PREHISTORIC MAN. CHAPTER XVI. NARCOTIC ARTS AND SUPERSTITIONS. AMONG the native products of the American continent, there is none which so strikingly distinguishes it as the tobacco-plant, and the purposes to which its leaf is applied; for even could it be proved that the use of it as a narcotic, and the practice of smoking its burning leaf, had originated independently in the Old World, the sacred institution of the peace-pipe must still remain the peculiar characteristic of the Red Indian of America. Its name-derived by some from the Haîtian tambaku, and by others from Tabaco, a province of Yucatan, where the Spaniards are affirmed to have first met with it, appears to have been the native term for the pipe, and not for the plant, which was variously called kohiba, petun, qutschartai, uppówoc, apooke, and indeed had a different name from almost every ancient and modern tribe and nation. The tabaco, or implement originally used by the Indians of Hispaniola for inhaling the smoke of the kohiba, or tobacco-plant, is described by Oviedo as a hollow, forked cane like the letter Y, the double ends of which were inserted in the nostrils, while the single end was applied to the burning leaves VOL. II. Α of the herb. This, however, was a peculiar insular custom, and a mere local name, though since brought into such universal use as the designation of the plant while the pipe, which plays so prominent a part among the traces of the most ancient arts and rites of the continent, is now common to every quarter of the globe. Nothing, indeed, more clearly proves the antiquity and universality of the use of tobacco throughout the whole continent of America, than the totally distinct and diverse names by which it is designated in the various languages of the Indian tribes. So far as we can now infer from the evidence furnished by native arts and relics connected with the use of the tobacco-plant, it seems to have been as familiar to most of the ancient tribes of the North-west, and the aborigines of the Canadian forests, as to those of the American tropics, of which the Nicotiana tabacum is believed to be a native. No such remarkable depositories indeed have been found to the north of the great chain of lakes as those disclosed to the explorers of the tumuli of "Mound City," in the Scioto Valley; but even now the tobacco-pipe monopolizes the ingenious art of many of the wild forest-tribes of the continent, and some of their most curious legends and superstitions are connected with the favourite national implement. Among them it retains the dignity of a timehonoured institution, the sacredness of which still survives with much of its ancient force; and to this accordingly the student of America's primeval antiquities is justified in turning, as an important link connecting the present with that ancient past. When referring to the miniature sculptures procured from the mounds of the Ohio and Scioto valleys, Messrs. Squier and Davis remark :-"From the appearance of these relics it is fairly inferable that among the Mound-Builders, as among the tribes of North American Indians, the practice of smoking was very general, if not universal. The conjecture that it was also more or less interwoven with their civil and religious observances is not without its support. The use of tobacco was known to nearly all the American nations, and the pipe was their grand diplomatist. In making war and in concluding peace it performed an important part. Their deliberations, domestic as well as public, were conducted under its influences ; and no treaty was ever made unsignalized by the passage of the calumet. The transfer of the pipe from the lips of one individual to those of another was the token of amity and friendship, a gage of honour with the chivalry of the forest which was seldom violated. In their religious ceremonies it was also introduced with various degrees of solemnity." But it is worthy of note that the form of the mound-pipes is altogether peculiar, and differs essentially from the endless varieties of form and pattern, wrought by Indian ingenuity from the most diverse materials pertaining to the native localities of tribes of the forest and prairie. Some consideration, therefore, of the arts of the modern pipe-sculptor, and of the native customs and traditions associated with the use of tobacco, is necessary, as a means of comparison between the ancient and the modern nations and tribes of the New World. Nor will it be out of place to consider here whether America was indeed the sole originator of the practice of smoking, and consequently how far its introduction into Europe and the Old World at large may be justly reckoned as one of the results of Columbus's adventurous daring. In the Old World most of the ideas connected with the tobacco-pipe are homely and prosaic enough; and though we associate the chibouk with the poetical reveries of the oriental day-dreamer, and the hookah with the pleasant fancies of the Anglo-Indian reposing in the shade of his bungalow, nevertheless, its seductive antique mystery, and all its symbolic significance, pertain alone to the New World. The tobacco-pipe, indeed, constitutes the peculiar and most characteristic symbol of America, intimately interwoven with the rites and superstitions, and with the relics of ancient customs and historical traditions of its aborigines. If Europe borrowed from it the first knowledge of its prized narcotic, the gift was received unaccompanied by any of the sacred or peculiar virtues which the Red Indian still attaches to it as the symbol of hospitality and amicable intercourse; and Longfellow, accordingly, with no less poetic vigour than fitness, opens his Song of Hiawatha with the institution of "the peace-pipe" by the Great Spirit. The Master of Life descends on the mountains of the prairie, breaks a fragment from the red stone of the quarry, and, fashioning it with curious art into a figured pipe-head, he fills it with the bark of the red willow, chafes the forest into flame with the tempest of his breath, and kindling it, smokes the calumet as a signal to the nations, and the tribes of the ancient aborigines gathering from river, lake, and prairie, assemble at the divine summons, listen to the warnings and promises with which the Great Spirit seeks to guide them ; and this done, and the warriors having buried their warclubs, they smoke their first peace-pipe, and depart : "While the Master of Life, ascending, Through the opening of cloud-curtains, In the smoke that rolled around him, It is no mean triumph of the poet thus to redeem from associations, not only prosaic, but even offensive, a custom which so peculiarly pertains to the usages and the rites of the American continent from the remotest times of which its historic memorials furnish any trace; and which was no sooner practically introduced to the knowledge of the Old World than that royal pedant, King James, directed against it his world-famous Counterblast to Tobacco, describing its use as "a custom loathesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless!" In those, however, as in other passages of his national epic, the American poet has only embodied in forms of modern verse the cherished legends of the New World: placing the opening scene of Hiawatha on the heights of the great red pipe-stone quarry of Coteau des Prairies, between the Minnesota and Missouri rivers, in the Far West. On the summit of the ridge between these two tributaries of the Mississippi rises a bold perpendicular cliff, beautifully marked with distinct horizontal layers of light grey and rose or flesh-coloured quartz. From the base of this a level prairie of about half a mile in width runs parallel to it, and here it is that the famous red pipestone is procured, at a depth of from four to five feet from the surface. Numerous traces of ancient and modern excavations indicate the resort of the Indian tribes of many successive generations to the locality. "That this place should have been visited," says Catlin, "for centuries past by all the neighbouring tribes, who have hidden the war club as they approached it, and stayed the cruelties of the scalping-knife, under the fear of the vengeance of the Great Spirit who overlooks it, will not seem strange or unnatural when their superstitions are known. That such has been the custom there is not a shadow of doubt, and that even so recently as to have been witnessed by |