99
The shafts or stems of these pipes, as will be seen in [plate 98], are from two to four feet long, sometimes round, but most generally flat; of an inch or two in breadth, and wound half their length or more with braids of porcupines’ quills; and often ornamented with the beaks and tufts from the wood-pecker’s head, with ermine skins and long red hair, dyed from white horse hair or the white buffalo’s tail.
The stems of these pipes will be found to be carved in many ingenious forms, and in all cases they are perforated through the centre, quite staggering the wits of the enlightened world to guess how the holes have been bored through them; until it is simply and briefly explained, that the stems are uniformly made of the stalk of the young ash, which generally grows straight, and has a small pith through the centre, which is easily burned out with a hot wire or a piece of hard wood, by a much slower process.
In [plate 98], the pipes marked b are ordinary pipes, made and used for the luxury only of smoking; and for this purpose, every Indian designs and constructs his own pipe. The calumet, or pipe of peace ([plate 98] a), ornamented with the war-eagle’s quills, is a sacred pipe, and never allowed to be used on any other occasion than that of peace-making; when the chief brings it into treaty, and unfolding the many bandages which are carefully kept around it—has it ready to be mutually smoked by the chiefs, after the terms of the treaty are agreed upon, as the means of solemnizing or signing, by an illiterate people, who cannot draw up an instrument, and sign their names to it, as it is done in the civilized world.
The mode of solemnizing is by passing the sacred stem to each chief, who draws one breath of smoke only through it, thereby passing the most inviolable pledge that they can possibly give, for the keeping of the peace. This sacred pipe is then carefully folded up, and stowed away in the chief’s lodge, until a similar occasion calls it out to be used in a similar manner.
There is no custom more uniformly in constant use amongst the poor Indians than that of smoking, nor any other more highly valued. His pipe is his constant companion through life—his messenger of peace; he pledges his friends through its stem and its bowl—and when its care-drowning fumes cease to flow, it takes a place with him in his solitary grave, with his tomahawk and war-club, companions to his long fancied, “mild and beautiful hunting-grounds.”
The weapons of these people, like their pipes, are numerous, and mostly manufactured by themselves. In a former place ([plate 18]) I have described a part of these, such as the bows and arrows, lances, &c., and they have yet many others, specimens of which I have collected from every tribe; and a number of which I have grouped together in [plate 99]; consisting of knives, war-clubs, and tomahawks. I have here introduced the most general and established forms that are in use amongst the different tribes, which are all strictly copied from amongst the great variety of these articles to be found in my Collection.
The scalping-knives a and b, and tomahawks e e e e are of civilized manufacture, made expressly for Indian use, and carried into the Indian country by thousands and tens of thousands, and sold at an enormous price. The scabbards of the knives and handles for the tomahawks, the Indians construct themselves, according to their own taste, and oftentimes ornament them very handsomely. In his rude and unapproached condition, the Indian is a stranger to such weapons as these—he works not in the metals; and his untutored mind has not been ingenious enough to design or execute anything so savage or destructive as these civilized refinements on Indian barbarity. In his native simplicity he shapes out his rude hatchet from a piece of stone, as in letter f, heads his arrows and spears with flints; and his knife is a sharpened bone, or the edge of a broken silex. The war-club c is also another civilized refinement, with a blade of steel, of eight or ten inches in length, and set in a club, studded around and ornamented with some hundreds of brass nails.
Their primitive clubs d are curiously carved in wood, and fashioned out with some considerable picturesque form and grace; are admirably fitted to the hand, and calculated to deal a deadly blow with the spike of iron or bone which is imbedded in the ball or bulb at the end.