In many tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the tobacco pipe.
Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a remedy for certain maladies or states of mind.

The "pipe of peace" has become proverbial.

Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo.

It was not a very old practice in the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers.

They used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them, certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting.