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Short Stuff: "Peace" Pipes · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So it's a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: short stuff, and we're talking about what you might know
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: is peace pipes, but as it turns out, that's not
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the right word for it at all. So although we'll
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: probably accidentally call it peace pipes a bunch of times,
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  Speaker 1: they're really called sacred or ceremonial pipes.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. That whole notion of passing the peace pipe
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  Speaker 2: something that American settlers and soldiers saw and they thought like, hey,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: they're smoking that thing during a treaty signing, so that
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  Speaker 2: must be a peace pipe. And while it's true that
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: they might have smoked those during treaty signings, it turns
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: out they smoke them a lot, so it's a bit
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  Speaker 2: of a misnomer.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They come up in all sorts of different parts
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  Speaker 1: of Native American culture. Something I thought was really interesting
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: is that I could not find a mention of any
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  Speaker 1: North American tribe that doesn't use ceremonial pipes. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: so like they found old ones from Florida up to
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  Speaker 1: the Midwest. I think they found it in the Hopewell
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  Speaker 1: culture in Ohio from the southwest up to the Pacific northwest,
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  Speaker 1: like all over they use peace pipes, which tells you like,
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  Speaker 1: this is a really old tradition and it predates some
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  Speaker 1: of the tribes that eventually kind of grew out of
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  Speaker 1: other tribes that were older.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And again they just call them pipes.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I think there's a broader term that you can use,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: if you want to get more specific, called a calumet.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And apparently that's from the French word. Would that be
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: shadow may like Timothy, Yeah, all right, and that means
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: read or flute, and Timothy shallo may. He's like a
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: little flutie read himself, he really is.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that's the stage name.
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  Speaker 2: Now maybe, And you know, depending on the tribe and
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: the culture, they each have their own name for it,
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  Speaker 2: perhaps in their own language, and generally they take them
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: out during some kind of ceremony, maybe a prayer, maybe
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  Speaker 2: a treaty signing thing, maybe just a party or maybe
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  Speaker 2: a monarchy situation.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: But it is a sort of a physical representation of
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: a connection to God or maybe the smoke flowing out
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  Speaker 2: in all directions to nature and connecting in that way.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I also saw what it means specifically definitely depends
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: on the tribe. They have different meanings for it, even
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: though it's generally used for some sort of prayer solemn occasion,
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  Speaker 1: like you were saying. One explanation I saw is that
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  Speaker 1: the plants that are smoked in there, it's not always tobacco,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: it's never marijuana, but and it can be a combination
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  Speaker 1: of a bunch of different plants. Those plants have roots
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: in the earth, but their smoke travels up to the heavens,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to the spirit world, and they carry the person's prayer
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  Speaker 1: with them. So it's very they're very sacred and solemn
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: occasion when they're smoking a ceremonial pipe, even though exactly
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: what they believe about it is it varies.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And where they come from berries, I
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  Speaker 2: think the Lakota, you know, the ideas that they were
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  Speaker 2: given it by the white buffalo calf woman and it
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  Speaker 2: was used for prayer in their culture generally, and that's
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  Speaker 2: why the white buffalo calf is very much a sacred
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  Speaker 2: thing to the Lakota.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Still, yeah, the Lakota call there's the chinoonpa, which is
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  Speaker 1: a cool word to say, Yeah, And one other thing
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  Speaker 1: about any ceremonial pipe is there's like different parts represent
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  Speaker 1: different things, but they come in pieces. They're not actually
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  Speaker 1: just one single piece. Especially with the Dakota and the Lakota,
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  Speaker 1: both sue they are meant to stay apart, and when
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: they're put together, that indicates a ceremony or a prayer
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: session is beginning. You don't keep like if you're storing it,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: or say, if you're a museum who gets your hands
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: on one of these and you're displaying it, you do
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  Speaker 1: not show them put together. They're just kind of like
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  Speaker 1: exploded on display, separated the different parts.
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  Speaker 2: They should call them pieces pipes.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Very nice? Should we take a pipe? Very nice? Yeah?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I gotta let that gel with me from all right.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after that bad pun, right after this.
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  Speaker 1: So one of the other things that a lot of
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  Speaker 1: ceremonial pipes have in common in North America is that
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  Speaker 1: they are made from a spe zip kind of rock.
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  Speaker 1: And there's different variations on this kind of rock, but
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  Speaker 1: they're all generally called pipestone.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we've talked about the pieces. There's that
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  Speaker 2: wooden stem and then you've got your bowl. It's like
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  Speaker 2: an L shape bowl or a T shaped bowl, and
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  Speaker 2: that is that pipestone. There are different colors of pipestone,
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  Speaker 2: so they're often very pretty pipes and pretty bowls. But
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  Speaker 2: there's one apparently that's a little more revered, and that's
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  Speaker 2: the red pipestone from Pipestone National Monument, which is southwest Minnesota,
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  Speaker 2: and apparently it's that particular pipestone is considered sacred by
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  Speaker 2: a lot of indigenous tribes.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like they'll come from all over North America to
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  Speaker 1: get the red pipestone is a kind of catlanite, which
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  Speaker 1: is a stone made from clay, and it's actually fairly
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  Speaker 1: easy to work with. But to get to it at
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  Speaker 1: Pipestone National Monument, number one, you have to get a permit.
