The Native-American Peace Pipe (or Pipe of Peace). Two Terms Often Used as Symbol, Idiom, and Metaphor: Difference between revisions

'''SYSOP Note:''' ''Working on this one, not ready, but needed to save it....''

<center>'''Ben Rapaport''', May, 2023<br>  

''Exclusive to pipedia.org*''</center>

== Introduction ==

== Assorted Pipes and Their Uses ==

“War and Peace Pipes. Commemoration and Remembrance” (''Pipes & Tobaccos'' magazine, Spring 2008) was my report about pipes of another era. In this story, I examine the history of the peace pipe and pipe of peace beyond the colloquial “Put that in your peace-pipe and smoke it.” This essay the whole what’s what about these two terms.  

==== A gallery of interesting examples ====

== The Peace Pipe in Various Contexts ==

=== Music ===

The anonymously-composed “Song of Big Ben,” published in the March 15, 1877 issue of Truth, contains these lines: “There the braves unite to ponder,\On the present and the future;\There they smoke the pipe, Meer-sham-ah,\Smoke the pipe of peace, Meer-sham-ah;… The Peace Pipe. Cantata for Mixed Voices (1915) is Frederick S. Converse’s chorale with mixed voices and a baritone solo for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s words from “The Song of Hiawatha” that he had written in 1855; Part I is “The Peace-Pipe.” “Pass That Peace Pipe” was a 1947 Oscar-nominated song. “Smoke My Peace Pipe (Smoke It Right)” by the Wild Magnolias was released in 1973. “Peace Pipe” by the B.T. Express debuted on Soul Train in 1975. If you are into Beatles music, you may have listened to the fourth, solo-studio album of Paul McCartney, “Pipes of Peace,” released in 1983, consisting of lyrics describing the Christmas Day Truce during World War One. Johnny J. Blair and the Rover Boys, “Pipe of Peace,” is a 1990 Chippewa Indian song. Cry of Love’s band’s hit-single, “Peace Pipe,” was released in 1993. In 2004, Cerulean City’s hit was “We Smoke ‘em Peace Pipe.” The artist Nickodemus released “Peace Pipe” in 2005 and, in the same year, there was Robert L. Hanson, “Song of the Peace Pipe.” In 2008, Aaron Ross/Shapeshifter song, “Pass the Peace Pipe,” was released. Emerson Windy song/video, “Peace Pipe,” was released in 2014. The New Orleans group, Tin Men, released “Smoke My Peace Pipe” in 2019. Street Slang’s song, “Peace Pipe,” and “Peace Pipe” from Bronx VI were both released in 2021. Peace Pipe Gypsy’s music is on Spotify. And in 2023, there’s “Peace Pipe-Peace Tape VIII” and “Peace Pipe by The Shadows. According to lyrics.com, there are 2,446 lyrics, 109 artists, and 49 albums matching pipe of peace.

 

 

One can find either term employed in unusual ways. Helen Wells, “How Bunny Smoked the Peace-Pipe” appeared in Little Folks. A Magazine For Young People (1901). Anna E. Parrish published her fairy tale, “Benard at the Fish Convention” (The Continent, November 10, 1910). In this tall tale, the peace pipe is a fish. Just so you know, there is a real freshwater pipefish with the scientific name Syngnathinae.

“The bookseller was smoking the peace pipe, sitting on the complete works of Jules Romains, who designed them for that purpose. He had a very pretty briar peace pipe, which he filled with olive tree leaves. He also had next to him a bowl to spit in, and a moist towel to cool his forehead and a bottle of Ricqlès mint alcohol to strengthen the effect of the peace pipe” (Boris Vian, Foam of the Daze, 2003). Briar peace pipe? And this from a misguided youth:

“Have you ever noticed that pipe thing in the front part of the church that people put quarters in?” “Yeah.” “It’s called a peace pipe.” “Okay.” “It’s called Heifer Project. They’re trying to solve world hunger. They think if people aren’t hungry it will be easier to have peace.” Robby waited. “That’s why they call it a peace pipe” (David Krewson, Robby Braveheart. A Novel, 2011).

“Not only that, but the kissing and making up after an argument can be a delicious way to remind both of you just how much you mean to each other. The Americans call this ‘peace pipe sex’ and it can help you reconnect emotionally when you find yourselves in two opposing camps” (Madeleine Lowe, Stop Kissing Frogs. How to Avoid Mr Wrong and Find Mr Right, 2012). “Justine suspected that the puppy, a pug named Dartmouth, had been a kind of peace pipe, to be regarded as the end of the braces discussion” (Bill Cotter, The Parallel Apartments, 2013). “Peace is an oft used word with multiple meanings. It can affect various parts of one’s physical being. …One can have a piece of apple pie when thinking about how to make peace at their place of business. ..Instead of a peace pipe, how about a piece of chocolate layer cake or a hostess cupcake?” (Al Paulvin, The Ramblings of a Broken Heart, 2020).

