Fig.84.—Chippewa Pipe.
Fig.84.—Chippewa Pipe.
The Chippewas, at the head of Lake Superior, carve their pipes out of a dark close-grained stone procured from Lake Huron; and frequently introduce groups of animals and human figures with considerable artistic skill.Pabahmesad, or the Flier, an old Chippewa, still living on the Great Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, is generally known asPwahguneka, the Pipe Maker, literally “he makes pipes.” Though brought in contact with the Christian Indians of the Manitoulin Islands, he resolutely adheres to the pagan creed and rites of his fathers, and resists all encroachments of civilisation. He gathers his materials from the favourite resorts of different tribes, using themuhkuhda-pwahgunahbeck, or black pipe-stone of Lake Huron; thewahbe-pwahgunahbeck, or white pipe-stone, procured on St. Joseph’s Island; and themisko-pwahgunahbeck, or red pipe-stone of the Coteau des Prairies. His saw, with which the stone is first roughly blocked out, is made of a bit of iron hoop; and his other tools are correspondingly rude. Nevertheless the workmanship of Pabahmesad shows him to be a master of his art; as will be seen from a characteristic illustration of his ingenious sculpture, engraved here (Fig. 84) from the original, in the museum of the University of Toronto.
Fig. 85.—Babeen Pipe.
Fig. 85.—Babeen Pipe.
But the most elaborate and curious specimens of pipe-sculpture are those executed by the Chimpseyan or Babeen Indians, who also carve skilfully in wood and bone. They display much ingenuity in grass-plaiting for hats and waterproof baskets, or kettles; and in the manufacture of basket-nets of wicker-work, with which they catch the ulikon, a kind of smelt abundant in the rivers along their coast. They are, indeed, pre-eminent among the savages of the North Pacific coast for artistic skill; yet to all appearance, in the collision with the whites, their extermination is inevitable at no distant date. The frontispiece, Plate 1. illustrates the characteristic physiognomy of this people. It is the portrait of Kaskatachyuh, a Chimpseyan chief, from sketches taken by Mr. Paul Kane, while travelling in their country. He wears one of the native hats made of dyed and plaited grass. The Chimpseyans belong to the Thlinket stock, tribes of which extend as far north as Behring Bay. They do not feast on the whale, because it is one of their tribal totems; but the blubber of the porpoise and seal is a favourite delicacy. The Babeens or big-lip Indians,—as the Chimpseyans are most frequently called,—have received this name from the deformation of the under-lip in the women of the tribe, produced by the insertion of a piece of wood into a slit made in infancy, and increased in size until the lip protrudes like the bill of a duck; and among the wooden masks which they carve of life-size, this protruding lip is the invariable characteristic of those of the women. Other and not less singular customs mark the distinction between the sexes, and are perpetuated even after death. Their women are wrapped in mats and placed on an elevated platform, or in a canoe raised on poles, while the bodies of the males are invariably burned. The Chimpseyans and the Clalam Indians, occupying Vancouver’s Island and the coasts in the neighbourhood of Charlotte’s Sound, carve bowls, platters, and other utensils out of a blue claystone or slate, from which also they make their pipes, and decorate them with many ingenious and grotesque devices. One of the smaller and simpler of these pipes, shown in Fig. 85, is placed here alongside of achef-d’œuvreof Pabahmesad, the Chippewa artist. Nothing could better serve to illustrate the contrast between the ingenious imitative art of Algonquin pipe-sculpture and the exuberant fancifulness of the Babeen carvings. Large and complicated designs are common, sometimes inlaid with bone or ivory, and embracing every native or foreign object adapted to the sculptor’s fancy. The same talent for carving finds room for its display on their ivory combs; and on ladles and spoons made from the horns of a mountain goat, which is one of the principal animals that they hunt on land. The claystone carvings of strictly native design chiefly occur on their pipe-sculptures, and consist of human figures, and of strange monstrosities intermingling human and brute forms, in which curious analogies may frequently be traced to the sculptures of Central America. But the powers of observation and imitation are most strikingly illustrated in claystone carvings of objects of foreign origin. The collections formed by the United States Exploring Expedition, now at Washington, include numerous specimens of this class, representing European houses, forts, boats, horses, and fire-arms; and reproducing in minute detail the cords, pulleys, and other minutiæ of the shipping which frequent the coast. The example shown in Fig. 86 is a curious combination of native and foreign elements; and may be regarded as the conventional representation by the native artist of a bear hunt in the vicinity of one of the Hudson Bay Company’s stations. The animal-heads on some of the human figures represent the grotesque masks already referred to as among their favourite carvings, and a special branch of native art. They are executed in wood, the size of life, and brilliantly coloured; and are worn in the grand dances of the tribe.
Fig. 86.—Babeen Pipe-Sculpture.
Fig. 86.—Babeen Pipe-Sculpture.
In some of the larger pipes, the entire group presents much of the grotesque exuberance of fancy, mingled with imitations from nature, which constitute the charm of ecclesiastical sculptures of the thirteenth century. Figures in the oddest varieties of posture are ingeniously interlaced, and connected by elaborate ornaments; the intermediate spaces being perforated, so as to give great lightness to the whole. But though well calculated to recall the quaint products of the medieval sculptor’s chisel, such comparisons are not suggested by any imitation of European models. Their style of art is thoroughly American; and traits of the same peculiar devices and modes of thought which mark some of the most finished sculptures of Yucatan are replete with interest, when thus recognised in regions so remote, and in the productions of rude Indian tribes.
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 tobaccokohiba, 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]VidePrehistoric Annals of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 496-498.
[100]
VidePrehistoric Annals of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 496-498.
[101]Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 293.
[101]
Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 293.
[102]This collection has since been acquired for the Blackmore Museum.
[102]
This collection has since been acquired for the Blackmore Museum.
[103]Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 245, fig. 145.
[103]
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 245, fig. 145.
[104]Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 183.
[104]
Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 183.
[105]Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley(No. 143).
[105]
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley(No. 143).
[106]Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 152.
[106]
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 152.
[107]This derivation from the SpanishManois rejected by some etymologists for a native Carib one,Manattoüi.
[107]
This derivation from the SpanishManois rejected by some etymologists for a native Carib one,Manattoüi.
[108]Archæology of the United States, p. 122.
[108]
Archæology of the United States, p. 122.
[109]Illustrations of the Manners, etc., of the North American Indians.By Geo. Catlin. Eighth edition. Vol. ii. p. 167.Vide Proceed. Amer. Philosoph. Soc., vol. x. p. 274.
[109]
Illustrations of the Manners, etc., of the North American Indians.By Geo. Catlin. Eighth edition. Vol. ii. p. 167.Vide Proceed. Amer. Philosoph. Soc., vol. x. p. 274.
[110]Mass. Hist. Coll., Second Series, vol. ix. p. 94.
[110]
Mass. Hist. Coll., Second Series, vol. ix. p. 94.
[111]Historia General de las Indias, second edit. p. 74.
[111]
Historia General de las Indias, second edit. p. 74.
[112]History of the New World.By Girolamo Benzoni. Hakluyt Society, 1857.
[112]
History of the New World.By Girolamo Benzoni. Hakluyt Society, 1857.
THE END
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AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.
[The end ofPrehistoric Man: Researches into the Origin of Civilization in the Old and the New World, by Daniel Wilson.]