Before publishing this extract from Neil Mac Gregor’s book “The History of the World in 100 Objects”, I made sure I checked that there were no restrictions on reproduction.
I didn’t find any, so I hope that Adelphi, the Italian publishing house, will not be offended with me for posting an extract from Mac Gregor’s book on my website. The book was a Christmas present for Maria, my partner, but it was a dear friend, who knows of my love for pipes, that recommended it to me originally. Enjoy it, if you haven’t already read it. You will discover some interesting things about the origins of an artefact that, for someone, is a true passion.
G.S.
Pipe shaped otter
Pipe Stone, Mound City, Hoio, USA 200 BC-100 AD
The collections at the British Museum prove that society changes its opinion on many topics, not just sex. Here is an artefact that once had an enormous social value, which today is practically banned from every public place: the tobacco pipe. Smoking, with the pleasures and dangers it entails, has a long history, and 2000 years ago in North America it was going strong, as this object demonstrates. Our pipe is roughly the same shape and size as a kazoo, and is the colour of a chocolate biscuit. Unlike modern pipes, which have the pipe bowl at the end of a long stem, it is carved into a reddish stone and has a flat base about ten centimetres long. A small hole at one end serves as a mouthpiece. The pipe bowl is located in the middle of the base but, far from being a simple space for tobacco, it has the shape of an otter emerging from a river, looking around with his paws resting on the banks. The stone is smooth and resembles the shine of the wet fur of the animal. The otter is placed in such a way that the smoker looks into its eyes and they find themselves nose to nose. Originally, contact would have been even more exciting, as in the hollow eye cavities, sets of freshwater pearls could be found. Thanks to this object of exquisite craftsmanship, we can pinpoint when the long history of man and the tobacco pipe began. Although nowadays smoking is considered a deadly vice almost everywhere, 2000 years ago in North America, the pipe played a key role in the religious and ritual dimensions of human life.
There were groups of Native Americans across the continent whose customs were very different than those of Hollywood westerns. Those who inhabited the lands around the mighty Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, were farmers: there was no city, yet they reshaped the landscape with extraordinary monuments. We can say that they lived apart but died together: in fact, although they were divided into many small communities, they joined forces to build giant mounds of earth used as gathering places for ceremonies and burial of the dead. The tombs inside of these artificial hills were full of weapons and decorative items whose raw materials came from faraway places: there were teeth of grizzly bears from the Rocky Mountains, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, mica from the Appalachian Mountains and copper from the Great Lakes.
European visitors would later have been astonished by these spectacular burial mounds, above all those of the so-called “Mound City”, in today’s Ohio: a 5 hectare enclosed area with a good 24 burial mounds. In one of these mounds there were around 200 stone pipes, one of which is ours.
The pipe dates back to the period in which the very first evidence of tobacco usage in North America was reported. Grown for the very first time in South and Central America, tobacco was smoked wrapped in the leaves of other plants, a bit like a cigar. However, throughout the cold, long North winters, leaves could not be found and smokers had to find another holder: and so they made pipes. It seems that the cigar/pipe divide is in part a consequence of climate.
