Native Life: Ceremonial Pipes, Peace Pipes and Calumets

One of the more enduring images of the frontier is a peace parley marked by the exchange of a "peace pipe" to mark the agreement of a treaty.  A pipe ceremony occurred at almost all parleys and most treaty signings.  However, this was not the only use of pipes by Native Americans.  Nor were all pipes peace pipes, or all peace pipes known as a calumet.

Tobacco was a lucrative trading item, both among Native tribes and between Natives and Settlers.  While Settlers smoked tobacco for pleasure, Natives used it for medicinal and ceremonial purposes.  Thus, the pipes used to smoke tobacco could be sacred items used only for ceremony.  Smoking tobacco was a means of offering prayer.  Ceremonial pipes could be used whenever councils met, important decisions were made, tribes exchanged visits of diplomacy with other tribes or with Europeans, and of course when agreements were reached.  Beautifully decorated ceremonial pipes were often presented as gifts or commemoratives of agreement.  They could also serve as safe conduct passages through a tribe's territory.  Jacques Marquette, a 17th century Jesuit missionary, was presented with such a pipe by the Illini people. 

Various Native cultures have different terms for ceremonial pipes, depending on the type of pipe and its use.  The term calumet is derived from French words meaning a reed or straw.  The word was first used by French settlers in Canada to describe pipes made from reeds.  Later pipes, often elaborately decorated, became part of Native conversion ceremonies to Catholicism, particularly among the Huron or Mikmaq, and were also known as calumets.  It was only these religious pipes that were originally called by this name.  Over time, people have come to refer to any Native ceremonial pipe as a peace pipe, or even as a calumet, notwithstanding its use or purpose.

Interestingly, the bowls of some pipes are mad with red pipestone, known as Catlinite.  Portraitist George Catlin traveled among the Sioux people in Minnesota, claiming to be the first to have seen their quarries of this stone.  In fact, both French explorers and Lewis and Clark also were aware of the quarries.  However, this red pipestone was later named Catlinite, in his honor.  There are other types of colored pipestones, alabasters and clays used to make beautiful pipe bowls.