"The suction pipes of steatite," mentioned by Schoolcraft, as found in the mounds, may have been the equivalents of our drinking reeds, and made of steatite to be the more readily preserved in the ritual of which they formed part. Copper cylinders 1¼ inches long and ⅜ of an inch in diameter were found in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley by Squier and Davis. The conjecture that they had been used "for ornaments" does not seem warranted.[229] We should not forget that there was a semideification of the reed itself by the Aztec in their assignment of it to a place in their calendar under the name of "acatl."[230] Mrs. Ellen Russell Emerson speaks of the custom the warriors of the northern tribes had which suggests that she had heard of the drinking reed without exactly understanding what it meant. She says that warriors carry bowls of birch bark "from one side of which the warrior drinks in going to battle--from the other, on his return. These bowls are not carried home, but left on the prairie, or suspended from trees within a day's journey of his village."[231] Among the Brahmans practices based upon somewhat similar ideas are to be found: every morning, upon rising, "ils prennent trois fois de l'eau dans la main, & en jettent trois fois dans leur bouche, évitant d'y toucher avec la main."[232] The fundamental reason upon which the use of the drinking reed is based is that the warrior or devotee shall not let water touch his lips. It is strange to find among the regulations with regard to taking water by the warrior caste: "He shall not sip water while walking, standing, lying down, or bending forward."[233] The Dharma-sûtra, traditionally connected with the Rishi-Vasishtha, of the Seventh Mandala of the Rig-Veda, is a relic of a Vedic school of the highest antiquity. Its seat was in the present northwestern provinces of India, and, like the Dharmasâstra of Gautama, it is the sole surviving record from this source.[234] There was another service performed by reeds or tubes in the domestic economy of nations around the north pole. As the Apache are derived from an Arctic ancestry it does not seem amiss to allude to it. Lord Lonsdale, in describing the capture of a whale which he witnessed, says that the Eskimo women "first of all gathered up the harpoons and then pulled out all the spears. As each spear was withdrawn a blow-pipe was pushed into the wound and the men blew into it, after which the opening was tied up. When every wound had been treated in this manner the whale resembled a great windbag and floated high in the water."