Pipe of Peace is a tobacco shop in Nassau, Bahamas. Quoting from Ian Fleming’s Thunderball (1961): “The girl gave a cheerful wave of a sunburned hand, raced up the street in second, and stopped in front of The Pipe of Peace, the Dunhills of Nassau.” It’s still in operation, and claims to have the largest selection of pipes in the world.  

        Courtesy, Facebook

Look at any map in detail and you’ll find addresses such as Peace Pipe Place, Peace Pipe Road, Peace Pipe Drive, Peace Pipe Bend, Peace Pipe Way, Peace Pipe Court, and Peace Pipe Lane. West Hammond, Illinois, founded in 1868, was renamed Calumet City in 1924, and there are 12 other places in the world named Calumet. In Rachel Field’s book of fiction, And Now Tomorrow (2022), Peace-Pipe is a mill in New England. Coreorgonel was an 18th-century Native-American Village in what is now Tompkins County, New York. Its translation is “Where we keep the pipe of peace.”  

=== People and… ===

This is a short list. If I am to believe radaris.com, the people-search engine, there is one person named Peace Pipe living in each of the following states: Indiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Peace Pipe Players of Maquoketa, Iowa, is a media and entertainment company. The Peace Pipe Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is in Denver, Colorado. Concert organizers, Peace Pipe Productions, uses crossed calabashes as its logo.  

 

 

 

 

“To signal engineers, the ‘pipes of peace’ are signal pipes painted with Dixon’s Silica-Graphite Paint. In peace of mind it is worth much to the man in the tower to know that the pipes under his operation are …”  (“Signal Pipes, Boston Terminal Station,” Graphite, June 1913). In the late 1960s, there was a system called Peace Pipe that could pinpoint ground locations to within 25 yards with the aircraft as much as 50 miles from the drop zone. And I’m not surprised to find several, tasteless slang definitions of the phrase pass the peace pipe in the urban dictionary, most of which are not repeatable here.   

The Nicotiana sylvestris, also known as the Indian Peace Pipe, is a perennial plant that blooms in the summer. And to further your botanical education, the Ghost Plant, a wildflower of the Adirondacks and Hocking County, Ohio, also known as Indian pipe (Montropa uniflora), corpse plant, death plant, and ghost flower, is said to resemble a Native American peace pipe. Geum triflorum JS ‘Peace Pipe’ is a perennial known as grandfather’s beard or lion’s beard.

An early 1900s postcard, smoking the (clay) peace pipe on Saint Patrick’s Day.  

 

 

A Tuxedo tobacco ad from around 1915: “For ‘The Smoke of Battle’ and the ‘Pipe of Peace.’ Here are today’s marching orders. …It’s good for you when you’re going into action—and when you’re at peace with the world.” This ad is not far-fetched: “Among other achievements, they [Knights of Columbus] helped to make the Christmas of 1918 a most memorable one for hundreds of thousands of young Americans in France by the distribution of thousands of peace pipes, by extra supplies of chocolate and tobacco, and, at least one section, by the distribution of plum pudding cooked by a noted expert chef” (Maurice F. Egan and John J. B. Kennedy, The Knights of Columbus in Peace and War, 1920).

The graphic on this T-shirt probably appeals to Second Amendment-ers.  

 

 

 

 

 

Courtesy, pipehittersunion.com  

 

 

 

 

=== Metaphor ===

Daryl Black describes the souvenir program for a Civil War remembrance in 1889:  

 

 

 

Courtesy, civilwarshades.org

“We all know how everyone dislikes the yearly event of spring cleaning, more especially the sterner sex, who if they are wise would try and vanish from the scene of action. However, many are quite unable to do so; therefore try and do your cleaning as comfortably as you can, always having one sitting-room where they can go and smoke the peace pipe” (“Spring Cleaning, As Done in English Homes,” Good Housekeeping, May 10, 1890).

“Probably it is some relic of this superstition, which makes men more civilised think it their solemn obligation to retire into the sanctum of a smoking room or a club in Pall-Mall or elsewhere, when they wish to sacrifice tobacco to the manes of the more sophisticated Peace-Pipe whose name is Meerschaum?” (Cope’s Smoke Room Booklets. Number Nine. Pipes and Meerschaum. Part The First. American Pipes, 1895).  

“Smoking the peace pipe in wartime” was a piece in the Cosmopolitan, September 1923, from Hugh Livingstone, Adjutant of Yankee Division Post No. 272 of the VFW, complaining that there was never enough tobacco distributed to the Doughboys to satisfy their need. And here’s a witty play on words, a poem in celebration of Tobacco Week (Tobacco, February 7, 1924): “All smokers now may, so to speak.\Smoke up. This is Tobacco Week.\All in America, we may state,\Have double cause to celebrate.\For in our country, Heaven be praised,\Tobacco was first born and raised.\ And by religious rites invoked\The pungent leaves were lit and smoked.\And warriors would their battles cease\To quietly smoke the Pipe of Peace.\But customs change and culture ripe\Has turned it to a piece of pipe.” “Pretty cigarette girls are now gardenia maidens and cigarettes are passed around in the manner of peace-pipes at dinner parties” (“Cigarette Shortage,” Brief, Vol. 2, No. 6, January 9, 1945).

