Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce Part 2

Others derive it from Tabasco, a province of Mexico; others from the island of Tobago one of the Caribbees; and others from Tobasco in the gulf of Florida.

Tomilson says:--

"The word tobacco appears to have been applied by the caribbees to the pipe in which they smoked the herb while the Spaniards distinguished the herb itself by that name.

The more probable derivation of the word is from a place called Tobaco in Yucatan from which the herb was first sent to the New World."

Humboldt says concerning the name:--

"The word Tobacco like maize, savannah, cacique, maguey (agave) and manato, belong to the ancient language of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb, but the tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread should have different names among neighboring people. The pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Guaranos; but the a.n.a.logy between the Cabre and Algonkin (or Lenni-Lennope) words which denote tobacco may be merely accidental. The following are the synonymes in five languages: Aztec or Mexican, _yetl_; Huron, _oyngona_; Peruvian, _sayri_; Brazil, _piecelt_; Moxo, _sabare_."

Roman Pane who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage alludes to another method of using the herb.

They make a powder of the leaves, which "they take through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder, and so draw it up, which purges them very much."

This is doubtless the first account that we have of snuff-taking; Fairholt says concerning its use:--

"Its effects upon the Indians in both instances seem to have been more violent and peculiar than upon Europeans since."

This may be accounted for from the fact of the imperfect method of curing tobacco adopted by them and all of the natives up to the period of the settlement of Virginia by the English. As nearly all of the early voyagers allude to the plant and especially to its use it would seem probable that it had been cultivated from time immemorial by all the native people of the Orinoco; and at the period of the conquest the habit of smoking was found to be alike spread over both North and South America. The Tamanacs and the Maypures of Guiana wrap maize leaves round their cigars as the Mexicans did at the time of the arrival of Cortez. The Spaniards since have subst.i.tuted paper for the leaves of maize, in imitation of them.

"The poor Indians of the forests of the Orinoco know as well as did the great n.o.bles at the court of Montezuma, that the smoke of tobacco is an excellent narcotic; and they use it not only to procure their afternoon nap, but also to put themselves in that state of quiescence which they call dreaming with the eyes open or day dreaming."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Native smoking.]

Tobacco at this period was also rolled up in the leaves of the Palm and smoked. Columbus found the natives of San Salvador smoking after this manner. Lobel in his History of Plants[6] gives an engraving of a native smoking one of these rolls or primitive cigars and speaks of their general use by Captains of ships trading to the West Indies.

[Footnote 6: History of Plants, 1576.]

But not only was snuff taking and the use of tobacco rolls or cigars noted by European voyagers, but the use of the pipe also in some parts of America, seemed to be a common custom especially among the chiefs.

Be Bry in his History of Brazil (1590) describes its use and also some interesting particulars concerning the plant. Their method of curing the leaves was to air-dry them and then packing them until wanted for use. In smoking he says:--

"When the leaves are well dried they place in the open part of a pipe of which on burning, the smoke is inhaled into the mouth by the more narrow part of the pipe, and so strongly that it flows out of the mouth and nostrils, and by that means effectually drives out humours."

Fairholt in alluding to the various uses of the herb among the Indians says:--

"We can thus trace to South America, at the period when the New World was first discovered, every mode of using the tobacco plant which the Old World has indulged in ever since."

This statement is not entirely correct--the mode of using tobacco in Norway by plugging the nostrils with small pieces of tobacco seems to have been unknown among the Indians of America as it is now with all other nationalities, excepting the Norwegians.

When Cortez made conquest of Mexico in 1519 smoking seemed to be a common as well as an ancient custom among the natives. Benzoni in his History of the New World[7] describing his travels in America gives a detailed account of the plant and their method of curing and using it.

In both North and South America the use of tobacco seemed to be universal among all the tribes and beyond all question the custom of using the herb had its origin among them. The traditions of the Indians all confirm its ancient source; they considered the plant as a gift from the Great Spirit for their comfort and enjoyment and one which the Great Spirit also indulged in, consequently with them smoking partook of the character of a moral if not a religious act.

The use of tobacco in sufficient quant.i.ties to produce intoxication seemed to be a favorite remedy for most diseases among them and was administered by their doctors or medicine-men in large quant.i.ties.

Benzoni gives an engraving of their mode of inhaling the smoke and says of its use:--

[Footnote 7: From 1541 to 1556.]

