Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Calumet   Listen
noun
Calumet  n.  A kind of pipe, used by the North American Indians for smoking tobacco. The bowl is usually made of soft red stone, and the tube is a long reed often ornamented with feathers. "Smoked the calumet, the Peace pipe, As a signal to the nations." Note: The calumet is used as a symbol of peace. To accept the calumet is to agree to terms of peace, and to refuse it is to reject them. The calumet of peace is used to seal or ratify contracts and alliances, and as an evidence to strangers that they are welcome.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Calumet" Quotes from Famous Books



... death-parched lips to bestow the draught upon a dying soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco-pipes, consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh's, the earliest on record, Dr. Parr's, Charles Lamb's, and the first calumet of peace which was ever smoked between a European and an Indian. Among other musical instruments, I noticed the lyre of Orpheus and those of Homer and Sappho, Dr. Franklin's famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van Corlear, and the flute ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... friendly intent. The rest donned their gala garments and painted their faces in readiness to receive visitors. With the messengers came two Cherokees to conduct the Shawnees to their settlement, where the chief warriors of the tribe welcomed Cheeseekau and his braves. After the calumet had gone the rounds in token of goodwill, the Cherokee chief explained that their hatchet was raised against the white settlers, and that they were on the eve of setting out on the war-path. This was good news for the Shawnees, who promptly agreed to cast in their ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond

... opposite wall. "Our sons and brothers went like children to the Stone House of the white man. Their hands were stretched before them, their muskets hung empty from their shoulders, their bowstrings were loosened; the calumet was in their hands. But the sons of Onontio lied as their fathers had taught them. They took the calumet; they called the Onondagas into their great lodge; and in the sleep of the white man's fire-water they chained them. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... Havana in the sunny streets of old Madrid, and I have puffed the rude and not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in the draughty wigwam of the Wild West; I have sipped my evening coffee in the silent tent, while the tethered camel browsed without upon the desert grass, and I have quaffed the fiery brandy of the North while the reindeer munched his fodder beside me in the hut, and the ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... left Qu'appelle to return to the colony, and stopped for the night at an encampment of Indians, some of whom were engaged as hunters for the company. They welcomed me with much cordiality to their wigwams. We smoked the calumet as a token of friendship; and a plentiful supply of buffaloe tongues was prepared for supper. I slept in one of their tents, wrapt in a buffaloe robe, before a small fire in the centre, but the ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... 51 Of him who bearded Jefferson, A non-resistant by conviction, But with a bump in contradiction, So that whene'er it gets a chance His pen delights to play the lance, And—you may doubt it, or believe it— Full at the head of Joshua Leavitt The very calumet he'd launch, And scourge him with the olive branch. 60 A master with the foils of wit, 'Tis natural he should love a hit; A gentleman, withal, and scholar, Only base things excite his choler, And then his satire's keen and thin As the lithe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... portion should be given, as otherwise the Indians might suppose that their wealth was boundless. It would be better to promise to deliver the rest in three months' time. A dozen of the principal men of the Utes came over. The goods were examined and accepted, the calumet of peace was smoked and a solemn covenant of friendship entered into, and by the next morning ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... fighters, wood being the common material, though crude pottery and basketry were manufactured, together with bags and bottles of skins or animal intestines. Ceremonial objects were common, the most conspicuous being the calumet, carved out of the sacred pipestone or catlinite quarried for many generations in the midst of the Siouan territory. Frequently the pipes were fashioned in the form of tomahawks, when they carried a double symbolic significance, standing alike for peace and war, and thus expressing well ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... biscuit!" began the flippant boy. "Dear brethren, I entreat you to join with me in smoking the calumet of peace in the shape ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe

... conclusion, Pontiac and his chiefs returned to Rogers's camp on the following morning. There they smoked the calumet with the English and exchanged presents and promises of kindness and friendship. The men who had met as enemies ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... few instances of the former movement: Mr. Pullman, the great car-builder, has recently established, on Lake Calumet, a vast system of workshops and workmen's homes, a description of which reads like a chapter from More's "Utopia." The Waterbury Watch Company has lately built a factory, employing 600 hands, on similar lines to those of Mr. Pullman. Cheney ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various

