Chapter II: Tobacco. Its Discovery

Nearly four hundred years have passed away since the tobacco plant and its use was introduced to the civilized world. It was in the month of November, 1492, that the sailors of Columbus in exploring the island of Cuba first noted the mode of using tobacco. They found the Indians carrying lighted firebrands (as they at first supposed) and puffed the smoke inhaled from their mouths and nostrils.

The Spaniards concluded that this was a method common with them of perfuming themselves; but its frequent use soon taught them that it was the dried leaves of a plant which they burned inhaling and exhaling the smoke. It attracted the attention of the Spaniards no less from its novelty than from the effect produced by the indulgence.

The use of tobacco by the Indians was entirely new to the Spanish discoverers and when in 1503 they landed in various parts of South America they found that both chewing and smoking the herb was a common custom with the natives. But while the Indians and their habits attracted the attention of the Spanish sailors Columbus was more deeply interested in the great continent and the luxuriant tropical growth to be seen on every hand. Columbus himself says of it:--

"Everything invited me to settle here. The beauty of the
streams, the clearness of the water, through which I could
see the sandy bottom; the multitude of palm-trees of
different kinds, the tallest and finest I had ever seen; and
an infinite number of other large and flourishing trees; the
birds, and the verdure of the plains, are so amazingly
beautiful, that this country excelles all others as far as
the day surpasses the night in splendor."

Lowe, gives the following account of the discovery of tobacco and its uses:--

"The discovery of this plant is supposed to have been made
by Fernando Cortez in Yucatan in the Gulf of Mexico, where
he found it used universally, and held in a species of
veneration by the simple natives. He made himself acquainted
with the uses and supposed virtues of the plant and the
manner of cultivating it, and sent plants to Spain, as part
of the spoils and treasures of his new-found World."

Oviedo[4] is the first author who gives a clear account of smoking among the Indians of Hispaniola[5]. He alludes to it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce insensibility. Their mode of using it was by inhalation and expelling the smoke through the nostrils by means of a hollow forked cane or hollow reed. Oviedo describes them as "about a span long; and when used the forked ends are inserted in the nostrils, the other end being applied to the burning leaves of the herb, using the herb in this manner stupefied them producing a kind of intoxication."

[Footnote 4: Historia General de los Indios 1526.]

[Footnote 5: St. Domingo.]

Of the early accounts of the plant and its use, Beckman a German writer says:--

"In 1496, Romanus Pane, a Spanish monk, whom Columbus, on
his second departure from America, had left in that country,
published the first account of tobacco with which he became
acquainted in St. Domingo. He gave it the name of Cohoba
Cohobba, Gioia. In 1535, the negroes had already habituated
themselves to the use of tobacco, and cultivated it in the
plantations of their masters. Europeans likewise already
smoked it."

An early writer thus alludes to the use of tobacco among the East Indians:--

"The East Indians do use to make little balls of the juice
of the hearbe tobaco and the ashes of cockle-shells wrought
up together, and dryed in the shadow, and in their travaile
they place one of the balls between their neather lip and
their teeth, sucking the same continually, and letting down
the moysture, and it keepeth them both from hunger and
thirst for the space of three or four days."

Oviedo says of the implements used by the Indians in smoking:--

"The hollow cane used by them is called tobaco and that that
name is not given to the plant or to the stupor caused by
its use."

A writer alluding to the same subject says:--

"The name tobacco is supposed to be derived from the Indian
tobaccos, given by the Caribs to the pipe in which they
smoked the plant."

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 analogy 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 substituted 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 nobles 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."

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 quantities 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 quantities. 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
gods, 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 circumstance, 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 scrape 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.

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

"From the evidence collected by travellers and
archæologists, 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 superstitious 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 quantities 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 quantities were shipped to Spain and Portugal. The early voyagers little dreamed, however, of the vast proportions to be assumed 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.]

Helps, treating on this same subject, says:

"It is interesting to observe the way in which a new product
is introduced to the notice of the Old World--a product that
was hereafter to become, not only an unfailing source of
pleasure to a large section of the whole part of mankind,
from the highest to the lowest, but was also to distinguish
itself as one of those commodities for revenue, which are
the delight of statesmen, the great financial resource of
modern nations, and which afford a means of indirect
taxation that has perhaps nourished many a war, and
prevented many a revolution. The importance, financially and
commercially speaking, of this discovery of tobacco--a
discovery which in the end proved more productive to the
Spanish crown than that of the gold mines of the Indies."

Spain and Portugal in all their colonies fostered and encouraged its cultivation and then at once ranked as the best producers and dealers in tobacco. The varieties grown by them in the West Indies and South America were highly esteemed and commanded much higher prices than that grown by the English and Dutch colonies. In 1620, however, the Dutch merchants were the largest wholesale tobacconists in Europe, and the people of Holland, generally, the greatest consumers of the weed.

The expedition of 1584, under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, which resulted in the discovery of Virginia, also introduced the tobacco plant, among other novelties, to the attention of the English. Hariot,[11] who sailed with this expedition, says of the plant:

[Footnote 11: A brief and true Report of the New Found
Land of Virginia (London, 1588).]