"In La Espanola, when their doctors wanted to cure a sick man, they went to the place where they were to administer the smoke, and when he was thoroughly intoxicated by it, the cure was mostly effected. On returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the council of the G.o.ds, and other high visions."

It can hardly be supposed that while the custom of using tobacco among the Indians in both North and South America was very general and the mode of use the same, that the plant grown was of the same quality in one part as in another. While the rude culture of the natives would hardly tend to an improvement in quality; the climate being varied would no doubt have much to do with the size and quality of the plant.

This would seem the more probable for as soon as its cultivation began in Virginia by the English colonists it had successful rivals in the tobacco of the West Indies and South America. Robertson says:--

"Virginia tobacco was greatly inferior to that raised by the Spaniards in the West Indies and which sold for six times as much as Virginia tobacco."[8]

[Footnote 8: West India tobacco sold for 18 shillings per pound and Virginia for 3 s.]

But not only has the name tobacco and the implements employed in its use caused much discussion but also the origin of the plant.

Some writers affirm that it came from Asia and that it was first grown in China having been used by the Chinese long before the narcotic properties of opium were known. Tatham in his work on Tobacco says of its origin in substantial agreement with La Bott:--

"It is generally understood that the tobacco plant of Virginia is a native production of the country; but whether it was found in a state of natural growth there, or a plant cultivated by the Indian natives, is a point of which we are not informed, nor which ever can be farther elucidated than by the corroboration of historical facts and conjectures. I have been thirty years ago, and the greatest part of my time during that period, intimately acquainted with the interior parts of America; and have been much in the unsettled parts of the country, among those kinds of soil which are favorable to the cultivation of tobacco; but I do not recollect one single instance where I have met with tobacco growing wild in the woods, although I have often found a few spontaneous plants about the arable and trodden grounds of deserted habitations. This circ.u.mstance, as well as that of its being now, and having been, cultivated by the natives at the period of European discoveries, inclines towards a supposition that this plant is not a native of North America, but may possibly have found its way thither with the earliest migrations from some distant land. This might, indeed, have easily been the case from South America, by way of the Isthmus of Panama; and the foundation of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations (who we have reasons to consider as descendants from the Tloseolians, and to have migrated to the eastward of the river Mississippi, about the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Cortez), seems to have afforded one fair opportunity for its dissemination."

The first knowledge which the English discoverers had of the plant was in 1565 when they found it growing in Florida, one hundred and seventy-three years after it was first discovered by Columbus on the island of Cuba. Sir John Hawkins says of its use in Florida:--

"The Floridians, when they travel, have a kind of herb dried, which with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire and the dried herbs put together, do suke through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live four or five dayes without meat or drinke, and this all the Frenchmen used for this purpose: yet do they holde opinion withall, that it causeth water and steame to void from their stomacks."

This preparation might not have been tobacco as the Indians smoke a kind of bark which they sc.r.a.pe from the killiconick, an aromatic shrub, in form resembling the willow; they use also a preparation made with this and sumach leaves, or sometimes with the latter mixed with tobacco. Lionel Wafer in his travels upon the Isthmus of Darien in 1699 saw the plant growing and cultivated by the natives. He says:--

"These Indians have tobacco amongst them. It grows as the tobacco in Virginia, but is not so strong, perhaps for want of transplanting and manuring, which the Indians do not well understand, for they only raise it from the seed in their plantations. When it is dried and cured they strip it from the stalks, and laying two or three leaves upon one another, they roll up all together sideways into a long roll, yet leaving a little hollow. Round this they roll other leaves one after another, in the same manner, but close and hard, till the roll be as big as one's wrist, and two or three feet in length. Their way of smoking when they are in company is thus: a boy lights one end of a roll and burns it to a coal, wetting the part next it to keep it from wasting too fast. The end so lighted he puts into his mouth, and blows the smoke through the whole length of the roll into the face of every one of the company or council, though there be two or three hundred of them. Then they, sitting in their usual posture upon forms, make with their hands held together a kind of funnel round their mouths and noses. Into this they receive the smoke as it is blown upon them, snuffing it up greedily and strongly as long as ever they are able to hold their breath, and seeming to bless themselves, as it were, with the refreshment it gives them."

