The New International Encyclopædia/Tobacco Pipe

TOBACCO PIPE. An implement for the smoking of tobacco. The use of a pipe for smoking herbs of various sorts dates from a period when these plants were burned in a container and the smoke employed for sacrifices or for healing. Aside from the specimens discovered in ancient sites in Europe, the greatest prehistoric distribution of the pipe is in America. Here the widespread primitive form is a drilled tube of stone, wood, bone, or pottery, in the form of a large cigar holder, evidently taking its shape from that of a tube of cane. This type is found almost exclusively west of the Mississippi, and its early use was for blowing out smoke and not for drawing it into the mouth. This form, when put into clay, shows a later transition toward the modern pipes by bending the stem. In the Eastern United States the prehistoric pipe shows considerable modification of the original tube, and some of the varieties are the monitor pipe with the bowl set on a flat base perforated as a stem, hour-glass pipes, biconical pipes, etc. The peace pipe or calumet (q.v.) descends from the monitor form. The red stone called catlinite, commonly used for calumets, came into use in historic times. The Alaskan Eskimo pipe is of Asiatic form, with a very small cavity in a mushroom bowl attached to a stem, while the Labrador Indian pipe is of a well-marked type consisting of a separate bowl of stone beautifully worked and a short stem. Numerous examples of sculptured pipes have been found in Ohio and Illinois, and have been attributed to the so-called ‘mound-builders.’ The tomahawk pipe was introduced through trade by the French, English, and Spanish, and certain tribes affected a certain style of this pipe.

The ethnographic study of the pipe or its modification and adaptation to their uses by different peoples shows not only that the spread of the pipe into different environments has given rise to a great number of inventions connected with this utensil, but that their forms, materials, and artistic conceptions have taken upon themselves racial or tribal individuality, as e.g. Turkish and Chinese pipes. Most of the inventions have grown out of the desire to cool the smoke and relieve it of acrid principles, giving rise to the great class of water pipes widespread in Asia and Africa, as the hookah or narghile, and the ornate Chinese water pipe, and in other countries resulting in absorbing bowls, as the meerschaum, clay, brier root, or other substances, as well as devices for condensing the nicotine in a receptacle below the bowl, as in the German lange Pfeife. The same result is attained by the long stem of the pipe and by the long coiled tube of the narghile. Numerous evidences of taste are shown in the decoration of the bowls, stems, and mouthpieces and in the tobacco pouches, strike-a-light, match-boxes, and cleaners, which are smokers' accessories. The bowl is often covered for protection against the wind, and is frequently carved or molded in the form of human or animal heads, as in the European characteristic or grotesque pipes, especially those of Holland and Germany. The opium pipe of China is a special development with a large cylindrical bowl having a small aperture, and a large flute-shaped stem designed for the inhalation of a small quantity of fumes from a pellet of burning opium. The hemp pipe of India is a form of water pipe in which tobacco or a mixture of tobacco and hemp may be smoked. The Chinese and Japanese prefer a pipe with a very small bowl in which a pellet of finely shredded tobacco is smoked. The Koreans use a larger bowl with an extremely long stem. In Africa the water pipe is rudely made of a cow's horn perforated for stem and bowl holder. It is said that a Kafir lacking a pipe will often dig a small hole in the ground in which he puts tobacco, fit a stem in position below it, and, lying on his belly, enjoy a smoke. Consult: Nadaillac, Les pipes et le tabac (Paris, 1885); McGuire, Pipes and Smoking Customs of the American Aborigines (Washington, 1897).