Short Stuff: "Peace" Pipes

Did Native Americans really smoke peace pipes? Well yes and no. They smoked pipes for many reasons, sometimes to commemorate peace. But they never called them peace pipes. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here for Dave, so it's the Short Stuff. And we're talking about what you might know as peace pipes, but as it turns out, that's not the right word for it at all. So although we'll probably accidentally call it peace pipes a bunch of times, they're really called sacred or ceremonial pipes.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  That's right. That whole notion of passing the peace pipe, something that American settlers and soldiers saw, and they thought like, hey, they're smoking that thing during a treaty signing, so that must be a peace pipe. And while it's true that they might have smoked those during treaty signings, they, it turns out, they smoked them a lot. So it's a bit of a misnomer.

• 1:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they come up in all sorts of different parts of Native American culture. Something I thought was really interesting is that I could not find a mention of any North American tribe that doesn't use ceremonial pipes.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06Josh Clark?

  And so like, they found old ones from Florida up to... The Midwest, I think they found it in the Hopewell culture in Ohio. From the southwest up to the Pacific Northwest, like all over. They use peace pipes, which tells you like this is a really old tradition and it predates some of the tribes that eventually kind of grew out of other tribes that were older.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And again, they just call them pipes. There, I think there's a broader term that you can use if you want to get more specific called a calumet. And apparently that's from the French word, would that be Chalamet, like Timothy?

• 2:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  All right. And that means reed or flute. And Timothy Chalamet, he's like a little flutey reed himself.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  He really is. I wonder if that's a stage name now.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Maybe. And, you know, depending on the tribe and the culture, they each have their own name for it, perhaps in their own language. And generally they take them out during some kind of ceremony, maybe a prayer, maybe a treaty signing thing. Maybe just a party or maybe a monarchy situation.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  But it is a, it's sort of a physical representation of a connection to God, or maybe the smoke flowing out in all directions to nature and connecting in that way.

• 3:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I also saw, and what it means specifically definitely depends on the tribe. They have different meanings for it, even though it's generally used for some sort of prayer solemn occasion, like you were saying. One explanation I saw is that the plants that are smoked in there, it's not always tobacco, it's never marijuana. But, and it can be a combination of a bunch of different plants. Those plants have roots in the earth, but their smoke travels up to the heavens, to the spirit world. And they carry the person's prayer with them. So it's a very, they're very sacred and solemn occasions when they're smoking a ceremonial pipe. Even though exactly what they believe about it is, it varies.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And where they come from varies. I think the Lakota.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  You know, the ideas that they were giving it by the white buffalo calf woman. And it was used for prayer in their culture generally. And that's why the white buffalo calf is very much a sacred thing to the Lakota still.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the Lakota call, there's the chunumpa, which is a cool word to say.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:39Josh Clark?

  And one other thing about any ceremonial pipe is there's like different parts represent different things, but they come in pieces. They're not actually just one single piece, especially with the Dakota and the Lakota, both Sioux.

• 4:56Josh Clark?

  They're meant to stay apart. And when they're put together, that indicates a ceremony or a prayer session is beginning. You don't keep like, if you're storing it, or say if you're a museum who gets your hands on one of these and you're displaying it, you do not show them put together. They're just kind of like exploded on display, separated the different parts.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  They should call them pieces pipes.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Should we take a break?

• 5:24Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Yeah, I gotta let that gel with me for a minute.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back after that bad pun, right after this.

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• 6:49Josh Clark?

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• 7:53Josh Clark?

  So, one of the other things that a lot of ceremonial pipes have in common in North America is that they are made from a specific kind of rock. And there's different variations on this kind of rock, but they're all generally called pipe stone.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, we talked about the pieces. There's that wooden stem, and then you've got your bowl. It's like an L-shaped bowl, or a T-shaped bowl. And that is, that pipe stone, there are different colors of pipe stone, so they're often very pretty, pipes and pretty bowls. But there's one, apparently, that's a little more revered, and that's the red pipe stone from Pipestone National Monument, which is southwest Minnesota. And apparently, it's, that particular pipe stone is considered sacred by a lot of indigenous tribes.