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  Speaker 1: Number two, you can't get a permit unless you're enrolled
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  Speaker 1: in a North American tribe. And then number three, it's
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  Speaker 1: going to take you a while to get there because
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  Speaker 1: the red pipestone at that park only exists underneath a
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  Speaker 1: thick quartz layer and you're only allowed to use hand
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  Speaker 1: tools like pick axes, chisels, sledgehammers to get to it,
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  Speaker 1: and the park rangers recommend expecting to do at least
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: a weekend's worth of work with multiple other people, but
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: that some people end up having to get an annual
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: pass because they have to just keep coming back and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: coming back and to finally get to it. And can
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  Speaker 1: you imagine if you dedicated months to this and you
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: came back for that last time, you're like, this is
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  Speaker 1: the one, and to find somebody else had just used
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the rest of your work, dug through it and got
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: to the red pipestone you had to start over.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought you were going to say you finally
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: make that beautiful bowl out of the pipestone, and then
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: your friend Gary knocks it off the kitchen counter.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Either way, either way, it was probably Gary who used
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: your hole in the first place too, So either way
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Gary's to blame.
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  Speaker 2: Gary notorious hole user. So it's not always up pipestone.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's limestone. Sometimes it's bone or pottery or shale,
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  Speaker 2: but that pipestone is which are really after The stems
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  Speaker 2: are generally wood, maybe alder or ash, and they're usually decorative,
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  Speaker 2: not always, because like we said, there are all different
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  Speaker 2: kinds of pipes, some for different ceremonies, some just personal pipes.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: A lot of times I'll have feathers and beadwork. Some
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  Speaker 2: are just plain though, and like you mentioned, they smoke
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: of a variety of things, not always tobacco. Sometimes it's
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: dried bark of maybe a red oyster dog wood. Maybe
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: it's a ground shrub if you're out on the prairie,
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  Speaker 2: And like you mentioned, it's never marijuana. That is just
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: some dumb joke made by white people at some point,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: probably in a cartoon strip or something.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So that, yeah, in our crumb strip. Yeah, maybe Fritz
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the cat. So that that ground shrub from the prairie
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you mentioned is called kinnikinnick and it's spelled like it sounds.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: It's also called bearberry, but actually both of them are
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  Speaker 1: really fun to say as well. That's a sacred plant,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and then the tobacco that they'll smoke is also considered sacred.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not that standard Virginia tobacco strain. It's an
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  Speaker 1: older indigenous strain to the United States that's much more potent,
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  Speaker 1: just stronger tobacco. So I'm sure in a pinch you
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: could use the Virginia kind, but there's apparently a preferred kind.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: That's not that aka the good stuff.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So I also said that you're not supposed
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  Speaker 1: to keep the pipe stored put together. In addition to
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the stem and the bowl, there are there's also often
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  Speaker 1: a mouthpiece too, So these three separate parts are brought
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  Speaker 1: together to begin a ceremony. It might be in a
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  Speaker 1: sweat lodge like you said, it might be as part
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  Speaker 1: of a wedding. There's all sorts of different times to
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  Speaker 1: use it. But in some Native American cultures they were
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: used to basically seal a peace treaty between warring nations.
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  Speaker 1: And there was a process for doing this, and there
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  Speaker 1: would be a medicine man involved, and then you would
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  Speaker 1: bring together the chiefs of the two warring tribes. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and the cool thing about it is the medicine man
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  Speaker 1: and each of the warring chiefs brings a piece of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the pipe, the medicine man puts it together, and then
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  Speaker 1: it's kind of like, all right, we're all connected again.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. I love what it symbolizes. And it's
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: something that's not you know, something still happening. And I mean,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I think this is from HowStuffWorks dot Com. They interviewed
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I think a woman from the Lakota maybe, and she's like,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: you know, this stuff is not past tense, like we
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: still have our culture and we still do these things.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Her name's Gabriel Drapeau and she's with the yank
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  Speaker 1: tan Sioux tribe of South Dakota.
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  Speaker 2: Oh okay, Well, she just makes a point like this
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  Speaker 2: stuff is not in the past tense, like we still
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  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people look at it that
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  Speaker 2: way as like, oh, they used to smoke these ceremonial pipes.
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  Speaker 2: And she's like, no, we still do this. We still
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  Speaker 2: have our culture and it's still sacred to us.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty cool man. I love it. Well, I guess
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: short stuff is out everybody.
• 10:19
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