... to this query contained nothing but evasions. Finally, however, it having been mutually agreed upon, both parties disarmed and marched to the place where their representatives were talking. The Calumet was then prepared, lighted and handed around to each person present, it being puffed once or twice by every one of the savages and every one of the whites. The council then commenced. The head men among the savages ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... ironical eye I used to read Schiller), who is just now being lionized, and is lecturing on the National History of the Peruvians. Agassiz has become a millionaire, not from the proceeds of his brain, but from copper-mines (Calumet and Hecla). How his dear old father would have liked to possess some of ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... the outside war was at an end and you had made peace with your enemies, all other strifes and difficulties had ceased, and you had all entered upon an epoch of everlasting happiness; that, by the sides of your fond and faithful wives, you had nothing to do but smoke the calumet of peace. But he made a great and dangerous mistake, and he will suffer for it. I tell you, friend, the war which you have just closed was less difficult, less alarming than the strife which will now be carried on in your families. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... the most common species in northern Illinois, frequenting grassy marshes and low prairies, and is not exceeded in numbers even by the ever-present Spotted Sandpiper. While it was one of our most common birds in the Calumet region it is now ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... present, and the supply of blankets and other articles sent to the chiefs for distribution had the effect of removing all animosity. It is true that the Angry Snake and one or two more made very violent speeches, but they were overruled. The calumet of peace had been presented and smoked, and all danger appeared to be over from that quarter. Malachi had gone to the council, and was well received. He had been permitted to speak also as an English ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... of La Salle filled the Indians with astonishment, and entirely changed their purposes. The calumet was smoked, presents mutually exchanged, and a ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... the most ardent friendship, and as an emphatic token of the same, produced the calumet and began smoking the pipe of peace. The tobacco having been lit, each took several whiffs and then passed it to his neighbor, who did the same until the round was completed. This solemn pledge of good will having been exchanged, the convention or peace congress ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... savages of North-America, we are told there are various dances practised, such as that of the calumet, the leaders dance, the war-dance, the marriage-dance, the sacrifice-dance, all which, respectively differ in the movements, and some, amidst all the wildness of their performance, are not without their graces. But the dance of the calumet is esteemed the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... draped, only the head, the left hand and the right arm to the elbow emerging from the voluminous folds in which it was wrapped, save that the tip of one sandalled foot was visible, resting upon a ballot box. Half covered by the hem of the robe were seen a tomahawk, an axe, a printer's stick, a calumet, and various other emblems of American ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... investments in worthless undertakings, surely not the smallest cause is the lack of concise reasoning. Wrong analogies control the thought of the masses. Any copper stock must be worth buying because the stock of Calumet-Hecla multiplied its value a hundredfold. But the irony of the situation lies in the fact that, as experience shows, those who are the clearest thinkers in their own fields are in the realm of investments as easily trapped as the most superficial reasoners. It ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... Gary was built to order. Fifteen years ago the site of the present town was nothing but a waste of sand-dunes and swamps intersected from east to west by the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet Rivers. In 1906 the United States Steel Corporation broke ground here for a series of enormous foundries and factories, first laying sewers, water mains, gas pipes and conduits for electric ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... idea as serenely as any stock-gambler ever "plunged" in Wall Street, and a pretty school-teacher will tell you that she has become an advocate of the "New Thought" as complacently as an old financier will boast of having bought Calumet and Hecla when it was selling at 25. (Perhaps the school-teacher may get as good a bargain. I cannot say.) Upon the whole, Americans back individual guesswork and pay cheerfully when they lose. A great many of them, as it happens, have guessed right. