The earliest pipes found in Central North America date to about 5,000 years ago. Indigenous people in this region gathered kinnikinnick and red osier dogwood to smoke in their ceremonial pipes. Around 1,100 years ago tobacco was adopted as a crop and the Blackfoot began to add it to their pipes.
The Indigenous people of the Central Plains developed elaborate pipe ceremonies. They considered smoke to be a link between the earth and the sky, and the exhaling of the smoke connected the physical and spiritual worlds.