When it is uncovered, great ceremony is shown. No matter how severe may be the weather,—sometimes far below zero,—the bearer begins his operations by removing all his garments with the exception of his cloth, and then pours upon a burning coal some fragrant gum, which fills the place with smoke. He then carefully removes the different wrappers, fills the bowl with tobacco, and blows the smoke to the four points of the compass, to the sky, and to the earth, at each puff uttering a prayer to the Great Spirit for assistance in war against all enemies, and for bison and corn from all quarters. The pipe is replaced with similar ceremonies. No woman is allowed to see it, and if during the beginning of the ceremony a single word is spoken, it is looked upon as a very bad omen, and all the ceremony has to be begun again.
The bowl of the calumet is made of a peculiar stone, found, I believe, only in one place in the world, namely, in the Great Pipe-stone Quarry. This is situated in the Côteau des Prairies, about three hundred miles west of the Falls of St. Anthony, on the southern summit of the dividing ridge between the Minnesota and Missouri rivers, in the very middle of the Sioux territory. On this sacred spot the Great Spirit is said to have stood in the ancient times, and to have called together all the Indian nations. He broke from the rock a piece of stone, moulded it in his hands into a huge pipe bowl, and smoked it toward the four quarters of the compass. Then he told them that the ground was sacred, and that no weapon of war should be raised in it, for the red stone was their flesh, and belonged equally to them all. At the last whiff of the pipe the Great Spirit disappeared in the cloud, and the whole ground was melted, and became polished as at the present time.
In consequence of this legend, the Indians have the greatest reverence for this place. They will not allow any white man to touch the stone, or even to approach the place, if they can keep him away, saying that the stone is their flesh, and that if a white man takes the red men’s flesh, “a hole will be made in their flesh, and the blood will never stop running.”
Even the natives themselves never take a piece without asking permission of the Great Spirit, depositing tobacco in the hole whence they dug it, and promising that it shall be made into a pipe. When Mr. Catlin succeeded in reaching this sacred spot, one of the chief obstacles lay in the fact that a native had once given a piece of the red stone to a white man in order to be made into a pipe, and he had made it into a dish, thereby offending the Great Spirit, and “making the heart of the Indians sick.”
Mr. Catlin’s opinion is, that the red pipes, found among almost every tribe of Indians on the continent, were obtained at this place. His reasons are that every tribe he visited alleged this as their source; and furthermore, the stone from which they are made is different from any mineral yet discovered in America or Europe. He expresses the conviction substantiated by striking proof that the various tribes had for centuries visited this quarry, laying aside the war club and scalping knife, and smoking together in amity upon this neutral ground by command, as they thought, of the Great Spirit.
This stone is of a soft, creamy red color, rather variable in point of tint, and taking a peculiar polish. It has been analyzed, and is said to be a kind of steatite. It is cut into various fanciful shapes, those shown in the [illustration] on the next page being ordinary examples, though in some cases the bowls are adorned with figures of men and various animals. Some of these pipe heads have two bowls, one in front of the other.
These bowls are fitted with stems worthy of their sacred character. They are generally made of the stalk of the young ash, and are often adorned in the most elaborate manner. They are mostly flat, and sometimes are twisted spirally and perforated with open patterns in such a way that the observer cannot but marvel how the aperture for the smoke is made. After all, the mode of boring is simple enough. As every one knows who has cut a young ash sapling, the centre is occupied with pith. This is easily burned out with a hot wire, or bored out with a piece of hard wood, and the aperture is completed.
Afterward the wood is cut away on two sides, so as to leave only a flat stem, with the bore occupying the centre. The perforated patterns are next cut at either side of the bore, being carefully kept clear of it; and if the stem be then softened in boiling water, it can be made to assume almost any shape. One valued but rather rare form is a screw, or spiral, and several of the pipes in Mr. Catlin’s collection have this form.
The stems are very seldom left bare, but are almost invariably decorated with colored porcupine quills, woven into various patterns, sometimes representing the forms of men and animals. The calumet is always decorated with a row of eagle feathers, sometimes stained scarlet, and being tufted at their ends with slight plumes of hair. Indeed, this portion of the calumet is formed on exactly the same principle as the headdress of the chief, of which a [drawing] is given on page 1277. An example of this kind of pipe is shown in the [upper figure], on page 1315. Many pipes, instead of feathers, have long tufts of hair dyed scarlet. This hair is taken either from the tail of a white horse or that of a white bison, as in the lower figure of the same illustration. The woodpecker furnishes many ornaments for these pipes, and sometimes the stem passes through the preserved skin of a bird, or through that of a particularly beautiful ermine. But whatever may be the ornament of a medicine pipe, it is always the very best and most valuable that can be procured. The stem of the pipe varies from two to four feet.
The natives do not restrict themselves to tobacco, but smoke many narcotic vegetables, whether leaves, roots, or bark. These are generally mixed with tobacco, and go by the general name of k’neck-k’neck.