“When the blossoms had quite dried, my father fetched them over near the fireplace and took a piece of buffalo fat, thrust it on the end of a stick and roasted it slowly over the coals. He touched it lightly here and there to the piled up blossoms, so as to oil them slightly, but not too much. Now and then he would gently stir the pile of blossoms with a little stick, so that the whole mass might be oiled equally. When my father wanted to smoke these dried blossoms, he chopped them fine with a knife, a pipeful at a time. The blossoms were always dried in the lodge: If dried without, the sun and air took away their strength. “About harvest time, just before frost came, the rest of the plants were gathered. He dried the plants in the lodge. For this he took sticks, about fifteen inches long, and thrust them over the beam between two of the exterior supporting posts, so that the sticks pointed a little upwards. On each of these sticks he hung two or three tobacco plants by thrusting the plants, root up, upon the stick, but without tying them. When the tobacco plants were quite dry, the leaves readily fell off. It was the stems that furnished most of the smoking. They were treated like the blossoms, with buffalo fat. We did not treat tobacco with buffalo fat except as needed for use, and to be put into the tobacco pouch ready for smoking. “Before putting the tobacco away in the cache pit, my father was careful to put aside seed for the next year’s planting. He gathered the black seeds into a small bundle about as big as a baby’s fist, wrapping them in a piece of soft skin which he tied with a string. He made two or three of these bundles and tied them to the top of his bed, or to a post nearby, where there was no danger of their being disturbed.” [Illustration: PLATE III. AMERICAN INDIAN TOBACCO PIPES. 1. PIPE OF ANTELOPE BONE, CHEYENNE. 2–3. STEATITE PIPES, JOHNSON COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 4–5. LARGE STEATITE PIPES, SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES.]