Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, Revised and Expanded Edition

The Calumet Ceremony in the Southeast as Observed Archaeologically

The Calumet Ceremony in the Southeast as Observed Archaeologically ian w. brown There remains no more, except to speak of the Calumet. There is nothing more mysterious or more respected among them. Less honor is paid to the Crowns and scepters of Kings than the Savages bestow upon this. It seems to be the God of peace and of war, the Arbiter of life and of death. It has but to be carried upon one’s person , and displayed, to enable one to walk safely through the midst of Enemies— who, in the hottest of the Fight, lay down Their arms when it is shown. For That reason, the Illinois gave me one, to serve as a safeguard among all the Nations through whom I had to pass during my voyage. Father Jacques Marquette among the Illinois in 1673 Few material items in historic times have had such singular cultural significance as the calumet. The first Frenchmen in the northern Mississippi valley were amazed at its power, and they soon learned that carrying calumets with them enhanced safety and security. The calumet, or rather the confidence placed in it, had the ability to create peaceful interaction. For intervals of varying duration, the calumet was able to make temporary friends out of potential foes. By the eighteenth century calumet ceremonialism was practiced in many regions of the Southeast, particularly the lower Mississippi valley. The mechanisms as to why, how, and when this institution was adopted have been topics of much debate. There can be no question that the calumet ceremony firmly was embedded in the upper Mississippi valley and Great Lakes regions long before Europeans arrived on the scene.1 The timing is not so clear for the Southeast, however. One of the principal questions has been whether or not the French were responsible for its introduction and spread into the Southeast, or whether the cultural roots of the calumet ceremony stretch far back into prehistory in this area also. From a review of the historical and archaeological records, I propose that French exploration in the late seventeenth century in large measure promoted the    the calumet ceremony in the southeast spread of the calumet ceremony into the southern regions of the lower Mississippi valley and, subsequently, to other parts of the Southeast. The main reason for this rapid and widespread diffusion seems to be that the calumet ceremony provided balance in a rapidly changing world. Calumets: Description and Function The word “calumet” is believed to derive from a medieval French word chalemel (and later chalumeau) meaning reed, cane, stem, tube, or pipe (fig. 1).2 The highly ornamented wands that were often used by the Indians in ceremonial dances intrigued early French adventurers in the Great Lakes and Mississippi valley areas. Because these wands sometimes doubled as stems for pipes, it was unclear to the French whether the calumet was the stem or the bowl of the pipe, or perhaps both.3 Among Plains Indian tribes, the term calumet usually signified the highly decorated stem, and it is possible that this was the case in the Mississippi valley also.4 Dumont dit Montigny reported that the calumet was given to the opposite party, while the pipe bowl was retained, which suggests that the Indians did indeed make a distinction between the two parts.5 From an extensive study of seventeenth - and eighteenth-century calumet ceremonies, Mildred Mott Wedel concluded that French explorers in the Mississippi valley particularly were impressed with the highly polished pipe bowls and, as a result, may have underestimated the significance of the stems. Dancing and much waving of the wands characterize the earliest renditions of the ceremony, but smoking , curiously, is not a prime feature in these accounts.6 Robert Hall feels a distinction should be made between the historic development of the round-stem calumet pipe of the Hako type in the Plains and the flat-stem council pipe/sacred pipe of the Eastern Woodlands.7 With regard to the latter, he believes that the smoking aspect has been important for millennia, its development having come directly out of Hopewellian flatstemmed atlatl pipes. Jordan Paper also believes ritual smoking was practiced for millennia.8 He reserves the term “calumet” for elaborate feathered stems similar to those used in the Pawnee Hako, but he groups all of the round-stemmed and flat-stemmed pipes together under the term “Sacred Pipes,” including the calumet when the bowl is present. Father Marquette referred to two types of calumets: one...