AMERICAN SPIRIT NATURAL TOBACCO

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From: Indian Uses of Native Plants - 1976

"Tobacco was sometimes the only crop that Indians with their migrations in search of food, whether game or plant food, really counted on producing. It was one of the important introductions taken back to England from the American colonies."

"Over the country types of tobacco vary. In the Rocky Mountains and Plains and through Nevada and California there were the native type of tobacco, which is a Nicotiana, and then the collection of leaves and sometimes bark of other plants, also native, but carefully blended."

"There are two kinds of smoking: ceremonial, as in council, and which might include preparation for training as a medicine man, and the other kind, for sociability and pleasure."

"Smoking requires a pipe. The pipe still in use among Plains Indians was usually made of pipestone from the great pipestone quarries in Minnesota, dark red in color, soft when first quarried, but becoming harder with exposure to air. The pipe itself might vary in size. It was shaped like a letter L. About eight inches in length, tapering in width. The small end was three inches in length, and then rose the pipe bowl, as large around as a man's thumb, the rest of the pipe on the balance of the L was five inches long and gradually increasing in width. The pip-stem was made of golden sumac, a sumac which used to grow close by the pipestone quarry. This stem was about 24 inches long and an inch wide, but quite thck, flat like a carpenter's pencil. This is the way the hole through the stem was made. Gathering the sumac in Spring when the sap was up in the large pith, some meat or fish was put out where blowflies could work on it. When large maggots were on the meat, the piece of sumac which had previously been put in a can of oil or bear grease, was brought in. As the large pith had taken up the oil, it was soft, and quite a bit was dug out. The maggots were then sealed up in the stem, to either eat their way through, or die. Sometimes they did both, but there was plenty of time to do it over again, patiently, till a long perfect hole was drilled through."

"On either side of this hole column holes were made and these were usually in sets of two, about six sets to the middle of the stem. Through the two holes buckskin or rawhide strings were inserted, and on them treasures of very old Hudson Bay beads, preferably blue, were tied, sometimes abalone shell pendants, and in the very middle, medicine feather, of some bird down, dyed red, was put on so it could float."

"This was the likeness of a chief's pipe, or a medicine pipe, usually a man would have a commoner pipe, one for a quiet smoke with a friend. This might be made of soapstone, or of a black stone, which could be worked on easily."

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