Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce Part 12

Humboldt, when traveling in South America, found in use among the Ottomac Indians a powder called Niopo, or "Indian snuff." Niopo is a powerful stimulant, a small portion of it producing violent sneezing in persons unaccustomed to its use. Father Gumilla says:--"This diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by an adolescent tobacco plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils, deprives them of reason for some hours, and renders them furious in battle." Humboldt, however, has shown that this stimulating snuff is not the product of the tobacco plant, but of a species of acacia, Niopo being made from the pods of the plant after they have undergone a process of fermentation. Captain Burton, when traveling in the Highlands of Brazil, found the tobacco plant growing spontaneously, which made him conclude that it is indigenous to Brazil. He found the "Aromatic Brazilian" a kind of tobacco with thin leaves and a pink flower, which is "much admired in the United States, and there found to lose its aroma after the second year." It is usually a.s.serted that the tobacco grown in Brazil contains only two per cent. of nicotine, but Captain Burton is disposed to doubt this, as he states that some varieties of the "holy herb" grown at Sa'a' Paulo and Nimos suggests a larger proportion. In the small towns in the Highlands of Brazil, Captain Burton found that excellent cigars, better than many "Havannas," were retailed at a halfpenny each. In La Plata, Paraguay, and other countries to the south of Brazil, nearly every person smokes, and an American traveler quoted by Mr. Cooke states that women and girls above thirteen years of age use the weed in the form of quids. A magnificent Hebe, arrayed in satin and flashing in diamonds, "puts you back with one delicate hand, while with the fair taper fingers of the other she takes the tobacco out of her mouth previous to your saluting her." A European visiting Paraguay for the first time is rather astonished at the conduct of the fair beauty, but such is the force of custom that the squeamishness of the new-comer is soon overcome, when he finds that he has to kiss every lady to whom he is introduced; and the traveler says that "one half of those you meet are really tempting enough to render you reckless of consequences."

Smoking is practised by the natives of Patagonia, who are a tall and muscular cla.s.s of men, though not such giants as represented by the early voyagers. Hutchinson, in a valuable paper on the Indians of South America has an account of the Pehuenches, one of the princ.i.p.al tribes of Patagonia, in which he states that "their chief indulgence is smoking. The native pipes are fabricated out of a piece of stone, fashioned into the shape of a bowl, into which is inserted a long bra.s.s tube. The latter is obtained by barter at Bohia Blanca. The tobacco in the bowl being lighted, each man of a party takes a suck at the pipe in his turn." Tilston, who witnessed the operation, describes it as a most ludicrous one.

"The smoker gives a pull at the pipe, gulping in a quant.i.ty of Tobacco vapour, the cubic measurement of which my informant would be afraid to guess at. All the muscles of the body seem in a temporary convulsion whilst it is being taken in, and the neighbour to whom the pipe is transferred follows suit by inhaling as if he were trying to swallow down bra.s.s tube, bowl, Tobacco, fire, and all. Meanwhile, there issues from the nose and mouth of the previous smoker such a c.u.mulus of cloud as for a few seconds to render his face quite invisible."

Tobacco is more used in Chili than in the other countries on the Pacific side of South America; this is owing to the extensive use of the leaves of the Cocoa plant as a narcotic by the natives of Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: South Americans smoking.]

We refrain from enlarging on the nature and use of this narcotic, as on some future occasion we may take an opportunity of making some observations on Cocoa, which according to Jonson, holds an undisputed sway over some seven or eight millions of the inhabitants of South America. The Indians formerly inhabiting the high table-lands of what is now called Peru and Bolivia appear prior to the invasion of the Spaniards to have been much further advanced in civilization than the races occupying the other portions of South America; and there is a strong probability that they are of a different origin from the races occupying Chili, Patagonia, Brazil, and the great district washed by the waters of the West Indian Sea. Science as yet cannot give anything like an accurate idea of the time man has existed in these widely-diversified countries, but we cannot go wrong in accepting the statement of Darwin, who observes that "we must admit that man has inhabited South America for an immensely long period, inasmuch as any change in climate, effected by the elevation of the land must have been extremely gradual."

Another writer says of the pipes of the Indians of North America:

"Great variety of form and material distinguishes the pipes of the modern Indians; arising in part from the local facilities they possess for a suitable material from which to construct them; and in part also from the special style of art and decoration which has become the traditional usage of the tribes. The favorite red pipe-stone of the Coteau des Prairies, has been generally sought after, both from its easiness of working and the beauty of its appearance. A pipe of this favorite and beautiful material, found on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Simcoe, and now in my possession, measures five inches and three-quarters in length, and nearly four inches in greatest breadth, yet the capacity of the bowl hollowed in it for the reception of tobacco is even less than in the smallest of the "Elfin Pipes." In contrast to this, a modern Winnebago pipe recently acquired by me, made of the same red pipe-stone, inlaid with lead, and executed with ingenious skill, has a bowl of large dimensions ill.u.s.trative of Indian smoking usages modified by the influence of the white man.