In the year 1534 James Cartier a Frenchman was commissioned to explore the coast of North America, with a view to find a place for a colony.

He observed that the natives of Canada used the leaves of an herb which they preserved in pouches made of skins and smoked in stone pipes. It being offensive to the French, they took none of it with them on their return. But writing more particularly concerning the plant he says:--

"In Hochelaga, up the river in Canada there groweth a certain kind of herb whereof in Summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great account of it, and only men use of it, and first they cause it to be dried in the Sune, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little beast's skine made like a bagge, with a hollow piece of stone or wood like a pipe, then when they please they make powder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said Cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire upon it, at the other end and suck so long, that they fill their bodides full of smoke, till that it commeth out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the Tonnel of a chimney. They say that this doth keepe them warme and in health, they never goe without some of this about them."

Be Bry in his History of Brazil 1590 gives an engraving of a native smoking a pipe and a female offering him a handful of tobacco leaves.

The pipe has a modern look and is altogether unlike those found by the English in use among the Indians in Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old engraving.]

An English writer says of the Tobacco using races:--

"From the evidence collected by travellers and archaeologists, as to the native arts and relics connected with the use of Tobacco by the Red Indians, it would appear that not one tribe has been found which was unacquainted with the custom,[9] its use being as well known to the tribes of the North-west and the denizens of the snowy wilds of Canada, as to the races inhabiting Central America and the West India Islands."

[Footnote 9: Arnold in his History of Rhode Island refers to the planting of tobacco by the Indians when the State was first settled. Elliot also says in his History of the same State:--"Tobacco was universal, every man carrying his pipe and bag; and in its cultivation only, did the men condescend to labor; but occasionally all would join, the whole neighborhood, men, women, and children, when some one's field was to be broken up, and they made a loving, sociable, speedy time of it."]

Father Francisco Creuxio states that the Jesuit missionaries found the weed extensively used by the Indians of the Seventeenth Century. In 1629 he found the Hurons smoking the dried leaves and stalks of the Tobacco plant or petune. Many tribes of Indians consider that Tobacco is a gift bestowed by the Great Spirit as a means of enjoyment. In consequence of this belief the pipe became sacred, and smoking became a moral if not a religious act, amongst the North American Indians.

The Iroquois are of opinion that by burning Tobacco they could send up their prayers to the Great Spirit with the ascending incense, thus maintaining communication with the spirit world; and Dr. Daniel Wilson suggests that "the practice of smoking originated in the use of the intoxicating fumes for purposes of divination, and other superst.i.tious rites."

When an Indian goes on an expedition, whether of peace or war, his pipe is his constant companion; it is to him what salt is among Arabs: the pledge of fidelity and the seal of treaties. In the words of a _Review_:

"Tobacco supplies one of the few comforts by which men who live by their hands, solace themselves under incessant hardship."

While the presence, and use of tobacco by the natives of America are among the most interesting features connected with its history, it can hardly be more so than is its early cultivation by the Spaniards, English and Dutch, and afterward by the French. The cultivation of the plant began in the West India Islands and South America early in the Sixteenth Century. In Cuba its culture commenced in 1580, and from this and the other islands large quant.i.ties were shipped to Europe. It was also cultivated near Varina in Columbia, while Amazonian tobacco had acquired an enviable reputation as well as Varinian, long before its cultivation began in Virginia by the English. At this period of its culture in America the entire product was sent to Spain and Portugal, and from thence to France and Great Britain and other countries of Europe. The plant and its use attracted at once the attention as well as aroused the cupidity of the Spaniards, who prized it as one of their greatest discoveries.

As soon as Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the Spaniards, and its use became a general custom, its sale increased as extensively as its cultivation. At this period it brought enormous prices, the finest selling at from fifteen to eighteen shillings per pound. Its cultivation by the Spaniards in various portions of the New World proved to them not only its real value as an article of commerce, but also that several varieties of the plant existed; as on removal from one island or province to another it changed in size and quality of leaf. Varinas tobacco at this time was one of the finest tobaccos known,[10] and large quant.i.ties were shipped to Spain and Portugal.

The early voyagers little dreamed, however, of the vast proportions to be a.s.sumed by the trade in the plant which they had discovered, and which in time proved a source of the greatest profit not only to the European colonies, but to the dealers in the Old World.

[Footnote 10: Trinidad tobacco was then considered the finest.]