First Nations Pipes from the Canadian Museum of History

[mikethompson]

Full Article here

Smoking was ... an important activity and often preceded important discussions

 

[cortezattic]

Thanks for the link! A couple of interesting observations there.

 

[Civil War]

Thanks, for sharing.

 

[scloyd]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

[mso489]

James Willard Schultz, the author who spent most of his adult life from his teens living around and hunting with the Blackfoot, fluently speaking their language, reported a lot of recreational smoking with his Native American comrades. He didn't elucidate much about the pipes or the leaf, but it was a recurrent theme. His first wife, when he was young, bore his only child; he was later a widower, and married twice again.

 

[crashthegrey]

Very cool. Thank you for sharing.

 

[mikethompson]

Here's one from around where I live:

 

[hakchuma]

Heres one from the Choctaw, the real inventors of Perique.

"The early Choctaw tobacco horticulturalists made a lasting contribution to the American tobacco industry. One of the traditional tobacco varieties that they developed, today known as "Perique," may be the most expensive grade of tobacco in the world. The story is that in late 1700s, Pierre Chenet, a French Canadian, emigrated into what is now St. James Parish, La., and observed Choctaws preparing a special variety of tobacco using a traditional pressure fermentation method (Ehwa 1973). They put the tobacco leaves into hollow tree trunks and pressed them with long poles, held down by weights. The pressure made the juice come out of the leaves, and they were left in this position long enough to ferment. Today's Perique is grown in the unique soils of St. James Parish and prepared using a variation on the old Choctaw technique. It has a strong taste of figs and black pepper, and it is often mixed in tobacco blends."

 

[mikethompson]

Nice! Do you think there was a wooden stem on that pipe? Or was it smoked right from the bowl?