His Hobowakan or Calumet is the object which the American Indian prizes most highly; he who does not own one is in their eyes a very poor wretch. It is very often tastefully and ingeniously decorated and carved. There is nothing in the customs and usages of the Indians so emphatically characteristic as their peculiarities in the matter of smoking. There can be no doubt that it is a very ancient custom, as it seems to be the one that enters most largely into their habits - it is the Alpha and the Omega of all acts to which they attach any importance. Throughout the wilderness, wherever you meet Indians, though they may be suffering from hunger, the first thing they ask for is Sama - tobacco.
There is no allusion in the holy scriptures to the use of tobacco. Herodotus makes no mention of the pipe, nor of the custom of smoking. This may perhaps indicate an Occidental origin for them; that they are purely American. It was in fact in I56o, after the discovery of America, that tobacco and the manner of using it were introduced into France, by Nicot; whence the name nicotina.
According to an ancient tradition of the " Lenni-Lennapi," (First People; surnamed Delawares since the arrival of the whites) it is reported that they received the great calumet of peace and brotherhood in the twentieth moon of their existence as a nation. The story told by the elders, or conservators of the national traditions, of the occasion of the calumet being presented to them, is as follows
Far to the North, there existed a powerful nation. Their warriors were as many as the unnumbered herds of the buffalo upon the vast plains of the West. Their wigwams extended farther than the eye could reach, on the shores of their fair lakes and the banks of their wide and beautiful rivers. The Manitou, whose voice bellows in the clouds and is borne upon the wings of the wind to all parts of the earth, spoke to this great nation and told them that a rival people (the Lenni-Lennapi) held possession of all the coun-