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A ceremonial pipe is a particular type of smoking pipe, used by a number of cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in their sacred ceremonies. Traditionally they are used to offer prayers in a religious ceremony, to make a ceremonial commitment, or to seal a covenant or treaty. The pipe ceremony may be a component of a larger ceremony, or held as a sacred ceremony in and of itself. Indigenous peoples of the Americas who use ceremonial pipes have names for them in each culture's Indigenous language. Not all cultures have pipe traditions, and there is no single word for all ceremonial pipes across the hundreds of diverse Native American languages.
Various types of ceremonial pipes have been used by different Native American, First Nations and Métis cultures. The style of pipe, materials smoked, and ceremonies are unique to the specific and distinct religions of those nations. Similarly, the pipes are called by names in that tribe's language. The specific type of pipes smoked in Catholic conversion rituals first in Illinois and then in Mi'kmaq territory were known as Calumets.Leavelle, Tracy Neal (2012) The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America. University of Pennsylvania Press. Historically, ceremonial pipes have been used to mark war and peace, as well as commerce and trade, and social and political decision-making.
During his travels down the Mississippi River in 1673, Father Jacques Marquette documented the universal respect that the ceremonial pipe was shown among all Native peoples he encountered, even those at war with each other. He claimed that presenting the pipe during battle would halt the fighting. The Illinois tribe people gave Marquette such a pipe as a gift to ensure his safe travel through the interior of the land.
In ceremonial usage, the smoke is generally believed to carry prayers to the attention of the Creator deity or other powerful spirits. Lakota people tradition tells that White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the Chanunpa (Lakota sacred pipe) to the people, and instructed them in its symbolism and ceremonies.Looking Horse, Chief Arvol (March 13, 2003) " Looking Horse Proclamation on the Protection of Ceremonies " at Indian Country Today Media Network Many Native American cultures still practice these ceremonies.
According to oral traditions, and as demonstrated by pre-contact pipes held in museums and tribal and private holdings, some ceremonial pipes are adorned with feathers, fur, animal or human hair, beadwork, quills, carvings or other items having significance for the owner. Other pipes are very simple. Many are not kept by an individual, but are instead held collectively by a medicine society or similar indigenous ceremonial organization.
The Lakota people sacred pipe is called a Chanunpa, also spelled chanunpa or c'anupa.
In some historical sources written by colonists, a ceremonial pipe is referred to as a calumet (kal-yə-ˌmet, -mət). Calumet is a Norman language word (), first recorded in David Ferrand's La Muse normande around 1625–1655, CNRTL site etymology of calumet and used by Norman-French settlers to describe the ceremonial pipes they saw used among the native peoples of the region.Rowland, Dunbar (1907) The settlers initially used the word to refer to the hollow decorated pipe shaft alone while the pipe bowl was a separate ritual object, Calumet or "Peace-pipe" of the Indians, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1907 a "sort of reeds used to make pipes", with a suffix substitution for calumel.The word comes from Late Latin calamellus. The Northern Norman dialect retains the group /ca/, when it turns into /ʃa/ ( cha-) in Common French and it retains the suffix -el, when it has turned into -eau in Common French. The fall of the final /l/ is specific for the Cauchois dialect, which explains the later confusion with another suffix -et, pronounced the same way e. It corresponds to the French word chalumeau, meaning 'reed' (Modern French also means 'straw', 'blowlamp').CNRTLT.F. Hoad, English Etymology, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 59 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. Calumet River-Frontal Lake Michigan , Watershed Central Wiki, U.S. EPA, quoting from the "City of Chicago Calumet Land Use Plan" Likewise, there is a current Umatilla term, čalámat.
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 people 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.
Notes
(2025). 9780295994284, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, in association with University of Washington Press. ISBN 9780295994284
Materials
Tobacco, Nicotiana rustica, The Native American Chanunpa, the Sacred Pipe , Barefoot's World 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.Charles L. Cutler. Tracks that speak: the legacy of Native American words in North American culture. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston : 2002).
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:
Traditional pipemaking tools
One traditional method of manufacture is the use of 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 , 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.Paul S. Martin, "The bow-drill in North America." American anthropologist 36.1 (1934): 94-97. online
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