The red stone of which these pipe bowls are made, is, in my estimation, a great curiosity; inasmuch as I am sure it is a variety of steatite (if it be steatite), differing from that of any known European locality, and also from any locality known in America, other than the one from which all these pipes come; and which are all traceable I have found to one source; and that source as yet unvisited except by the red man who describes it, everywhere, as a place of vast importance to the Indians—as given to them by the Great Spirit, for their pipes, and strictly forbidden to be used for anything else. The source from whence all these pipes come, is, undoubtedly, somewhere between this place and the Mississippi River; and as the Indians all speak of it as a great _medicine_-place, I shall certainly lay my course to it, ere long, and be able to give the world some account of it and its mysteries. The Indians shape out the bowls of these pipes from the solid stone, which is not quite as hard as marble, with nothing but a knife. The stone which is of a cherry red, admits of a beautiful polish, and the Indian makes the hole in the bowl of the pipe, by drilling into it a hard stick, shaped to the desired size, with a quantity of sharp sand and water kept constantly in the hole, subjecting him therefore to a very great labour and the necessity of much patience. [Illustration: 99] The shafts or stems of these pipes, as will be seen in +plate+ 98, are from two to four feet long, sometimes round, but most generally flat; of an inch or two in breadth, and wound half their length or more with braids of porcupines’ quills; and often ornamented with the beaks and tufts from the wood-pecker’s head, with ermine skins and long red hair, dyed from white horse hair or the white buffalo’s tail. The stems of these pipes will be found to be carved in many ingenious forms, and in all cases they are perforated through the centre, quite staggering the wits of the enlightened world to _guess how_ the holes have been _bored_ through them; until it is simply and briefly explained, that the stems are uniformly made of the stalk of the young ash, which generally grows straight, and has a small pith through the centre, which is easily burned out with a hot wire or a piece of hard wood, by a much slower process.