Pascimur et fumis, ingeniosa gula est.”
THE SMOKING RITE.We began by calling our new gift the “holy herb;” it is now, like the Balm of Gilead, entitled, I believe, a weed. Among the North American Indians even the spirits smoke; the “Indian summer” is supposed to arise from the puffs that proceed from the pipe of Nanabozhoo, the Ojibwa Noah. The pipe may have been used in the East before the days of tobacco, but if so it was probably applied to the inhalation of cannabis and other intoxicants.[68] On the other hand, the Indian had no stimulants. He never invented the beer of Osiris, though maize grew abundantly around him;[69] the koumiss of the Tartar was beyond his mental reach; and though “Jimsen weed”[70] overruns the land, he neglected its valuable intoxicating properties. His is almost the only race that has ever existed wholly without a stimulant; the fact is a strong proof of its autochthonic origin. It is indeed incredible that man, having once learned, should ever forget the means of getting drunk. Instead of the social cup the Indian smoked. As tobacco does not grow throughout the continent, he invented kinnikinik. This Indian word has many meanings. By the hunters and settlers it is applied to a mixture of half and half, or two thirds tobacco and one of red willow bark; others use it for a mixture of tobacco, sumach leaves, and willow rind; others, like Ruxton (“Life in the Far West,” p. 116), for the cortex of the willow only. This tree grows abundantly in copses near the streams and water-courses. For smoking, the twigs are cut when the leaves begin to redden. Some tribes, like the Sioux, remove the outer and use only the highly-colored inner bark; others again, like the Shoshonees, employ the external as well as the internal cuticle. It is scraped down the twig in curling ringlets, without, however, stripping it off; the stick is then planted in the ground before the fire, and, when sufficiently parched, the material is bruised, comminuted, and made ready for use. The taste is pleasant and aromatic, but the effect is that of the puerile ratan rather than the manly tobacco. The Indian, be it observed, smokes like all savages by inhaling the fumes into the lungs, and returning them through the nostrils; he finds pure tobacco, therefore, too strong and pungent. As has been said, he is catholic in his habits of smoking; he employs indifferently rose-bark (Rosa blanda?)[71] and the cuticle of a cornus, the lobelia,[72] the larb, a vaccinium, a Daphne-like plant, and many others. The Indian smokes incessantly, and the “calumet”[73] is an important part of his household goods. He has many superstitions about the practice. It is a sacred instrument, and its red color typifies the smoker’s flesh. The Western travelers mention offerings of tobacco to, and smoking of pipes in honor of, the Great Spirit. Some men will vow never to use the pipe in public, others to abstain on particular days. Some will not smoke with their moccasins on, others with steel about their persons; some are pledged to abstain inside, others outside the wigwam, and many scatter buffalo chip over their tobacco. When beginning to smoke there are certain observances; some, exempli gratiâ, direct, after the fashion of Gitche Manitou, the first puff upward or heavenward, the second earthward, and the third and fourth over the right and left shoulders, probably in propitiation of the ghosts, who are being smoked for in proxy; others, before the process of inhaling, touch the ground with the heel of the pipe-bowl, and turn the stem upward and averted.
[68] The word tobacco (West Indian, tobago or tobacco, a peculiar pipe), which has spread through Europe, Asia, and Africa, seems to prove the origin of the nicotiana, and the non-mention of smoking in the “Arabian Nights” disproves the habit of inhaling any other succedaneum.
[69] It has long been disputed whether maize was indigenous to America or to Asia; learned names are found on both sides of the question. In Central Africa the cereal is now called as in English, “Indian corn,” proving that in that continent it first was introduced from Hindostan. The Italians have named it Gran’ Turco, showing whence it was imported by them. The word maiz, mays, maize, or mahiz, is a Carib word introduced by the Spaniards into Europe; in the United States, where “corn” is universally used, maize is intelligible only to the educated.
[70] Properly Jamestown weed, the Datura stramonium, the English thorn-apple, unprettily called in the Northern States of America “stinkweed.” It found its way into the higher latitudes from Jamestown (Virginia), where it was first observed springing on heaps of ballast and other rubbish discharged from vessels. According to Beverly (“History of Virginia,” book ii., quoted by Mr. Bartlett), it is “one of the greatest coolers in the world;” and in some young soldiers who ate plentifully of it as a salad, to pacify the troubles of bacon, the effect was “a very pleasant remedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days.”
[71] The wild rose is every where met with growing in bouquets on the prairies.
[72] The Lobelia inflata, or Indian tobacco, is corrupted by the ignorant Western man to low belia in contradistinction to high belia, better varieties of the plant.
[73] The calumet, a word introduced by the old French, is the red sandstone pipe, described in a previous page, with a long tube, generally a reed, adorned with feathers. It is the Indian symbol of hatred or amity; there is a calumet of war as well as a calumet of peace. To accept the calumet is to come to terms; to refuse it is to reject them. The same is expressed by burying and digging up the tomahawk or hatchet. The tomahawk and calumet are sometimes made of one piece of stone; specimens, however, have become very rare since the introduction of the iron axe. The “Song of Hiawatha” (Canto I., The Peace Pipe) and the interesting “Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians” (vol. ii., p. 160), have made the Red Pipe-stone Quarry familiar to the Englishman.
According to those who, like Pennant, derive the North American from the Scythians, THE SCALPING RITE.scalping is a practice that originated in High and Northeastern Asia. The words of the Father of History are as follows: “Of the first enemy a Scythian sends down, he quaffs the blood; he carries the heads of all that he has slain in battle to the king; for when he has brought a head, he is entitled to a share of the booty that may be taken—not otherwise; to skin the head, he makes a circular incision from ear to ear, and then, laying hold of the crown, shakes out the skull; after scraping off the flesh with an ox’s rib, he rumples it between his hands, and having thus softened the skin, makes use of it as a napkin; he appends it to the bridle of the horse he rides, and prides himself on this, for the Scythian that has most of these skin napkins is adjudged the best man, etc., etc. They also use the entire skins as horse-cloths, also the skulls for drinking-cups.”—(“Melpomene,” iv., 64, Laurent’s trans.) The underlying idea is doubtless the natural wish to preserve a memorial of a foeman done to death, and at the same time to dishonor his hateful corpse by mutilation. Fashion and tradition regulate the portions of the human frame preferred.
Scalping is generally, but falsely, supposed to be a peculiarly American practice. The Abbé Em. Domenech (“Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North America,” chap. xxxix.) quotes the decalvare of the ancient Germans, the capillos et cutem detrahere of the code of the Visigoths, and the annals of Flude, which prove that the “Anglo-Saxons” and the Franks still scalped about A.D. 879. And as the modern American practice is traceable to Europe and Asia, so it may be found in Africa, where aught of ferocity is rarely wanting. “In a short time after our return,” says Mr. Duncan (“Travels in Western Africa in 1845 and 1846”), “the Apadomey regiment passed, on their return, in single file, each leading in a string a young male or female slave, carrying also the dried scalp of one man supposed to have been killed in the attack. On all such occasions, when a person is killed in battle, the skin is taken from the head and kept as a trophy of valor. It must not be supposed that these female warriors kill according to the number of scalps presented; the scalps are the accumulation of many years. If six or seven men are killed during one year’s war it is deemed a great thing; one party always run away in these slave-hunts; but where armies meet the slaughter is great. I counted 700 scalps pass in this manner.” But mutilation, like cannibalism, tattooing, and burying in barrows, is so natural under certain circumstances to man’s mind that we distinctly require no traditional derivation.