But while the modern Indian thus rivals in the elaborateness of his art the ingenious pipe-sculpture of the mounds, all his superstitious reverence is reserved for the pipe-stem. On it depends the safety of the tribe in peace, and its success in war. It is guarded accordingly with jealous care, and produced at the medicine dance or the war-council with mysterious ceremonies. Even on such great occasions, so long as the medicine pipe-stem is used, it is a matter of indifference whether the bowl attached to it be of the richest carving, or a common trader’s clay-pipe. Many special privileges and honours pertain to its bearer. It is not only disrespectful, but unlucky, to pass between him and the fire. An ornamental tent is provided for his use, and his other official accoutrements are so numerous that frequently he requires to maintain several horses for their transport. A bear-skin robe is employed for wrapping up the consecrated pipe-stem, and thus enveloped, it is usually borne by the favourite wife of the dignitary. But it is never allowed to be uncovered in her presence; and should a woman, even by chance, cast her eyes on it, its virtues can only be restored by a tedious ceremony.
Among the Indian portraits executed by Mr. Paul Kane, is one of Kea-keke-sacowaw, head chief of the Crees, whom he met on the Saskatchewan, engaged in raising a war-party against the Blackfeet. He had with him eleven medicine pipe-stems, the pledges of different bands that had joined him. The grim old chief appears decorated with his war-paint, and holding in his hand one of the pipe-stems adorned with the head and plumage of an eagle. Before beginning his work, the artist had to witness the ceremony of “opening the medicine pipe-stem,” in the course of which he smoked each of the eleven pipes; and, thus enlisted in the cause, his painting was esteemed a great medicine, calculated to contribute materially to the success of the war-party.
A young Cree Half-breed confessed to the painter that, in a spirit of daring scepticism, he had once secretly thrown down the medicine pipe-stem and kicked it about; but soon after, its official carrier was slain, and such misfortunes followed as left no doubt on his mind of the sanctity pertaining to this guardian and avenger of the honour of the tribe.
But all the ideas and superstitions which such usages illustrate, are peculiar to the modern Indians. The pipes of the Mound-Builders show that they used no pipe-stem; and the same appears to have been the case with the Mexicans before the Conquest. Throughout the whole of Lord Kingsborough’s great work, traces of the use of the tobacco-pipe are rare; and where they do occur they tend to confirm the idea that it was not invested, either in Mexico or Central America, with such sacred attributes as were attached to it by the ancient race of the Mississippi Valley: and which, under other but no less peculiar forms, are maintained among the Indian tribes of the North-west.
Various early writers on the customs of the American Indians refer to expiatory sacrifices, which present striking, though rude analogies, to the ancient offerings by fire on the mound-altars. Hearne describes a custom among the Chippewas, after the shedding of blood, of throwing all their ornaments, pipes, etc., into a common fire, kindled at some distance from their lodges; and Winslow narrates of the Nanohiggansets of New England, that they had a great house ordinarily resorted to by a few, whom he supposes to be priests; but he adds, “Thither, at certain times, resort all their people, and offer almost all the riches they have to their gods, as kettles, skins, hatchets, beads, knives, etc., all which are cast by the priests into a great fire that they make in the midst of the house.”[[110]] The analogies, however, which appear to be traceable in such practices of tribes remote from the localities of the old Mound-Builders, are after all slight, and lack the most important elements which give a special character to the ancient mound-altars. The use of tobacco is no longer a characteristic peculiar to the New World; but it may be that in the mode of indulging in its favourite narcotic, we have perpetuated as a practice of mere sensual indulgence, what was once a solemn rite associated with the mysterious worship of the sacred enclosures and the altar-mounds of the Mississippi Valley. Oviedo, who is the earliest authority, at least for any minute account of tobacco-smoking among the native tribes, speaks of it as an evil custom practised among the Indians of Hispaniola to produce insensibility; and greatly prized by the Carribees, who called tobacco kohiba, and “imagined, when they were drunk with the fumes of it, the dreams they had were in some sort inspired.”[[111]] Again, Girolamo Benzoni narrates in his travels in America, recently translated from the edition of 1753 by Rear-Admiral Smyth: “In La Española, and the other islands, when their doctors wanted to cure a sick man, they went to the place where they were to administer the smoke, and when he was thoroughly intoxicated by it the cure was mostly effected. On returning to his senses, he told a thousand stories of his having been at the council of the gods, and other high visions.”[[112]]
Many Indian legends ascribe a divine origin to tobacco. A chief of the Susquehannas told of two hunters of the tribe sharing the venison they had cooked with a lovely squaw, who suddenly appeared to them; and on returning to the scene of their feast thirteen moons after, they found the tobacco plant growing where she had sat. Harriot, who sailed in Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition of 1584, states that the Indians of Virginia regarded tobacco as a means of peculiar enjoyment, in which the Great Spirit was wont freely to indulge, and that he bestowed it on them that they might share in his delights. Repeated allusions also refer to its intoxicating effects as an influence analogous to that which produced the visions and inspirations of their fasting dreams. It seems, therefore, by no means improbable, that the original practice of inhaling the fumes of tobacco was associated exclusively with superstitious rites and divination; so that the tobacco-plant may have played a part in the worship of the ancient Mound-Builders, analogous to that of the inspiring vapour over which the Delphic tripod was placed, when the priestess of Apollo prepared to give utterance to the divine oracles.
| [100] | Vide Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 496-498. |
| [101] | Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 293. |
| [102] | This collection has since been acquired for the Blackmore Museum. |