obvious reasonableness in the idea that offerings reduced to this condition are fit to be consumed by, or transmitted to, spiritual beings towards whom the vapour rises in the air. This idea is well shown in the case of incense, and especially a peculiar kind of incense offered among the native tribes of America. The habit of smoking tobacco is not suggestive of religious rites among ourselves, but in its native country, where it is so widely diffused as to be perhaps the best point assignable in favour of a connexion in the culture of the northern and southern continent, its place in worship is very important. The Osages would begin an undertaking by smoking a pipe, with such a prayer as this: 'Great Spirit, come down to smoke with me as a friend! Fire and Earth, smoke with me and help me to overthrow my foes!' The Sioux in Hennepin's time would look toward the Sun when they smoked, and when the calumet was lighted, they presented it to him, saying: 'Smoke, Sun!' The Natchez chief at sunrise smoked first to the east and then to the other quarters; and so on. It is not merely, however, that puffs from the tobacco-pipe are thus offered to deities as drops of drink or morsels of food might be. The calumet is a special gift of the Sun or the Great Spirit, tobacco is a sacred herb, and smoking is an agreeable sacrifice ascending into the air to the abode of gods and spirits.[1] Among the Caribs, the native sorcerer evoking a demon would puff tobacco-smoke into the air as an agreeable perfume to attract the spirit; while among Brazilian tribes the sorcerers smoked round upon the bystanders and on the patient to be cured.[2] How thoroughly incense and burnt-offering are of the same nature, the Zulus well show, burning incense together with the fat of the caul of the slaughtered beast, to give the spirits of the people a sweet
- ↑ Waitz, vol. iii. p. 181. Hennepin, 'Voyage,' p. 302. Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 311, vi. p. 178. Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part i. p. 49, part ii. p. 127. Catlin, vol. i. pp. 181, 229. Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 164. J. G. Müller, p. 58.
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' pp. 418, 507. Lery, 'Voy. en Brésil,' p. 268. See also Musters in 'Journ. Anthrop. Inst.' vol. i. p. 202 (Patagonians).
