Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The Medicine or Leaping Rock, here referred to, is a detached column standing between seven and eight feet from the precipitous cliff; and the leap across this chasm is a daring feat which the young warriors are ambitious of performing. It was pointed out to Catlin by a Sioux chief, whose son had perished in the attempt. A conical mound marked the spot of his sepulture; and though the sanctity of this ancient neutral ground has been invaded, and the Sioux now refuse to permit other tribes to have access to it, this is of quite recent occurrence. The memorials of many tribes on the graven rocks; numerous excavations, sepulchral mounds, and other earthworks in the vicinity; and the recovery from time to time, in chance excavations, or in ancient ossuaries and grave-mounds, of pipes wrought in the favourite material: all confirm the Indian tradition that this had been recognised as neutral ground by the tribes to the west, and many of those to the east of the Mississippi, to which they have made regular pilgrimages to renew their pipes from the rock consecrated by the footprints of the Great Spirit. The marks of his footsteps are pointed out, deeply impressed in the rock, and resembling the track of a large bird!

Mandan traditions respecting this sacred spot have a special interest; for the migrations of that once powerful Indian nation have been traced from the country lying between Lake Erie and Cincinnati, down the Valley of the Ohio, over the graves of the ancient Mound-Builders, and thence up the western branch of the Mississippi, until the extinction of nearly the whole nation, by the ravages of the small-pox, in the year 1838, at their latest settlements on the Upper Missouri. The site of their last homes lies to the north of the Sioux’s country, in whose possession the pipe-stone quarries are now vested by the law of the strongest. To the Sioux, accordingly, the guardianship of the traditions of the locality belongs. For, although they have thus set at defiance its most sacred characteristic, and so slighted the mandate of the Great Spirit, they do not the less strongly hold by the superstitious ideas associated with the spot.

One of these legends is connected with the peculiar features of the scene. Five large granite boulders form prominent objects on the level prairie in the vicinity of the pipe-stone quarries; and two holes under the largest of them are regarded by the Sioux as the abodes of the guardian spirits of the spot. Catlin, who broke off and carried away with him fragments of these sacred boulders, remarks: “As for the poor Indian, his superstitious veneration of them is such, that not a spear of grass is broken or bent by his feet within three or four roods of them, where he stops, and, in humble supplication, by throwing plugs of tobacco to them, solicits permission to dig and carry away the red stone for his pipes.” For here, according to Indian tradition, not only the mysterious birth of the peace-pipe, but the postdiluvian creation of man, took place.

The institution of the peace-pipe is thus narrated by the Sioux: “Many ages after the red men were made, when all the tribes were at war, the Great Spirit called them together at the Red Rocks. He stood on the top of the rocks, and the red nations were assembled on the plain below. He took out of the rock a piece of the red stone, and made a large pipe. He smoked it over them all; told them that it was part of their flesh; that though they were at war, they must meet at this place as friends; that it belonged to them all; that they must make their calumets from it, and smoke them to him whenever they wished to appease him or get his goodwill. The smoke from his big pipe rolled over them all, and he disappeared in its cloud. At the last whiff of his pipe a blaze of fire rolled over the rocks and melted their surface. At that moment two Indian maidens passed in a flame under the two medicine rocks, where they remain to this day. The voices of Tsomecostee and Tsomecostewondee, as they are named, are heard at times in answer to the invocations of the suppliants, and they must be propitiated before the pipe-stone is taken away.”

An offering of tobacco is the usual gift, and it appears to have been employed in similar acts of worship from the earliest period of intercourse with Europeans. In the narrative of the voyage of Drake, in 1572, it is stated that the natives brought a little basket made of rushes, and filled with an herb which they called tobak. This was regarded as a propitiatory offering; and the writer subsequently notes: they “came now the second time to us, bringing with them, as before had been done, feathers and bags of tobak for presents, or rather, indeed, for sacrifices, upon this persuasion that we were gods.” Harriot in like manner tells, in his “Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,” of a plant which the Spaniards generally call tobacco, but there named by the natives uppówoc. “This uppówoc is of so precious estimation among them, that they think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith, whereupon sometime they make halowed fires, and cast some of the powder therein for a sacrifice. Being in a storme upon the waters, to pacifie their gods they cast some up into the aire, and into the water; so a weare for fish being newly set up, they cast some therein and into the aire; also after an escape of danger, they cast some into the aire likewise; but all done with strange gestures, stamping, sometime dancing, clapping of hands, holding up of hands, and staring up into the heavens, uttering therewithal and chattering strange words and noises.”

