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Updated: May 21, 2025
They are presented by the Indians to their Father, the agent, as a proof that they abjure all cabal or alliance with the English. Pipes, or calumets and other little Indian presents, offered by the various tribes as pledges of their friendship, decorate the walls and give a remarkable and characteristic air to the room."
In addition, there hung about the fort the usual habitués of a Northern fur post, young clerks from England, who had come out for a year's experience in the wilds; underpaid artisans, striving to mend their fortunes by illicit trade; hunters and coureurs and voyageurs, living like Indians but with a strain of white blood that forever distinguished them from their comrades; stately Indian sachems, stalking about the fort with whiffs of contempt from their long calumets for all this white-man luxury; and a ragamuffin brigade, squaws, youngsters, and beggars, who subsisted by picking up food from the waste heap of the fort.
There were no deformities among the people. Radisson saw corn and pumpkins in their gardens. "Their arrows were not of stone, but of fish bones. . . . Their dishes were made of wood. . . . They had great calumets of red and green stone . . . and great store of tobacco. . . . They had a kind of drink that made them mad for a whole day." "We had not yet seen the Sioux," relates Radisson.
In the old days there were always two parties to this ancient Indian ceremony of peace: those bringing the calumets were called "the fathers" and those receiving them "the children". So it was necessary that Betty should now indicate that "the children" were willing to receive the blessing the other party desired to bring.
The long hair, the two crops a year, the tobacco, the soap-stone calumets, the stationary villages, the knowledge of the Spaniards, the warm climate all point to a region far south of the Northern States, to which so many historians have stupidly and with almost wilful ignorance insisted on limiting Radisson's travels. Parkman has been thoroughly honest in the matter.
Then, to their intense relief, four chiefs advanced deliberately, holding aloft two calumets, or peace-pipes. They wore French cloth, from which it was evident that they traded with the French. These people proved to belong to the great Illinois tribe, the very people some of whom had met Marquette at his mission-station and had begged him, as he says, "to bring them the word of God."
It was like an old-time Indian council, but the picturesqueness was a good deal spoiled by the gingham shirts they wore, and the ill-fitting coats and trousers from the store. Moreover, the red men's pipes, instead of the graceful calumets were English briars with showy silver bands.
The peace paint was upon them all, red, or red and white; they sat and looked at the ground until I had made the speech of welcome. Soon the air was dense with the fragrant smoke; in the thick blue haze the sweep of painted figures had the seeming of some fantastic dream. An old man arose and made a long and touching speech with much reference to calumets and buried hatchets.
"They have another name, Betty, which isn't calumets and you know it, and we were to use them at our Council Fire to-night. They are called 'pipes of peace' and I can't very well lead the party that is to bring them to camp and also the children who are to receive them." A silence in the tent then followed, lasting several moments.
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