A Grosventre dagger
Horn drinking cup
Blackfoot parchment bags
Talc pipes
One of the most necessary articles to the men is the tobacco-pipe; those made by themselves are not so handsome as those of the Sioux, which they highly prize, and readily obtain by barter. The true Blackfoot pipes are made of the talc, of which I have already spoken, or of a blackish stone, which is found in the Rocky Mountains. Their shape is shown in the annexed woodcuts;[96] {252} it is often in the form of a ball, or a pear, and rests upon a cubical foot. The tube is made of wood, broad, flat, or round, and sometimes carved in imitation of a serpent. The handsomest are the large medicine pipes, the calumets of the French.[97] They are adorned with the red heads of the woodpecker, bills, and a large fan made of feathers, and are used in all the solemn treaties and festivals of the North American tribes, more or less ornamented, but, on the whole, always in the same manner. When the Blackfeet smoke, they put a piece of dried earth, or a round mass made of the filaments and pods of certain water plants, on the ground, to rest the pipe on. Their tobacco consists of the small, roundish, dried leaves of the sakakomi plant (Arbutus uva ursi). When you visit an Indian in his tent, the pipe is immediately taken up, and passes round in the company, each person handing it to his left-hand neighbour. The master of the tent often blows the smoke towards the sun and the earth; every one takes some puffs and hands it on; the last man sends the pipe back again, but gives it to the person sitting opposite to him, in another row, and it circulates as before. The Blackfeet, like most of the tribes of the Upper Missouri, sow the seeds of the Nicotiana quadrivalvis, having first burnt the place where they intend it to grow: it is only on solemn occasions that they smoke this tobacco.