From the red pipe-stone, as well as from the lime stone and other harder rocks, the Chippeways, the Winnebagos, and the Sioux, frequently make a peculiar cla.s.s of pipes, inlaid with lead.

"The Chinc.o.k and Puget Sound Indians, who evince little taste in comparison with the tribes surrounding them, in ornamenting their persons or their warlike and domestic implements, commonly use wooden pipes. Sometimes these are elaborately carved, but most frequently they are rudely and hastily made for immediate use; and even among these remote tribes of the flat head Indians, the common clay pipe of the fur trader begins to supersede such native arts. Among the a.s.sinaboin Indians a material is used in pipe manufacture altogether peculiar to them. It is a fine marble, much too hard to admit of minute carving, but taking a high polish.

This is cut into pipes of graceful form, and made so extremely thin, as to be almost transparent, so that when lighted the glowing tobacco shines through, and presents a singular appearance when in use at night or in a dark lodge.

Another favorite material employed by the a.s.sinaboin Indians is a coa.r.s.e species of jasper also too hard to admit of elaborate ornamentation."

This also is cut into various simple but tasteful designs, executed chiefly by the slow and laborious process of rubbing it down with other stones. The choice of the material for fashioning the favorite pipe is by no means invariably guided by the facilities which the location of the tribe affords. A suitable stone for such a purpose will be picked up and carried hundreds of miles. Mr. Kane informs me that, in coming down the Athabaska River, when drawing near its source in the Rocky Mountains, he observed his a.s.sinaboin guides select the favorite bluish jasper from among the water-worn stones in the bed of the river, to carry home for the purpose of pipe manufacture, although they were then fully five hundred miles from their lodges. Such a traditional adherence to a choice of material peculiar to a remote source, may frequently prove of considerable value as a clue to former migrations of the tribes. Both the Cree and the Winnebago Indians carve pipes in stone of a form now more frequently met with in the Indian curiosity stores of Canada and the States than any other specimens of native carving. The tube, cut at a sharp right angle with the cylindrical bowl of the pipe, is ornamented with a thin vand.y.k.ed ridge, generally perforated with a row of holes, and standing up somewhat like the dorsal fin of a fish. The Winnebagos also manufacture pipes of the same form, but of a smaller size, in lead, with considerable skill.

Among the Cree Indians a double pipe is occasionally in use, consisting of a bowl carved out of stone without much attempt at ornament, but with perforations on two sides, so that two smokers can insert their pipe-stems at once, and enjoy the same supply of tobacco.

It does not appear, however, that any special significance is attached to this singular fancy. The Saultaux Indians, a branch of the great Algonquin nation, also carve their pipes out of a black stone found in their country, and evince considerable skill in the execution of their elaborate details. But the most remarkable of all the specimens of pipe sculpture executed by the Indians of the north-west are those carved by the Bobeen, or Big-lip Indians,--so called from the singular deformity they produce by inserting a piece of wood into a slit made in the lower lip.

The Bobeen Indians are found along the Pacific coast, about lat.i.tude 54, 40', and extend from the borders of the Russian dominions eastward nearly to Frazer River. The pipes of the Bobeen, and also of the Clalam Indians, occupying the neighboring Vancouver's Island, are carved with the utmost elaborateness and in the most singular and grotesque devices, from a soft blue clay-stone or slate. Their form is in part determined by the material, which is only procurable in thin slabs, so that the sculptures, wrought on both sides, present a sort of double bas-relief. From this, singular and grotesque groups are carved without any apparent reference to the final destination of the whole as a pipe. The lower side is generally a straight line, and in the specimens I have examined they measure from two or three to fifteen inches long; so that in these the pipe-stem is included. A small hollow is carved out of some protruding ornament to serve as the bowl of the pipe, and from the further end a perforation is drilled to connect with this. The only addition made to it when in use is the insertion of a quill or straw as a mouth-piece. The Indians have both war and peace pipes.

The War pipe is a true tomahawk of ordinary size with a perforated handle the tobacco being placed in the receptacle above the hatchet the handle serving as a pipe-stem and used for either pipe or tomahawk. Many varieties of Indian Pipes have been found not only in the Western and Southern mounds but in Mexico and Central America.