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... of the Stonies sat smoking his red clay calumet at the narrow entrance of the gorge that looked out upon the wooded hillside, the only means of ingress to the shelf which constituted Dorothy's prison-house. He was keeping watch and ward with his good friend "Black Bull Pup," who also sat smoking ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... back we yet see on the horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season, and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener and greener—reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and cities, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... dactylonomy[obs3]; freemasonry, telegraphy, chirology[Med], byplay, dumb show; cue; hint &c. 527; clue, clew, key, scent. signal, signal post; rocket, blue light; watch fire, watch tower; telegraph, semaphore, flagstaff; cresset[obs3], fiery cross; calumet; heliograph; guidon; headlight. [sign (evidence) on physobj of contact with another physobj] mark, scratch, line, stroke, dash, score, stripe, streak, tick, dot, point, notch, nick. print; imprint, impress, impression. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to-day, While, like the actors in a play, Pass in their ancient guise along The figures of my border song What time beside Cocheco's flood The white man and the red man stood, With words of peace and brotherhood; When passed the sacred calumet From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke Through the gray beard of Waldron broke, And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea For mercy, struck the haughty key Of one who held, in any fate, His ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... themselves, one as a negro, the other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and handed them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right, and his old friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet cf peace was passed around; there was speaking and drinking of healths, with songs afterward in the illuminated garden. The occasion appears to have been a very pleasant and right merry one, and is said to have been the happiest festival ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... on the lowest rung of the ladder, whistling softly to myself. For Freddie Swain's address was no longer 1010 Fifth Avenue, nor was he to be found in the luxurious rooms of the Calumet Club. In fact, it was nearly a year since he had entered either place. For some eight hours of every week-day, he laboured in the law offices of Royce & Lester; he slept in a little room on the top floor ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... he had to make arrangements with Taminent. The natives hold in great respect an ancient elm of vast size which, they say, is already one hundred and fifty-five years old. Under its branches the tribes are wont to meet to smoke the calumet of peace, and to ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... compounds, being diffused in rocks and, in minute quantities, in soils, waters, plants, and animals. Spain, Chili, and the United States are the chief Cu producing countries. The extensive mines of Michigan yield the native ore. The Calumet and Heela mine alone produces 4,000,000 pounds per month. The most abundant compound of Cu is chalcopyrite, or copper pyrites, CuFeS2. Malachite, which is green, and azurite, which is blue, are carbonates, the former being used ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... turned his face to his god. At its conclusion, the priest began a hymn, of which the burthen was, "I will walk with God, I will go with the animal;" and, at the end of each stanza, the rest joined in an insignificant chorus. He next took up a calumet, filled with a mixture of tobacco and bear-berry leaves, and holding its stem by the middle, in a horizontal position, over the hot stones, turned it slowly in a circular manner, following the course of the sun. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... wanted to stop fighting; and she, very gladly in most cases, would confer with the wife of the other brave; and when they had concluded peace, the two men would immediately sit down together, smoke the calumet, and be good friends; and all this without the slightest ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... further surprise. After having given these superfluous stabs to the slain body of the preacher's argument, my good ally remarks, with magnificent calmness: "So far, then, the preacher and the professor are at one." "Let them smoke the calumet." By all means: smoke would be the most appropriate symbol of this wonderful attempt to cover a retreat. After all, the Duke has come to bury the preacher, not to praise him; only he makes the funeral obsequies look as much like ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... receiving strangers is by the pipe, or calumet of peace. Of this Pere Henepin has given a long account in his voyage, and the pipe is as follows: they fill a pipe of tobacco, larger and bigger than any common pipe, light it, and then the chief of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... you had looked close you would have seen that now and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes—a wrinkle that had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... true Bohemian individuality, and being a member of the Garrick Club, I found matured in it the element the Savage endeavoured at that time to emulate. Although I am still in my forties, few of those with whom I smoked the calumet of peace round the camp fire at a great pow-wow in the wigwam of the excellent ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss



Words linked to "Calumet" :   tobacco pipe, peace pipe, pipe of peace, pipe



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com