80 Cincinnats Society of Natural History. 
Indians gambled to great excess, and staked furniture, clothes, 
tools, personal liberty, or even their scalp-lock. 
Dancing was one of their daily amusements, and they have them 
of every possible variety, commemorative of all the events of 
Indian life—war, hunting, planting corn, worship of sun, etc. 
The war dance is performed about a painted pole, and those who 
enlisted for the enterprise struck the pole with their tomahawks or 
war clubs. The women had dances among themselves, accom- 
panied with musical instruments and the singing of rhythmic sounds. 
Their instruments consisted of rattles, bunches of deer hoofs, 
notched sticks, drums, tamborines, flutes and whistles. 
Tobacco is indigenous to America. It was used most in climates 
where it grew. The Indians of North America used pipes—bowls 
curiously carved out of stone, or of ‘‘catlinite.” The Mexicans 
used reeds and tubes filled with tobacco, or with other weeds, and 
bark or leaves of trees, as willow, sumach, etc. 
Some chew the inner bark of the pine tree, which furnishes a 
resin like tolu. 
The Creeks and Choctaws prepared a drink from the cassine 
(Prinos glober) called black-drink; it was emetic. 
Col. S. H. Long says that the Otoes prepared a drink from the 
seed of the ‘‘ intoxicating” bean.” 
The Mexicans prepared the pulque, but none but grandfathers 
and grandmothers were permitted to use it under pain of death. 
Lime of burnt shells was used with certain plants for chewing, 
by the American, as well as the Asiatic, Indians. 
Intoxicating drinks can be readily made out of honey and 
water. Clavigero states that there are six different kinds of bees in 
Mexico. 
All nations know that grain bruised or mashed will make intox- 
icating drinks, and all rude nations seem to find their supremest 
delight in excessive quantities of intoxicating drinks. 
Juarros remarks that the Quiches were intemperate in their 
habits, and that they made ten different kinds of drinks from maize. 
In Yucatan, the natives intoxicated themselves with a liquor made 
of honey and water. In Honduras they used certain roots and 
fruits steeped in water and then submitted to fermentation. 
Sweating baths or steam baths are among the luxuries of our 
Indians. A hut of skin or bark is constructed with a scaffold or 
platforin of trellis work, a foot or so above the ground; here the 
