Peace pipe
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A peace pipe, also called a calumet or medicine pipe, is a ceremonial smoking pipe used by many Native American tribes, traditionally as a token of peace.
A common material for calumet pipe bowls is red pipestone or catlinite, a fine-grained easily-worked stone of a rich red color of the Coteau des Prairies, west of the Big Stone Lake in South Dakota. The quarries were formerly neutral ground among warring tribes; many sacred traditions are associated with the locality.
Smoking tobacco out of a peace pipe was sacred to Native Americans. A prayer would be said to each of the four directions as well as mother earth and father sky as they filled the pipe. After filling the pipe, some tobacco would be sprinkled on the ground.
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[edit] Pipestone varieties
Several Native tribes make ceremonial pipes. The types of stones used vary by tribe and locality. Some of the known types of pipe stone and pipe materials are:
Clay - The Cherokee and Chickasaw both fashioned pipes made from fired clay that also employed small reed cane pipestems made from river cane. These pipes were made from aged river clay hardened in a hot fire.
Red Pipestone - Catlinite is an iron-rich, reddish, very hard quartzite slate typically excavated from below groundwater level, as the stone erodes rapidly when exposed to the weather and outside air. Red pipestone was used by the Eastern Tribes, Western and Great Basin Tribes, and the Plains Tribes, with sources of the stone in Tennessee (South Central), South Dakota (Pipestone), and Utah (Delta, Uinta). Catlinite from South Dakota is harder than that found at other locales, and has been widely commercialized and promoted for tourism, which explains the popular myth that all pipestone came from South Dakota in ancient times.
Blue Pipestone - Also a form of catlinite, blue pipestone was used almost predominantly by the Plains Tribes for ceremonial pipes. Deposits of the stone are also found in South Dakota. The use of blue pipestone coincided with the arrival of the horse among the Plains Tribes.
Bluestone - a hard, greenish-blue quartzite stone from the southern Appalachian Mountains. After being worked, it takes on a decidedly greenish cast. This stone was used by several Eastern Woodlands tribes for pipemaking. Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw made pipes from bluestone. Several ancient Mississippian bluestone pipes have been discovered.
Salmon Alabaster - the Uncompahgre Ute made beautiful ceremonial pipes from salmon alabaster mined in central Colorado.
Green Pipestone - A white on green marbled cupric pipestone found in Wyoming and South Dakota and used by the Shoshone, Ute, and Plains Tribes for personal and cermonial pipes. This stone was also used to carve sacred effigies and religious items.
Black Pipestone (South Dakota) - a soft, brittle, white on black marbled pipestone found in South Dakota and used by the Plains Tribes for ceremonial pipes.
Black Pipestone (Uinta) - an extremely hard black quartzite slate which has undergone metamorphic compression and is found in the southeastern drainage of the Uinta Mountains in Utah and Colorado. This stone was used by the Great Basin Tribes for war clubs and beautiful pipes that are jet black with a high gloss when polished. Stones which had tumbled down creeks and drainages were always selected, since these stones typically contained no cracks or defects.
[edit] Traditional pipemaking tools
Native Americans who learned the use of the bow and arrow rapidly advanced the concept in early pipemaking and employed bow drills that used hard white quartz points which, when combined with water, could bore out even the hardest of pipestones.
Early Native Americans employed moistened rawhide stips rolled in crushed white quartz and stretched with a bow handle to shape and rough the pipes. The efficiency of such bow stone saws in cutting and slabbing a large piece of red pipestone is quite surprising given their seeming simplicity. Pipes were also shaped and roughed with hard sandstones, afterward polished with water, then sanded with progressively finer and finer abrasive grit and animal hide, finally being rubbed with fat or facial oils to complete polishing.
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[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.de:Friedenspfeife