Fine specimens are found in Florida and some elaborately carved have been unearthed in Virginia. Wilson says of the pipes used by the Indians: "The pipe stem is one of the characteristics of modern race, if not distinctive of the Northern tribes of Indians." In alluding to the pipes more particularly he says: "Specimens of another cla.s.s of clay pipes of a larger size, and with a tube of such length as obviously to be designed for use without the addition of a "pipe-stem,"

most of the ancient clay pipes that have been discovered are stated to have the same form; and this, it may be noted, bears so near a resemblance to that of the red clay pipe used in modern Turkey, with the cherry-tree pipe stem, that it might be supposed to have furnished the model.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A war pipe.]

The bowls of this cla.s.s of ancient clay pipes are not of the miniature proportions which induce a comparison between those of Canada and the early examples found in Britain; neither do the stone pipe-heads of the mound-builders suggest by the size of the bowl either the self-denying economy of the ancient smoker, or his practice of the modern Indian mode of exhaling the fumes of the tobacco, by which so small a quant.i.ty suffices to produce the full narcotic effects of the favorite weed. They would rather seem to confirm the indications derived from the other sources, of an essential difference between the ancient smoking usages of Central America and of the mound-builders, and those which are still maintained in their primeval integrity among the Indians of the North West.

Of the mound-builders Foster says:

"The mound-builders were well aware of the narcotic properties of tobacco, a plant which indigenous to America, and which since the discovery of the western continent has been domesticated in every region of the earth where the soil and climate are favorable to its cultivation. No habit at this day, it may be said, is more universal or more difficult to eradicate than that of smoking. With the mound-builder tobacco was the greatest of luxuries; his solace in his hours of relaxations, and the choicest offering he could dedicate to the Great Spirit. Upon his pipe he lavished all the skill he possessed, in the lapidary's art.

"From the red stone of the quarry With his hand he broke a fragment Moulded it into a pipe head Shaped and fashioned it with figures."

Many of these pipes are sculptured from the most obdurate stones and display great delicacy of workmanship. The features of animals are so truthfully cut that often there is no difficulty in their identification, and even the plumage of birds is delineated by curved or straight lines which show a close adherence to nature. The bowl and stem piece wrought from a single block, are as accurately drilled as they could be at this day, by the lapidary's art. Both the War pipe and Peace pipe are the most sacred and the most highly valued of all the various kinds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Peace pipe.]

"The calumet, or pipe of peace, ornamented with the war eagles quill, is a sacred pipe, and never used on any other occasion than that of peace making, when the chief brings it into treaty, and unfolding the many bandages which are carefully kept around it, has it ready to be mutually smoked by the chiefs, after the terms of the treaty are agreed upon, as the means of solemnizing it; which is done by pa.s.sing the sacred stem to each chief, who draws one breath of smoke only through it. Nothing can be more binding than smoking the pipe of peace and is considered by them to be an inviolable pledge. There is no custom more uniformly in constant use amongst the poor Indians than that of smoking nor any more highly valued. His pipe is his constant companion through life--his messenger of peace; he pledges his friends through its stem and its bowl, and when its care-drowning fumes cease to flow, it takes a place with him in his solitary grave with his tomahawk and war-club companions to his long-fancied 'happy hunting grounds.'"

From specimens of clay pipes found at the South from Virginia to Florida it would seem that the Indians had a great variety of pipes some of which were beautifully carved while others are perfectly plain. Many of them however are of rude workmanship and might have been fashioned by some of the tribe unacquainted with pipe-making.

Dall gives the following account of smoking among the natives of Alaska:

We broke camp about five o'clock in the morning. Nothing occurred to break the monotony of constant steady plodding.

Two Indians in the bow of the boat would row until tired, and then we would stop for a few minutes to rest, and let them smoke. The last operation takes less than a minute; their pipes are so constructed as to hold but a very small pinch of tobacco. The bowl, with ears for tying it to the stem is generally cast out of lead. Sometimes it is made of soft stone, bone or even hard wood. The stem is made of two pieces of wood hollowed on one side, and bound to the bowl and each other by a narrow strip of deerskin. In smoking the economical Indian generally cuts up a little birch wood, or the inner bark of the poplar, and mixes it with his tobacco.

A few reindeer hairs pulled from his paska, are rolled into a little ball, and placed in the bottom of the bowl to prevent the contents from being drawn into the stem. A pinch of tobacco cut as fine as snuff is inserted and two or three whiffs are afforded by it.

