Quotes on Cherokee Pipes:
A couple of interesting quotes on pipes, especially among the Cherokee:
Timberlake describes the types of materials used in pipe
construction. Of note is the use of what was possibly red
pipestone, or catlinite, and the use of porcupine quills to decorate
the stem:
Timberlake, Henry, and Samuel Cole Williams. Lieut. Henry
Timberlake's Memoirs: 1756-1765. Signal Mountain, Tenn: Mountain
Press, 2001. Page 39:
"During this dance the peace-pipe was prepared, the bowl of it
was of red stone, curiously cut with a knife, it being very soft,
tho' extremely pretty when polished. Some of these are of black
stone, and some of the same earth they make their pots with, but
beautifully diversified. The item is about three feet long, finely
adorned with porcupine quills, dyed feathers, deers hair, and such
like gaudy trifles. "
Excerpted from James Adair's History of the American Indians, pp
423-424 - the 1775 Archive.org version available on
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofamerica00adairich
"They make beautiful stone
pipes; and the Cheerake the best of any of the Indians, for
their mountainous country contains many different sorts and
colours of soils proper for such uses. They easily form them
with their tomohawks, and afterward finish them in any desired
form with their knives, the pipes being of a very soft quality
till they are smoked with, and used to the fire, when they
become quite hard. They are often a full span long, and the
bowls are about half as large again as those of our English
pipes.
"The fore part of each commonly
runs out with a sharp peak, two or three fingers broad, and a
quarter of an inch thick on both sides of the bowl. Lengthwise,
they cut several pictures with a great deal of skill and labour
such as a buffalo and a panther on the opposite sides of the
bowl; a rabbit and a fox, and, very often, a man and a woman
puris naturalibus. Their sculpture cannot much be commended for
its modesty.
"The savages work so slow that
one of their artists is two months at a pipe, with his knife,
before he finishes it. Indeed, as before observed, they are
great enemies to profuse sweating, and are never in a hurry
about a good thing.
"The stems are commonly made of
soft wood about two feet long, and an inch thick, cut into four
squares, each scooped till they join very near the hollow of the
stem. The beaus always hollow the squares, except a little at
each corner to hold them together, to which they fasten a parcel
of bell-buttons, different sorts of fine feathers, and several
small battered pieces of copper kettles hammered, round
deer-skin thongs, and a red painted scalp. This is a boasting,
valuable, and superlative ornament. According to their standard,
such a pipe constitutes the superior, a grand beau. They so
accurately carve, or paint hieroglyphic characters on the stem,
that all the war-actions, and the tribe of the owner, with a
great many circumstances of things, are fully delineated. This
may seem strange to those who are unacquainted with the ancient
skill of the Egyptians this way, and the present knowledge of
the Turkish mutes. But so it is, and there is not perhaps the
like number of mimic mutes on the face of the earth, nor ever
were among the old Greek or Roman Pantomimi, as with the Indian
Americans, for representing the great and minute things of life,
by different gestures, movements of the body, and expressive
countenances, and at the same time they are perfectly understood
by each other."
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