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, they'll come from all over North America to get the red pipe stone. It's a kind of catlinite, which is a stone made from clay. And it's actually fairly easy to work with. But to get to it at Pipestone National Monument, number one, you have to get a permit. Number two, you can't get a permit unless you're enrolled in a North American tribe. And then number three, it's going to take you a while to get there because the red pipe stone at that park only exists underneath a thick quartz layer. And you're only allowed to use hand tools like pickaxes, chisels, sledgehammers to get to it. And the park rangers recommend expecting to do at least a weekend's worth of work with

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  multiple other people, but that some people end up having to get an annual pass because they have to just keep coming back and coming back and to finally get to it. And can you imagine if you dedicated months to this and you came back for that last time? You're like, this is the one and to find somebody else had just used the rest of your work, dug through it and got to the red pipe stone and you had to start over?

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought you were going to say you finally make that beautiful bowl out of the pipe stone and then your friend Gary knocks it off the kitchen counter.

• 9:53Josh Clark?

  Either way, either way, it was probably Gary who used your hole in the first place too. So either way, Gary's to blame.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Gary, notorious hole user.

• 10:02Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  So it's not always that pipe stone. Sometimes it's limestone, sometimes it's bone or pottery or shale, but that pipe stone's what you're really after. The stems are generally wood, maybe alder or ash, and they're usually decorative, not always, because like we said, there are all different kinds of pipes, some for different ceremonies, some just personal pipes. A lot of times they'll have feathers and beadwork. Some are just plain though. And like you mentioned, they smoke a variety of things, not always tobacco. Sometimes it's dried bark, maybe a red oyster dogwood. Maybe it's a ground shrub if you're out on the prairie. And like you mentioned, it's never marijuana.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  That is just some dumb joke made by white people at some point, probably in a cartoon strip or something.

• 10:51Josh Clark?

  So that, yeah, in our crumb strip?

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 10:55Josh Clark?

  Fritz the cat. So that, that ground shrub from the prairie you mentioned is called kynikynik. And it's spelled like it sounds. It's also called bearberry, but actually both of them are really fun to say as well. That's a sacred plant. And then the tobacco that they'll smoke is also considered sacred, but it's not that standard Virginia tobacco strain. It's an older indigenous strain to the United States that's much more potent, just stronger tobacco. So I'm sure in a pinch, you could use the Virginia kind, but there's apparently a preferred kind that's not that.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  AKA the good stuff.

• 11:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So I also said that you're not supposed to keep the pipes stored, put together.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  In addition to the stem and the bowl, there are, there's also often a mouthpiece too. So these three separate parts are brought together to begin a ceremony. It might be in a sweat lodge. Like you said, it might be as part of a wedding. There's all sorts of different times to use it, but in some Native American cultures, they were used to basically seal a peace treaty between warring nations. And there was a process for, for doing this. And there would be a medicine man involved, and then you would bring together the chiefs of the two warring tribes.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  And the, the cool thing about it is the medicine man and each of the warring chiefs brings a piece of the pipe. The medicine man puts it together and then it's kind of like, all right, we're all, we're all connected again.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's great. I love what it symbolizes and it's something that's not, you know, something still happening. And I mean, I think they, this is from howstuffworks.com. They interviewed, I think a woman from the Lakota, maybe. And she's like, you know, this stuff is not past tense. Like we still have our culture and we still do these things.

• 12:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, her name's Gabriel Drapoe, and she's with the Yankton Sioux tribe of South Dakota.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, she just makes a point like, this stuff is not in the past tense. Like we still, I think a lot of people look at it that way. It's like, oh, they used to smoke these ceremonial pipes. And she's like, no, we still do this. We still have our culture and it's still sacred to us.

• 13:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Pretty cool, man.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 13:16Josh Clark?

  Well, I guess short stuff is out, everybody.

• 13:22Josh Clark?

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• 13:38Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.