Such practices and ideas of propitiatory offerings among southern Indian tribes of the sixteenth century, show that the offerings of tobacco still made by the Sioux to the spirits that haunt the pipe-stone quarry, are of no merely local origin, but were anciently as universal as the peace-pipe itself. Nor were such religious associations confined to the favourite narcotic of the northern continent. Among the Peruvians the coca-plant took the place of tobacco; and Dr. Tschudi states that he found it regarded by the Indians as something sacred and mysterious. “In all ceremonies, whether religious or warlike, it was introduced for producing smoke at the great offerings, or as the sacrifice itself. During divine worship the priests chewed coca-leaves; and, unless they were supplied with them, it was believed that the favour of the gods could not be propitiated.” Christianity, after an interval of upwards of three hundred years, has not eradicated the Indian’s faith in the virtues of the sacred plant. In the mines of Cerro de Pasco, masticated coca is thrown on the hard veins of metal to propitiate the gnomes of the mine, who, it is believed, would otherwise render the mountains impenetrable; and leaves of it are secretly placed in the mouth of the dead, to smooth the passage to another world. Thus we find, in the superstitions perpetuated among the Indians of the southern Cordilleras, striking analogies to those which survive among the Sioux, and give character to the strange rites practised by them at the red pipe-stone quarry, on the Coteau des Prairies.

One of the Indian traditions connected with that locality, which seems to perpetuate the idea of a general deluge, was thus narrated by a distinguished Knisteneaux on the Upper Missouri, on the occasion of presenting to Catlin a handsome red-stone pipe: “In the time of a great freshet, which took place many centuries ago, and destroyed all the nations of the earth, all the tribes of the red men assembled on the Coteau des Prairies, to get out of the way of the waters. After they had gathered here from every part, the water continued to rise, until at length it covered them all in a mass, and their flesh was converted into red pipe-stone. Therefore, it has always been considered neutral ground; it belongs to all tribes alike, and all were allowed to get it and smoke it together. While they were all drowning in a mass, a young woman, Kwaptahw, a virgin, caught hold of the foot of a very large bird that was flying over, and was carried to the top of a high cliff not far off, that was above the water. Here she had twins, and their father was the war-eagle, and her children have since peopled the earth.” The idea that the red pipe-stone is the flesh of their ancestors is a favourite one among different tribes. When Catlin and his party attempted to penetrate to the sacred locality, they were stopped by the Sioux, and one of them addressing him, said: “This red-pipe was given to the red men by the Great Spirit. It is a part of our flesh, and therefore is great medicine. We know that the whites are like a great cloud that rises in the east, and will cover the whole country. We know that they will have all our lands; but if ever they get our red-pipe quarry they will have to pay very dear for it.” Thus is it that even in the farthest West the Indian feels the fatal touch of that white hand; and to the intrigues of interested traders is ascribed the encroachment of the Sioux on the sacred neutral ground, where, within memory of living men, every tribe on the Missouri had smoked with their enemies, while the Great Spirit kept the peace among his red children.

Apart, then, from such indications of an artistic power of imitation, by which the ancient pipe-sculptors are distinguished, it becomes an object of interest to observe other elements, either of comparison or contrast, between the memorials of the Mound-Builders’ skill, and numerous specimens of pipe-sculpture produced by modern tribes.

Notwithstanding the endless variety which characterises the ancient Mound-Builders’ pipes, one general type is traceable through the whole. A curved base forms the stem and handle, from the centre of which rises the bowl, as shown in Fig. 78, so that it is complete as found; whereas the modern Indian generally employs a pipe-stem, and ascribes to it the peculiar virtues of the implement. The medicine-man decorates it with his most elaborate skill, and it is regarded with awe and reverence by the whole tribe. The stem would seem, therefore, to be characteristic of the modern race; if indeed it be not the distinguishing memorial of an origin of the Northern tribes diverse from Toltecan and other ancient nations. One idea which such comparisons suggest is that in the sacred associations with the pipe of the Mound-Builders, we have indications of contact between a migrating race of Central or Southern America, where no superstitious pipe-usages have been found, and one of the Northern tribes among whom such superstitions are most intimately interwoven with all their sacred mysteries.

The utmost variety distinguishes the pipes of the modern Indians: arising in part from the local facilities they possess for a suitable material, and in part also from the special style of art and decoration which has become traditional with the tribe. The easily wrought red pipe-stone has been generally sought after, from the beauty of its colour and texture, as well as the mysterious virtues attached to it. But the pipe-sculptures of many tribes can be distinguished no less certainly by the material, than by the favourite conventional pattern.