Use of tobacco among North American Indians

by Ralph Linton

Even if documentary evidence of the New World origin of tobacco were lacking, its importance in the religious and ceremonial life of the Indians would leave little doubt of the antiquity of its use among them. Among all the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains tobacco was the favorite offering to the supernatural powers, and among the Central Algonquians no ceremony could take place without it. As a sacrifice it might be burned as incense, cast into the air or on the ground, or buried. There were sacred places at which every visitor left a tobacco offering, and during storms it was thrown into lakes and rivers to appease the under-water powers. Smoking was indulged in on all solemn occasions, such as councils, and was a necessary part of most religious ceremonies. In such ceremonial smoking the methods of picking up, filling, and lighting the pipe were usually rigidly prescribed, and the first smoke was offered to the spirits. The methods of passing and holding the pipe were also prescribed and differed with the ceremony and even with the personal taboos of the smokers. In the religious ceremonies of the Hopi, the head chief was attended by an assistant of nearly equal rank, who ceremonially lighted the pipe, and with certain formalities and set words handed it to the chief, who blew the smoke to the world quarters and over the altar as a preliminary to his invocation.

The so-called medicine-bundles, collections of sacred objects around which the religious life of many of the Central Algonquians and Plains Tribes centered, often contained pipes which were smoked in the ceremonies attending the opening of the bundle ([Pl. V], Nos. 1–2). In some cases the pipe itself seems to have been the most important object, and the palladium of the Arapaho tribe is a straight pipe of black stone. Among some of the eastern Siouan tribes each clan had its sacred pipe which was used at namings and other clan ceremonies. The stems of these pipes were covered with elaborate wrappings and other ornaments which symbolized the various supernatural powers invoked in the ceremonies, and the sanctity of the pipe lay in its stem rather than its bowl.

The calumet, so often mentioned in early American records, was not a pipe, but an elaborately decorated shaft, pierced like a pipe stem, to which a pipe bowl was not necessarily attached. The name itself is not of Indian origin, but is a Norman-French word meaning a reed or tube. J. N. B. Hewitt says, “From the meager descriptions of the calumet and its uses it would seem that it has a ceremonially symbolic history independent of that of the pipe; and that when the pipe became an altar, by its employment for burning sacrificial tobacco to the gods, convenience and convention united the already highly symbolic calumet shafts and the sacrificial tobacco altar, the pipe bowl; hence it became one of the most profoundly sacred objects known to the Indians of northern America. As the colors and other adornments of the shaft represent symbolically various dominant gods of the Indian pantheon, it follows that the symbolism of the calumet and pipe represented a veritable executive council of the gods. Moreover, in some of the elaborate ceremonies in which it was necessary to portray this symbolism the employment of two shafts became necessary, because the one with its colors and accessory adornments represented the procreative male power and his aid, and was denominated the male, the fatherhood of nature; and the other with its colors and necessary adornments represented the reproductive female power and her aid, and was denominated the female, the motherhood of nature.

“The calumet was employed by ambassadors and travelers as a passport; it was used in ceremonies designed to conciliate foreign and hostile nations and to conclude lasting peace; to ratify the alliance of friendly tribes; to secure favorable weather for journeys; to bring needed rain; and to attest contracts and treaties which could not be violated without incurring the wrath of the gods. The use of the calumet was inculcated by religious precept and example. A chant and a dance have become known as the chant and dance of the calumet; together they were employed as an invocation to one or more of the gods. By naming in the chant the souls of those against whom war must be waged, such persons were doomed to die at the hands of the person so naming them. The dance and chant were rather in honor of the calumet than with the calumet.

“The Omaha and cognate names for this dance and chant signify ‘to make a sacred kinship,’ but not ‘to dance.’ This is a key to the esoteric significance of the use of the calumet. The one for whom the dance for the calumet was performed became thereby the adopted son of the performer. One might ask another to dance the Calumet dance for him, or one might offer to perform this dance for another, but in either case the offer or invitation could be declined.

“Charlevoix (1721) says that if the calumet is offered and accepted it is the custom to smoke in the calumet, and the engagements contracted are held sacred and inviolable, in just so far as such human things are inviolable. The Indians profess that the violation of such an engagement never escapes just punishment. In the heat of battle, if an adversary offer the calumet to his opponent and he accept it, the weapons on both sides are at once laid down; but to accept or to refuse the offer of the calumet is optional. There are calumets for various kinds of public engagements, and when such bargains are made an exchange of calumets is usual, in this manner rendering the contract or bargain sacred.

“By smoking together in the calumet the contracting parties intend to invoke the sun and the other gods as witnesses of the mutual obligations assumed by the parties, and as a guaranty the one to the other that they shall be fulfilled. This is accomplished by blowing the smoke toward the sky, the four world quarters, and the earth, with a suitable invocation.

“There were calumets for commerce and trade and for other social and political purposes; but the most important were those designed for war and those for peace and brotherhood. It was vitally necessary, however, that they should be distinguishable at once, lest through ignorance and inattention one should become the victim of treachery. The Indians in general chose not or dared not to violate openly the faith attested by the calumet, and sought to deceive an intended victim by the use of a false calumet of peace in an endeavor to make the victim in some measure responsible for the consequences. On one occasion a band of Sioux, seeking to destroy some Indians and their protectors, a French officer and his men, presented, in the guise of friendship, twelve calumets, apparently of peace; but the officer, who was versed in such matters and whose suspicion was aroused by the number offered, consulted an astute Indian attached to his force, who caused him to see that among the twelve one of the calumet shafts was not matted with hair like the others, and that on the shaft was graven the figure of a viper, coiled around it. The officer was made to understand that this was the sign of covert treachery, thus frustrating the intended Sioux plot.”

The use of the calumet was almost universal in the Mississippi valley and among the Plains tribes, but in the Ohio and St. Lawrence valleys and southward its use is not so definitely shown. The symbolism and ritual of the calumet reached its highest development among the Pawnee and neighboring Siouan tribes and the concept probably originated in this region.

R. Linton.