“…in Kubrick’s telling it is not the ghosts of ‘Indians’ who haunt the Overlook but those of the European perpetrators.) All that is left of Native Americans are the artifacts littered throughout the hotel in the form of the decorations in the Colorado (Spanish for ‘red’) Lounge, the ‘Indian chief’ logo on the cans of Calumet (meaning ‘peace pipe’) baking powder conspicuously displayed in the kitchen storeroom…” (Geoffrey Cocks, The Wolf at the Door. Stanley Kubrick, History, & the Holocaust, 2004).

Seeking shelter from mounting liability suits, the headline in The Wall Street Journal on April 16, 1997, was: “Peace Pipe: Philip Morris, RJR Talk Settlement With Plaintiffs.” In the same year, France and the Netherlands held a mini-summit on drug policy, and the politico.eu headline read: “Peace pipe on offer in drugs policy conflict.” Another 1997 headline appeared in the Los Angeles Times on December 3: “The Peace Pipe Eludes Modern ‘Pilgrims’ and Indians,” about a confrontation with police and the arrests of more than two dozen members of the United American Indians of New England’s day of mourning march. James M. Wall, “No Peace Pipe: The Stated Goal of Bush Appointee Daniel Pipes—an Israeli Victory and a Palestinian Defeat” (Christian Century, September 20, 2003).  

“In fact, marijuana was one of the few common-ground experiences left in Vietnam, with dope sometimes being shared and passed between white and black soldiers like a peace pipe” (Martin Torgoff, Can’t Find My Way Home. America in the Great Stoned Age, 2004). In 2005, the UN Refugee Agency announced: “Rival ethnic groups smoke peace pipe in Liberia’s Lofa County.” The reconciliation was not the ritualistic sharing of a smoke by the Lorma and Mandingo tribes, but the slaughter of a cow.  

“The smoke in the peace pipe means many things. It may be the smoke given off by the fires of passion or the intoxicating scent of love itself. Most importantly it is the breath of words, spoken from the heart, seeking true understanding and union” (Teresa Moorey, The Fairy Bible, 2008). The Deseret News, August 2, 2009: “Obama’s modern peace pipe” was about his invitation to Henry Louis Gates and Police Sergeant James Crowley to share a beer at the White House. “Netflix Smokes a $50 Million Peace Pipe With the Satanic Temple” (nasdaq.com) was about the Satanic Temple’s lawsuit against the Netflix show, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Best-selling author, Ta-Nehisi Coates used this metaphor: “I was peace pipes and treaties. My style was to talk and duck. It was an animal tactic, playing dead in hopes that the predators would move to an actual fight” (The Beautiful Struggle, 2009). “It is David’s Heavenly Pastoral; a surpassing ode, which none of the daughters of music can excel. The clarion of war here gives place to the pipe of peace, and he who so lately bewailed the woes of the Shepherd tunefully rehearses the joys of the flock” (Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Treasury of David,” romans45.org).).  

=== A Much Different Pipe of Peace ===

More interesting is what Dr. Sterling Haynes claimed in his December 2012 article, “Tobacco Smoke Enemas” (BC Medical Journal) referring to our first Americans: “Inspired by an American First Nations custom, tobacco smoke enemas were administered by medical practitioners in the 18th century to treat everything from colds to cholera ….Word of this treatment crossed the water to England, and volunteer medical assistants with the society began to use the procedure to treat half-drowned London citizens who were pulled from the Thames River. Initially the ‘pipe smoker London Medic’ inserted an enema tube with rubber tubing attachments into the victim and blew smoke into the rectum.” Quoting Amanda Pederson: “Blowing smoke up your backside wasn’t always a figure of speech” (bioworld.com).

== In Conclusion ==

This mighty instrument of good will [the pipe] was found more powerful than the sword, so settling the tangles of intertribal disputes. It was utilized for such purposes more often than warfare. Just as the pen has time and again been found more powerful than the sword, so the pipe of peace has, time without number, been found more forceful than the arbitrament of war. And there can be no doubt that the character of the smoking mixture used in the pipes was a preponderating factor in promoting its conquests. The pipe of peace has played so many historical and social roles in American history that it is now looked upon as one of the most characteristic symbols of the United States. …The world’s authorities on international law, however, believe that the nations can be educated up to the pipe of peace type of diplomacy, and they have devised many plans for introducing it. The remodelled [sic] Hague conference and tribunal are some of them, and the League of Nations is another.