The smoke is inhaled into the lungs, producing a momentary stupor and the operation is over. A fungus which grows on decayed birch trees, or tinder manufactured from the down of the poplar rubbed up with charcoal is used with flint and steel for obtaining a light. Matches are highly valued and readily purchased. The effect of the Circa.s.sian tobacco on the lungs is extremely bad, and among those tribes who use it many die from asthma and congestion of the lungs. This is princ.i.p.ally due to the saltpetre with which it is impregnated. The Indian pipe is copied from the Eskimo, as the latter were the first to obtain and use tobacco. Many of the tribes call it by the Eskimo name.

The Kutchin and Eastern Finneh were modeled after the clay pipes of the Hudson Bay Company, but they also carve very pretty ones out of birch knots and the root of the wild rose-bush. The Chukchees use a pipe similar to those of the Eskimo, but with a much larger and shorter stem. This stem is hollow, and is filled with fine birch shavings. After smoking for some months these shavings impregnated with the oil of tobacco, are taken out through an opening in the lower part of the stem and smoked over. The Hudson Baymen make pa.s.sable pipe-stems by taking a straight-grained piece of willow or spruce without knots, and cutting through the outer layers of bark and wood.

This stick is heated in the ashes and by twisting the end in contrary directions the heart-wood may be gradually drawn out, leaving a hollow tube.

The Kutchin make pretty pipe-stems out of goose-quills wound about with porcupine-quills. It is the custom in the English forts to make every Indian who comes to trade, a present of a clay pipe filled with tobacco. We were provided with cheap brown ones, with wooden stems, which were much liked by the natives, and it is probable that small brier-wood pipes, which are not liable to break, would form an acceptable addition to any stock of trading goods". The Tchuktchi of north-eastern Asia are devoted worshipers of tobacco, and is one of the chief articles of trade with them. Their pipes are large, much larger at the stem than the bowl. In smoking, they swallow the fumes of the tobacco which causes intoxication for a time. "The desire to procure a few of its narcotic leaves induces the American Esquimaux from the Ice Cape to Bristol Bay, to send their produce from hand to hand as far as the Guosden Islands in Behrings Straits, where it is bartered for the tobacco of the Tchuktchi, and there again princ.i.p.ally resort to the fair of Ostrownoje to purchase tobacco from the Russians. Generally the Tchuktchi receive from the Americans as money skins for half a pond, or eighteen pounds of tobacco leaves as they afterwards sell to the Russians for two ponds of tobacco of the same quality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Tchuktchi pipe.]

The Russians also are great lovers of the weed. A writer says:--

"Everybody smokes, men, women, and children. They smoke Turkish tobacco, rolled in silk paper--seldom cigars or pipes. These rolls are called parporos. The ladies almost all smoke, but they smoke the small, delicate sizes of parporos, while the gentlemen smoke larger ones. Always at morning, noon and night, comes the inevitable box of parporos, and everybody at the table smokes and drinks their coffee at the same time. On the cars are fixed little cups for cigar ashes in every seat. Ladies frequently take out their part parporos, and hand them to the gentlemen with a pretty invitation to smoke. Instead of having a smoking car as we do, they have a car for those who are so 'pokey' as not to smoke."

Throughout the German States the custom of smoking is universal and tobacco enters largely into their list of expenditures. A writer says of smoking in Austria:--

"We have been rather surprised to find so few persons smoking pipes in Austria. Indeed, a pipe is seldom seen except among the laboring cla.s.ses. The most favorite mode of using the weed here is in cigarettes, almost every gentleman being provided with a silver box, in which they have Turkish tobacco and small slips of paper, with mucilage on them ready for rolling. They make them as they use them, and are very expert in the handling of the tobacco. The chewing of tobacco is universally repudiated, being regarded as the height of vulgarity. The Turkish tobacco is of fine flavor, and commands high prices. It is very much in appearance like the fine cut chewing tobacco so extensively used at home."

The cigars made by the Austrian Government, which are the only description to be had are very inferior, and it is not to be wondered that the cigarette is so generally used in preference.

The smoking of cigarettes by the ladies is quite common, especially among the higher cla.s.ses. In no part of the world is smoking so common as in South America; here all cla.s.ses and all ages use the weed.

Smoking is encouraged in the family and the children are early taught the custom. A traveler who has observed this custom more particularly than any other, says of the use of tobacco in Peru:--

"Scarcely in any regions of the world is smoking so common as in Peru. The rich as well as the poor, the old man as well as the boy, the master as well as the servant, the lady as well as the negroes who wait on her, the young maiden as well as the mother--all smoke and never cease smoking, except when eating, or sleeping, or in church. Social distinctions are as numerous and as marked in Peru as anywhere else, and there is the most exclusive pride of color and of blood. But differences of color and of rank are wholly disregarded when a light for a cigar is requested, a favor which it is not considered a liberty to ask, and which it would be deemed a gross act of incivility to refuse. It is chiefly cigarritos which are smoked.

