
BATSWANA (Tswana / Bechuana) Pipe — Dual-use: Cannabis / Tobacco — Early 19th Century — Water Pipe — Documented 1843
What museums actually record:
1. Form: Hookah pipe of bamboo and cowhorn. Handcoloured copperplate engraving by Antonio Sasso from Giulio Ferrario's Ancient and Modern Costumes of all the Peoples of the World, 1843 — caption: "Woman with baby on her back, man smoking hookah pipe of bamboo and cowhorn."
2. How it works:
The African continent has a great tradition in water pipes. This history begins with the dagga or dakka pipe from South Africa, named after the local word for hash, which was already smoked there around the year 1600. A piece of cow horn was used for the water reservoir of these pipes, serving to cool the smoke. A baked clay pipe bowl is fitted into the hole using a ring-shaped stopper made of woven plant material. The potter took great care in decorating this pipe bowl. Rows of recessed triangles were applied as in notch carving. After baking, these were alternately accentuated with red and white dye — Amsterdam Pipe Museum, object APM 24.904, February 2025.
3. Batswana connection:
Snuff containers and pipes — original material was horn, cut at the end — a cows horn — nakana means a small or baby horn — Interview with Tshupo Ntono, Village Elder, Setswana.
4. Dual-use:
'Dry' pipes would have been used for cannabis and tobacco. Cannabis was traded on the African continent since at least the 1600s. Water pipes like this Batswana horn form were associated primarily with cannabis and later dual-use — Amsterdam Pipe Museum + Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum.
5. Social role: Pipes were used in a variety of social contexts — ancestral spirits could be honored by offerings of tobacco, as well as entities inhabiting the surrounding natural world — Jacaranda Thembu catalogue comparative.
Disclaimer:
I am not a historian, not a Batswana custodian. Sharing open museum records (Amsterdam Pipe Museum, Bridgeman Images 1843 engraving, Making African Connections archive) to best ability.