The large presence of stone pipes in Ohio’s burial mounds proves that these objects had a special meaning in the lives of the people that made and used them. Although archaeologists haven’t understood their precise meaning yet, we can suggest a plausible theory. Gabrielle Tayac, Native American history specialist and superintendent of the National Museum of American Indians, believes:
Pipes are expressive of a precise cosmology and theology; they carry the meanings of religious teachings. They are considered like living beings and should be treated like such, rather than simple objects, although sacred, that come alive and become powerful when the pipe bowl is joined to the mouthpiece. For instance, red pipestone pipes are considered to be the blood and bones of the American buffalo. In order to show up at certain locations with a pipe, you must undergo an initiation ritual and accept enormous responsibilities
We know that 2000 years ago only selected members of the community could be buried in the mounds: presumably many of them played a key role in rituals because fragments of ceremonial dresses were found together with some of the bodies: bear, wolf or deer headgear made from skulls. It appears that the animal world played a very important part in the spiritual life of these people that left us a real zoological garden of pipes: there are pipe bowls shaped like wild cats, turtles, toads, squirrels, birds, fish and even birds eating a fish. Perhaps animals were linked to shamanic rituals, the aim of which was to connect the physical world to the spiritual one. The type of tobacco that was smoked at the time was Nicotiana rustica, which enhances perception and has a hallucinogenic effect: it is believed that smokers entered in a sort of trance and, being face to face with the creature engraved on the pipe, saw it come to life. Maybe the animals acted as a spiritual guide or totem to the smoker; what we can be sure of is that, in later ages, Native Americans chose the animals that they saw in their dreams as guardian spirits. Gabrielle Tayac says:
Natives still use tobacco; it is an element of great sacredness that has the ability to transform the community prayer, communication and thought. The pipes can be smoked individually or passed around in a group or family: they are used to unite the minds, so to speak, and elevate their power to the extended Universe, the Creator or the intercessors for the creator. In a negotiation, a “peace pipe” is worth more than a signature on a document; it is a way of sealing an agreement not only from a legal point of view, but giving a vow to the great powers of the Universe.
Still today, smoking is a spiritual act for Native Americans; smoke rises up and blends together, taking unified prayers up into the sky, combining the hopes and wishes of the whole community.
Europeans discovered smoking much later, in the sixteenth century. To their eyes, tobacco lost its religious feature and merely became a relaxing substance, although it must be said that even in the very beginning there were many critics. No modern government campaign can compete with the verve of the great Counterblast to Tobacco published by King James I in 1604, a few months after his arrival from Edinburgh to succeed Queen Elizabeth. The new king denounced smoking as “a habit repelling to the eye, hateful to the nose, detrimental to the brain, dangerous for the lungs; the black putrid smoke narrowly resembles the horrible infernal smoke of the bottomless pit”.
Soon enough, tobacco became associated with money. When the British colonized Virginia, the tobacco market, that was then-emerging in Europe, turned out to be one of the economy’s key sectors: Bremen and Bristol, Glasgow and Dieppe all grew rich thanks to American tobacco. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Europeans progressively penetrated the American continent, tobacco fully became an article of trade and a method of payment. The European acquisition of the habit of pipe-smoking has become symbolic, for many Native Americans, of the expropriation of their native land by the invaders.
From then on, in Europe and in the rest of the world, smoking became an activity associated with pure pleasure, a daily habit that was without a doubt ‘cool’. In the twentieth century, film stars appeared on screen amidst clouds of smoke and the admiring audience in the theatres imitated them. Smoking was not only sophisticated: it was a habit of intellectuals, bringing to meditation, and it is famous Sherlock Holmes’ statement on a particularly difficult case: “It’s a three pipes problem”. Naturally, there was also an intensely enjoyable personal relationship with the physical object. Tony Benn, politician and pipe lover, remembers those days with passion:
“Stanley Baldwin smoked a pipe, Harold Wilson smoked a pipe, it was the most natural thing in the world and a pipe was smoked to make peace, to spend the time with friends and so on. Thus, the significance of the pipe goes over and above the fulfilment gained by smoking. It’s a kind of hobby: the dirt is scraped away, it’s cleaned, filled up, the tobacco gets pressed, then it is lit, put out and fired up again. Today, you can no longer smoke during official meetings, but back then, if someone asked you something you could fire up your pipe and say: ”great question” and this gave you some time to think of an answer. But I wouldn’t advise anyone to start smoking.”
In the western world the war against smoking of the last thirty years has been an extraordinary revolution. In Hollywood movies nowadays, only the “baddies” smoke and whoever is caught smoking is kicked out of the cinema. King James I would have loved it. As the Warren Cup has shown us, pleasures that societies deem allowable are subject to continuous and unpredictable redefinitions.
From “The history of the world in 100 objects” by Neil Mac Gregor
