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I have two clay pipes that required a reed stem of about 4 to 5 inches long used by my ggrandmother born in 1877 and my gggrandmother born in the 1840’s. Has anyone seen this practice by women in any native american custom?
RD:
My Blackfoot ggggrandmother was said to have smoked a pipe. Deb’s ancestor, who was in the same location, same story, married to a brother of the husband of my ggggrandmother, and related by more than this marriage, we believe, also smoked a pipe.
Cindy
I recently read an article on Indian Hannah, last Native American living in Chester Co. PA, she was a pipe smoker. Attached picture of an Eastern KY woman smoking a pipe.
Msit Nokmaq
Tobacco is a secret herb and it was safe and healthy to smoke but now adays it is spoild with cemacalls and junk.
The women in the Cole family (Walkers and Sorrells) didn’t smoke a pipe because of the dominant men….they had a pinch of snuff.
I just came back from a funeral where the elders in the family described the pipe-smoking. They told of walking to their country school, past their grandma’s house, and watching her smoke her pipe on the porch.
Techteach
I dug this sand-tempered clay pipe bowl from an island in the Staunton (Roanoke) River below Smith Mountain in 1966. I belive that this site was Akentazy, where the Saponi left in 1675 A.D. to join the Occaneechee down stream. I’ll admit that experts disagree with me.
http://static.flickr.com/91/254801589_69c8694bb5_m.jpg
My great grandmother’s sister used to sit on the porch in braids, smoking a pipe. My mom was always hearing a lot of shrill rhetoric about how we were NOT Indians, and the site of Aunt Jane definitely disturbed that position. Apparently, she was from the NOT Indian tribe.
Welcome to the forum, Danny. Thanks for showing us that pipe.
My great-grandmother smoked a pipe, chewed tobacco and spit it too! She’s from my Blackfoot MAYO side from NC. My “uppity” WALLER great-aunts couldn’t understand why my great-grandfather had married such a dark-skinned, wild, loud-mouthed, unlady-like woman. LOL.
Hello all y’all….this thread tickled me so thanks for posting. I have time and again heard just tale after tale of numerous women in our family who were smokers of pipes…most tell of them smoking either a home-made clay pipe or a few a corn cob pipe. My maternal gramma smoked a pipe for years….and when the nursing home remanded her for it…she took to chewing tobacco instead…I can vividly recall visiting her in KY and she always caried 2 “purses”…1 was a ladylike thing she shoved her hankies and coins and treats and pictures in…and the other was a woven little cinch bag that housed a tin can for spitting her “chaw” into! (Bletch!) I suppose that she at that age thought that perhaps they (the nursing home staff) were clueless as to her newfound habit?! LOL Gramma was only 4’6″ tall and those dangling “purses” nearly reached her ankles but they were always one on one shoulder and the other on another whenever she was up and about. Blessings~~~Laurie
Laurie , my grandmothers both “dipped” and for those young kids out there that means they took a pinch of snuff and put it in their bottom lip. My joy was to run across the road and get them a supply of black gum twigs from which we made their snuff brushes. If some one wants to know how they were made I can share that but very simple. They were always “clean” with their dipping and spitting but some folk were not as you may remember.
This was one of the thousands of uses of emptied tin cans. Remember we didn’t throw much away in them days. You only threw away what was broke or could not be used in any manner. Even paper and cardboard cereal boxes were used to help start the fire in the wood cook stove.
At about age 4 or 5 I decided I had to chew some tobacco. My mama gently counseled me that no “store bought stuff” was good enough. They were stripping (preparing) tobacco for market. She selected some red leaves and then carefully prepared them in a Twist. She hung them on nails in the wall and I impatiently waited for weeks while they cured. Then came the eventful day. She took them down and showed me where to bite. And encouraged me to keep on chewing as it would get sweeter the longer I chewed. Need I tell you more !!!!!! I have both of those Twist to this day so that would make them about 60 years old. I need to take them out again and give my grand-sons a lesson about now. Ed
What a great story Ed…thanks for sharing…LOL…I never tried any of it personally but…don’t laugh to hard but I DO vividly recall taking the pods we called “Indian Cigars” off of the trees and drying them out and smoking those …it was like a longggggggggg skinny cigar to my youthful mind and they tasted horrid but the thrill of doing it was neat…I remember my mother telling me about how she smoked them too in the absence of tobacco (which cost money). Does anyone recall what those pods or trees were called? I also remember once we baked plantain skins cut into very thin strips too and tried smoking those too….crazy kids huh!?! Another thing worth “smoking mention” was that I also recall gramma rolling these little cigarettes and she’d place a wee bit of sweet sassafras in them for “flavor”….my mother always loved sassafrass and said they used to chew on it in the place of gum…and sassafras tea was a staple in our household for many reasons…still today I just LOVE the smell and taste of it…though in Ohio it is very hard to come by…I recently found some at a “international” market and paid out the wazoo for it…so I use it very sparingly. Thanks again for the ditty….take care~~~~Laurie
Does anyone recall what those pods or trees were called?
Yep, Indian Cigars are catalpa bean pods. I smoked one, once. Can’t recommend it, and I think it is slightly insulting to the intelligence of the Indians. I mean, tobacco was their weed; I’m not partial to tobacco either, but it certainly smells better than smoldering bean pods.
Catalpa trees attract a type of caterpillar commonly called a “catalpa worm,” black with a couple of lengthwise yellow stripes. They make really good fishing bait, but you’re supposed to turn them inside out over the hook. I must say I thought that was pretty gross, when I did it, a little over 50 years ago. Bet it is a native practice, however.
Some Middle Tennessee farm houses traditionally had one or two catalpa trees in the yard, just for the bait. The tree also has beautiful clusters of flowers (before the bean pods form), I think it’s sometimes called Tree of Heaven. But not by my relatives.
Pappy and Laurie, when I was growing up we knew them as monkey cigars so I never heard them by Indian cigars. Taste terrible, you got that right! But what do you expect from “younguns” like us. We smoked wild grape vines also which could give you some real nice blisters on the end of your tongue but we still did it. Then there was rabbit tobacco, a wild weed growing around the fields. You know a kid’s imagination never quit and the older guys always had to steer us on by sharing their KNOWLEDGE.
Remember when you used to roll your own cigarette ? We always collected the tobacco bags for marble bags. Every Sunday afternoon all the Aunts,Uncles,cousins were at our house, the homeplace. Games in the front yard and spectators on the porch. Hand rolled, no filter, cigarette butts got flung in the yard and we boys had to sneak them to take a puff. This Sunday afternoon when everyone was gone my parents kindly let me know they saw what we were doing and with no objection simply suggested that if I thought I wanted to do that I could clean the entire yard and then smoke all the butts I wanted. Kinda took the mystery , uniquness, and fun out of it and although I wasn’t lazy I decided it wasn’t worth it. We might label this with a modern term as psychology in reverse but I learned my parents well and I call it good old country Wisdom. I never used tobacco in any form after that . My mama and grandmama both used to make us corn cob pipes to play with and talked about other people using them but they never did. Ed
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