"The cigarrito, as is well known, is tobacco cut fine and dexterously wrapped in moist maize leaves, in paper, or in straw. Only the laborers on the plantations smoke small clay pipes. Dearer than the cigarritos are the cigars, which are not inferior to the best Havanna. Everywhere are met the cigarrito-twisters. Cleverly though they manipulate, cleanliness is not their besetting weakness. But in Peru, and in other parts of South America, cleanliness is not held in more esteem than in Portugal and Spain."

The Turks have long been noted as among the largest consumers of tobacco as well as using the most magnificent of smoking implements.

The hookah is in all respects the most expensive and elaborate machine (for so it may be called) used for smoking tobacco. A traveler gives the following graphic description of smoking among them:

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

"As each man smokes only out of his own pipe, it is not surprising that this instrument is an indispensable accompaniment of every person of rank. Men of the higher cla.s.ses keep two or three servants to attend to their pipes.

While one looks after things at home, the other has to accompany his master in his walks and rides. The long stem is on such occasions packed in a finely embroidered cloth cover, while the bowl, tobacco, and other accessories are carried by the servant in a pouch at his side. A stranger in Constantinople will often regard with curiosity and surprise, a proud Osmanli on foot or horseback, followed by an attendant who, through the long, carefully-packed instrument which he carries, gives one the idea that he is a weapon-bearer of some heroic period following his lord to some dangerous rendezvous. So are the times altered. What the armor-bearer was for the warlike races of old, such is the tchbukdi for their degenerate descendants.

"To smoke from sixty to eighty pipes a day is by no means uncommon; for whatever be the business, no matter how serious, in which the Turk is engaged, he must smoke at it.

In the divan, where the grandees of the empire consult together on the most delicate affairs of State, the question was once mooted whether the tchbukdes should not be excluded from such debates as were of a strictly private nature.

There was a great diversity of opinion on the subject.

Politics and reason were on opposite sides. At last it was decided that they would not disgrace an ancient national usage, but would allow the harmless attendants to enter the council-room every now and then to change the pipes. In Turkey, pipes and tobacco afford means of distinguishing not only the different cla.s.ses of the community, but even the several graduates of rank in the same cla.s.s. A mushir (marshal) would find it derogatory to his dignity to smoke out of a stem less than two yards in length. The artisan or official of a lower rank, would consider it highly unbecoming on his part to use one which exceeded the proper proportions of his cla.s.s. A superior stretches his pipe before him to his inferior; while the latter must hold his modestly on one side, only allowing the end of the mouth-piece to peep out of his closed fist.

"The pasha has the right to puff out his smoke before him like a steam engine, while his inferiors are only allowed to breathe forth a light curl of smoke, and that must be let off backwards. Not to smoke at all in the presence of a superior, is held the most delicate homage which can be paid him. A son, for instance, acts in this manner in the presence of his father, and only such a one is considered to be well brought up who declines to smoke even after his father has repeatedly invited him to do so. The fair s.e.x in the East is scarcely less addicted to the use of this weed.

"The girl of twelve years old smokes a cigarette of the thickness of pack-thread. When she has attained her fourteenth or fifteenth year, and is already marriageable, she is allowed to indulge her penchant at will, which is forbidden when younger. After this age the diameter of the cigarette increases year by year; and when a lady has reached the mature age of twenty-four, no one sees anything remarkable in her smoking a modest little chibouque as she sits on the lower divan of the harem. Elderly matrons--and in Turkey every lady is an elderly matron in her fortieth year--are pa.s.sionately devoted to this enjoyment. The pipe-bowls and stems always remain of the size appropriated by etiquette to the use of the harem; but the strongest and most pungent sorts of tobacco are not unseldom smoked, until the mouth, which, according to the a.s.surance of the poet, in the bloom of its youth breathed forth ambergiris and musk, in its fortieth year acquires so strong a smell that the lady can be scented from a distance.

"Like their lords, the hanyrus of rank have also their tchbukdes, of course of their own s.e.x, who accompany them when out walking or on a visit. In this case, however, the cover in which the pipe-stem is made, not of cloth, but of silk. The habit of refreshing oneself with a pipe on some elevated spot which commands a fine view, is common to both s.e.xes. Men can indulge this taste whenever their fancy may suggest, but ladies only in retired spots; for, whenever a Turkish fair one removes the yas mak (veil) from her lips, as she does to smoke, all around her must be harem (sacred).