Tobacco: The Story of Tobacco Before the Coming of the White Man

By Joseph C. Robert

Tobacco is American, first published in 1950, is a well-researched, fascinating look at the history of Native American use of tobacco and its introduction into European cultures. As one reviewer stated, “nothing is so American as tobacco,” and the Mayans and North and South American tribes used the plant in rituals and healing ceremonies for centuries. Included are chapters on the origins of smoking, pipes, the word 'tobacco,' botanical considerations of the several Nicotiana species, and medicinal and ritualistic uses. Included are 21 pages of maps and illustrations. Author Herbert Spinden was curator of American Indian art and primitive culture at the Brooklyn Museum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839740459

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

Tobacco Is American

The Story of Tobacco before the Coming of the White Man

By

Herbert J. Spinden

Tobacco is American was originally published in 1950 by The New York Public Library, New York.

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 4

Author’s Foreword 5

Divine Origin of Smoking Among the Maya 8

The Invention and Diffusion of Pipes 13

The Primitive Word Tobacco 17

Botanical Considerations 24

Tobacco as Universal Medicine 28

Mexico and Nicotiana Rustica 39

Peru and Nicotiana Tabacum 47

Conclusion 51

List of Authorities 53

Illustrations 61

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 83

Author’s Foreword

When, some three years ago, Mr. George Arents asked me to review the pre-Columbian place of tobacco in the light of archaeology, native histories and surviving ceremonies among the Indians of North, Central and South America, I little appreciated the extent to which the matter already had been compromised. Inadequate scholarship of some early writers and narrow specializations of some modern ones had standardized important errors.

When Tiedemann wrote his History of Tobacco in German in 1854 he came to the indefensible conclusion that the Spaniards had introduced the uses of tobacco into Peru. At that time the important manuscripts of Bernabé Cobo and Polo de Ondegarde had not yet been published. This does not excuse his sweeping conclusion, for the last Inca was Saire Tupac whose name means Tobacco Royal, while the Second Council of Lima in 1565 had ordered an investigation of tobacco in native ceremonies. The Third Council in 1583 denounced the native uses of smoking, snuffing and drinking tobacco so vigorously that a series of ecclesiastical prohibitions were adopted around the world.

Comes, whose treatise on the Genus Nicotiana was published in 1899, accepted Tiedemann’s restrictions, setting a fashion which other commentators have followed. Coca may be more conspicuous than tobacco as a narcotic among the Indians of Peru, but tobacco has continued to be employed among such highland tribes as the Aymara, while on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the Montana tobacco is cultivated extensively today and much used by Shamans. Indeed it seems that Nicotiana tabacum of commerce had its ancient origin in the eastern piedmont of Peru or Ecuador. Tobacco is now used in a decoction in ceremonies concerned with head trophies among the Jibaro of eastern Ecuador. Such ceremonies were anciently of great importance in Peru as shown by art and grave remains; but bowls for holding a special liquid can not be identified as easily as pipes for smoking or taking snuff. Carved tablets on which tobacco presumably was pulverized are ancient and widely distributed in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

A second question concerns the belief that Europeans were the first to adopt tobacco as a specific and as a universal medicine after its introduction into Portugal and France about 1560. Tobacco therapy was practiced by the Indians for many centuries before the white man, even though their principal use for it was as a magical control of spiritual rather that physical dangers. The curing of a sore called nolo me tangere by the use of tobacco leaves, claimed by Jean Nicot in 1560, was not, it is true, suggested by any Indian. But the Portuguese (his exact identity is not certain) who gave the French Ambassador the seeds of the new plant must have received them from a traveler to the new world, and such a person, careful enough to carry safely such small objects, presumably learned of the use of the plant by American natives as a cure for wounds and venomous snake bites. Bernardino de Sahagún, a firsthand observer and the best early authority on Indian customs in the time immediately succeeding the Spanish conquest of Mexico, refers to this use for tobacco in his works. Further consideration of its therapeutic value is given in the chapter entitled: Tobacco as universal medicine.

Nicot’s story of the marvelous cures effected by the new plant was bruited abroad and published by Jean Liébault in his 1567 edition of La Maison Rustique. Here tobacco was called "Nicotiane" after its supposed discoverer and he thus succeeded in taking the credit for its introduction from another Frenchman. But the tobacco of modern commerce was brought to France in 1557 by Jean André Thevet, just returned from Brazil as a member of a Huguenot expedition. The tobacco secured three years later was an inferior variety, afterwards called Nicotiana rustica, brought from Florida, which was later almost entirely replaced as a commercial product by the Nicotiana tabacum, grown in South America and the West Indies. Nicot, proving himself not only a diplomat but an opportunist, called the plant he sent to the court of France the Queen’s Herb to honor Catherine de Medici. The words nicotine and Nicotiana, the botanical name of the genus, perpetuate the name of the ambassador, and Thevet has never received up to this day official credit for bringing to France the plant which has added vast sums to the national treasury.

After much discussion and many counterclaims, it now may be accepted that the species of Nicotiana are wholly American and that they have achieved distribution in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia only since the discovery of America, the curious arguments of Leo Wiener for an African origin notwithstanding. As regards China and the Philippines, Nicotiana rustica was first introduced from Mexico, then Nicotiana tabacum either from Mexico or Peru, both in states of cultivation. The seeds of a Chilean species were given a free ride to Australia on sheep and mules along with several South American sedges: similarly it seems, tobacco reached the Pacific Islands in relatively recent times.

The List of Authorities given herewith covers only works referred to in the text and is far from complete. It may be supplemented by titles in other treatises including those of Berthold Laufer, Ralph Linton, etc., published by the Field Museum of Chicago. The new Handbook on South American Indians, Bulletin 143 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, contains newly assembled information on the South American Indians. The older authorities and rare sources are covered in the Catalogue of the Arents Collection. As regards modern special fields of research a word of warning may not come amiss: some tend to overspecialization. Genetics, for instance, cannot really replace botany, nor botany the broad interrelations of the other natural sciences.

The writer has many persons and institutions to thank for numerous courtesies. I mention the Biological Institute of Mexico City, the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for outstanding help. On top of these come many individuals, anthropological field workers, historians and travelers. Above all, I thank Miss Sarah Dickson, librarian of the Arents Tobacco Collection of The New York Public Library, Mr. F. Ivor D. Avellino and other members of the staff of the American History Division at the same institution for constant help, and Mr. George Arents for his continuing interest.

The presentation here given is too brief to do justice to the amount of data collected. It is always wise, however, to