Calumet

Calumet, the 'peace-pipe' of the North American Indians, is a tobacco-pipe having a stem of reed or painted wood about two feet and a half long, decorated with feathers, with a large bowl, usually of red soapstone. After a treaty has been signed, the Indians fill the calumet with the best tobacco, and present it to the representatives of the party with whom they have been entering into alliance, themselves smoking out of it afterwards. The presentation of it to strangers is a mark of hospitality, and to refuse it would be considered an act of hostility. Originally calumet was merely the Norman name for a shepherd's pipe (Fr. chalumeau, Lat. calamus), which the early French settlers applied to the native pipe from its resemblance; and we find it thus applied by Père Marquette (1673), and in the earlier 'Jesuit Relations' of 1638.