Ceremonial pipe

Varieties and terminology

Indigenous peoples of the Americas who use ceremonial pipes have names for them in each culture's indigenous language. There is no single word for all ceremonial pipes across the hundreds of diverse Native cultures.

The Lakota sacred pipe is called a chanupa, also spelled chanunpa or c'anupa.

Use of the term calumet

In some historical sources written by colonists, a ceremonial pipe is referred to as a calumet (kal-yə-ˌmet, -mət). Calumet is a Norman word (pronounced ), first recorded in David Ferrand's La Muse normande around 1625–1655, and used by Norman-French settlers to describe the ceremonial pipes they saw used among the native peoples of the region. The settlers initially used the word to refer to the hollow decorated pipe shaft alone while the pipe bowl was a separate ritual object, a "sort of reeds used to make pipes", with a suffix substitution for calumel. It corresponds to the French word chalumeau, meaning 'reed' (Modern French also means 'straw', 'blowlamp'). The Calumets smoked in Catholic conversion rituals first in Illinois and then in Mi'kmaq territory. They were elaborately carved and decorated. The name of the Calumet Region in Illinois and Indiana may derive from the French term or may have an independent derivation from Potawatomi. Likewise, there is a current Umatilla term, čalámat. Historian Richard White describes peace pipe rituals as an example of the "middle ground", a set of common practices crafted together by First Nations and French imperialists to bridge (or paper over) cultural distance across New France; as such the practice, though its origin may be found among Canadian First Nations, would have spread westwards alongside French expansion, and with it the French name for the pipe.

Materials

Tobacco, Nicotiana rustica, was originally used primarily by eastern tribes, but western tribes often mixed it with other herbs, barks, and plant matter, in a preparation commonly known as kinnikinnick.

One material used for ceremonial pipe bowls in the Upper Midwest 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 pipestone quarries of what today is Minnesota, were neutral ground as people from multiple nations journeyed to the quarry to obtain the sacred pipestone. The Sioux people use long-stemmed pipes in some of their ceremonies. Other peoples, such as the Catawba in the American Southeast, use ceremonial pipes formed as round, footed bowls. A tubular smoke tip projects from each of the four cardinal directions on the bowl.

Pipestone varieties

A number of Indigenous North American cultures make and use ceremonial pipes. However, there are also Native American cultures that do not have a ceremonial smoking tradition, but make pipes for social smoking only. The types of materials used vary by community and locality. Some of the known types of pipe stone and pipe materials are:

Clay

The Cherokee and Chickasaw both fashion pipes made from fired clay, however these are only used for social smoking. They use small reed cane pipestems made from river cane. These pipes are made from aged river clay hardened in a hot fire.

Red pipestone

Catlinite is an iron-rich, reddish, soft argillite or claystone typically excavated from beds occurring between hard Sioux Quartzite layers below groundwater level, as the stone erodes rapidly when exposed to the weather and outside air. Red pipestone is used primarily by the Plains Tribes, and the Western and Great Basin Tribes. The stone can be found in Minnesota (Pipestone), and Utah (Delta, Uinta). Sacred pipestone comes from Pipestone, Minnesota. The quarry is located just north of the town at the Pipestone National Monument. Today only Native Americans are allowed to quarry the pipestone from this quarry. The pipestone from this quarry is considered the softest stone available.

Blue pipestone

is used predominantly by the Plains Tribes for certain types of ceremonial pipes. Deposits of the stone are found in South Dakota.

Bluestone

a hard, greenish-blue quartzite stone from the southern Appalachian Mountains. After being worked, it takes on a decidedly greenish cast. This stone has been used by several Eastern Woodlands tribes for pipemaking. Several ancient Mississippian culture bluestone pipes have been excavated.

Salmon alabaster

The Uncompahgre Ute People make ceremonial pipes from salmon alabaster mined in central Colorado.

Green pipestone

A white on green marbled cupric pipestone found in Wyoming and South Dakota is used by the Shoshone, Ute, and Plains Tribes for personal and ceremonial pipes. This stone is 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 some of the Plains Tribes for certain types of 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 has been used by the Great Basin Tribes for war clubs and pipes that are jet black with a high gloss when polished. Stones which have tumbled down creeks and drainages are always selected, since these stones typically contained no cracks or defects.

Traditional pipemaking tools

One traditional method of manufacture is the use of bow drills made with hard white quartz points for drilling sacred objects from stone. One technique uses moistened rawhide strips rolled in crushed white quartz and stretched with a bow handle to shape and rough the pipes. Pipe bowls may also be shaped with hard sandstones, then polished with water and sanded with progressively finer and finer abrasive grit and animal hide, finally being rubbed with fat or other oils to complete polishing.