Native American Recreational Pipe Smoking

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,427
Europeans learned pipe smoking from the indigenous peoples of North America, and Native American pipes and leaf are often characterized by ceremonial pipes. Writings of some Europeans in close contact with the Nations remembered and reported a good deal of recreational smoking, for example James Willard Schultz and his late adolescent experiences with the Blackfoot. Smoking was often the way to relax after a hunt or other sort of rigorous work day. However, I have not seen any depictions of what Native American recreational tobacco pipes looked like. Is anyone of Indian heritage or has anyone lived in close proximity to Tribal Nations to know about these pipes? Did they look like peace pipes, or were they smaller and less adorned?

 

cortezattic

Lifer
Nov 19, 2009
15,147
7,637
Chicago, IL
One potential source of information is https://www.mitchellmuseum.org/index.html

About 10 yrs. ago the director gave a video presentation on the subject at the Chicago show, and reported here: http://pipesmagazine.com/blog/pipe-videos/use-of-tobacco-by-the-north-american-indians-and-the-use-of-the-catlinite-pipes/

 

cranseiron

Part of the Furniture Now
May 17, 2013
586
48
McHenry, MS
mso, just finished up a couple of ebooks by James W. Schultz about his time with the Blackfoot! Provides an insightful look into American Indian culture and contains a ton of adventure. A great read, to be sure.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,494
26,847
Carmel Valley, CA
Not North American, but miso-American. Take a look at the date! (Museo de Anthropologia)
Can anyone translate the info plaque?
Iq3JgoF.jpg


 

rfernand

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 2, 2015
669
39
Luxurious Ceramics
This cup is linked to martial practices, since there are two emblems crossed by four arrows depicted on the body. Inside each emblem there is a barely visible warrior. The clay pipe is decorated with a foot, the stem has a representation of a snake.

 

rfernand

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 2, 2015
669
39
Luxurious Ceramics
This cup is linked to martial practices, since there are two emblems crossed by four arrows depicted on the body. Inside each emblem there is a barely visible warrior. The clay pipe is decorated with a foot, the stem has a representation of a snake.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,427
Footnote: James Williard Schultz was married to my great aunt (grandfather's sister) Celia. Schultz had a son who was a graphic/visual artist with his first wife in his late teens or early twenties, and she was Blackfoot. Celia was his second wife and they were married for about twenty years during his most prolific writing years, and he later married a considerably younger woman who studied Native American culture professionally. Though my aunt and James separated under some duress, she always remembered him in glowing terms. Celia lived into her nineties.

 

xingpao

Starting to Get Obsessed
Mar 11, 2019
119
89
Native Americans smoked pipes recreationally until one day most of the Seminole and Cherokee nations had their Esoterica orders cancelled due to a "glitch" and myriad smoke signals were dispatched in disgust. The great chieftan, Cancels Your Orders, was exiled into Louisiana and started blending perique for the white man soon after.
This was also how the $5 coupon was invented, but, of course, back then it was a bead made of briar.

 

ron123

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 28, 2015
541
984
Park Ridge, IL
Maybe they rolled the tobacco into those giant hog fatties that you see drawings of what Cuba's indigenous people rolled?

 

trubka2

Lifer
Feb 27, 2019
2,470
21,640
Well, there were as many different tobacco practices as there were native cultures in the Americas, which is to say hundreds. Pipes of every possible design, rolled cigars, snuff, chaw, even enemas (the 9th century equivalent of Brown Irish X) - you name it. So, there's no single correct answer to mso's question: there were many different kinds of pipes, and they changed over the centuries before and after European contact. A great place to read about all that is the early chapters of Iain Gately's Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization (2003). He covers the bases pretty thoroughly, and it's a very lively, non-academic read.
https://www.amazon.com/Tobacco-Cultural-History-Seduced-Civilization/dp/0802139604/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

 
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