ing at your residence with the great ministers of three great powers will ever abide with me.
The Calumet.
In addition to the buffalo robes, I have sent you my large Indian calumet,' which was presented to me by the chiefs of the numerous tribe of the Sioux or Dacotahs, inhabiting the great plains of the west, together with the pipe-case and tobacco-bag, decorated with porcupine quills in the Indian fashion; which I beg you will accept as a little souvenir on my part. - If I add here a few remarks and reflections and the history of the tradition of the Great Indian Calumet, it is with the thought, Monsieur le Ministre, that the little narration will give you pleasure.
When the Indians send the calumet to a stranger, it is always a notable sign of good will on their part, of friendship and peace, of respect and gratitude for benefits received.
On all great occasions, in their religious and political ceremonies, and at the great feasts, the calumet presides; the savages send its first fruits, or its first puffs, to the Great Waconda, or Master of Life, to the Sun, which gives them light, and to the earth and water, by which they are nourished; then they direct a puff to each point of the compass, begging of heaven all the elements and favorable winds.
4 On two other occasions Father De Smet presented calumets to friends whom he particularly desired to honor. Upon returning from his western journey in 1859, he sent to a "benefactor and friend," Monsieur Massenhove, of Louvain, Belgium, the large and handsomely decorated calumet used by him on that expedition, which was a present to him from the head chief of the Yankton Sioux, Ite-ech-tshe, or Cut Face; and soon after he wrote to the Reverend P. Mattbys of that place an account of the use of the instrument, identical with that here given Monsieur Blondeel. Again, on April 20, 1862, he wrote his nephew Charles and his betrothed, bestowing upon them, with appropriate wishes, his large and handsome calumet, then in the possession of Charles' father.