"There is an herb which is sowed apart by itselfe, and is
called by the inhabitants uppowoc. In the West Indies it
hath divers names, according to the severall places and
countries where it groweth and is used; the Spaniards
generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried
and brought into powder, they use to take the fume or smoke
thereof by sucking it through pipes made of clay into their
stomacke and heade, from whence it purgeth superfluous
fleame and other grosse humors; openeth all the pores and
passages of the body; by which means the use thereof not
only preserveth the body from obstructions, but also if any
be so that they have not beene of too long continuance, in
short time breaketh them; whereby their bodies are notably
preserved in health, and know not many grievous diseases
wherewithall we in England are oftentimes affected. This
uppowoc is of so precious estimation amongest them that they
thinke their gods are marvellously delighted therewith;
whereupon sometime they make halowed fires, and cast some of
the powder therein for a sacrifise. Being in a storme uppon
the waters, to pacifie their gods, they cast some up into
the aire and into the water: so a weave for fish being newly
set up, they cast some therein and into the aire; also after
an escape of danger they cast some into the aire likewise;
but all done with strange gestures, stamping, sometimes
dancing, clapping of hands, holding up of hands, and staring
up into the heavens, uttering there withal and chattering
strange wordes, and noises.

"We ourselves during the time we were there used to suck it
after their manner, as also since our returne, and have
found many rare and wonderful experiments of the virtues
thereof; of which the relation would require a volume of
itselfe; the use of it by so manie of late, men and women,
of great calling as else, and some learned phisitions also
is sufficient witnes."

The natives also when Drake[12] landed in Virginia, "brought a little basket made of rushes, and filled with an herbe which they called Tobah;" they "came also the second time to us bringing with them as before had been done, feathers and bags of Tobah for presents, or rather indeed for sacrifices, upon this persuasion that we were gods."

[Footnote 12: The World Encompassed. London, 1628.]

William Strachey[13] says of tobacco and its cultivation by the Indians:

[Footnote 13: "The Historie of Travaile into Virginia
Britannica."]

"Here is great store of tobacco, which the salvages call
apooke: howbeit it is not of the best kynd, it is but poor
and weake, and of a byting taste; it grows not fully a yard
above ground, bearing a little yellow flower like to
henbane; the leaves are short and thick, somewhat round at
the upper end; whereas the best tobacco of Trynidado and the
Oronoque, is large, sharpe, and growing two or three yardes
from the ground, bearing a flower of the breadth of our
bell-flower, in England; the salvages here dry the leaves of
this apooke over the fier, and sometymes in the sun, and
crumble yt into poudre, stalk, leaves, and all, taking the
same in pipes of earth, which very ingeniously they can
make."

It would seem then, if the account given by Strachey be correct, that the tobacco cultivated by the Indians of North America was of inferior growth and quality to that grown in many portions of South America, and more particularly in the West India islands. As there are still many varieties of the plant grown in America, so there doubtless was when cultivated by the Indians. While most probably the quality of leaf remained the same from generation to generation, still in some portions of America, owing more to the soil and climate than the mode of cultivating by them, they cured very good tobacco. We can readily see how this might have been, from numerous experiments made with both American and European varieties. Nearly all of the early Spanish, French and English voyagers who landed in America were attracted by the beauty of the country. Ponce De Leon, who sailed from Spain to the Floridas, was charmed by the plants and flowers, and doubtless the first sight of them strengthened his belief in the existence somewhere in this tropical region of the fountain of youth.

The discovery of tobacco proved of the greatest advantage to the nations who fostered its growth,--and increased the commerce of both England and Spain, doing much to make the latter what it once was, one of the most powerful nations of Europe and possessor of the largest and richest colonies, while it greatly helped the former, already unsurpassed in intelligence and civilization, to reach its present position at the commercial head of the nations of the world.

As Spain, however, has fallen from the high place she once held, her colonial system has also gone down. And while England, thanks to her more liberal policy, still retains a large share of the territory which she possessed at first, Spain, which once held sway over a vast portion of America, has been deprived of nearly all of her colonies, and ere long may lose control of the island on which the discoverer of America first saw the plant.[14]

[Footnote 14: "Spain has doubtless conquered more of the
Earth's surface than any other modern nation; and her
peculiar national character has also caused her to make
the worst use of them. It was always easier for the Moor
to conquer than to make a good use of his conquests; and
so it has always been with Spain."]

It is an historical fact that wherever in the English and Spanish colonies civilization has taken the deepest root, so has also the plant which has become as famous as any of the great tropical products of the earth. The relation existing between the balmy plant and the commerce of the world is of the strongest kind. Fairholt has well said, that "the revenue brought to our present Sovereign Lady from this source alone is greater than that Queen Elizabeth received from the entire customs of the country."

The narrow view of commercial policy held by her successors, the Stuarts, induced them to hamper the colonists of America with restrictions; because they were alarmed lest the ground should be entirely devoted to tobacco. Had not this Indian plant been discovered, the whole history of some portions of America would have been far different. In the West Indies three great products--Coffee, Sugar-Cane, and Tobacco,--have proved sources of the greatest wealth--and wherever introduced, have developed to a great extent the resources of the islands. Thus it may be seen that while the Spaniards by the discovery and colonization of large portions of America strengthened the currency of the world, the English alike, by the cultivation of the plant, gave an impetus to commerce still felt and continued throughout all parts of the globe.

An English writer has truthfully observed that "Tobacco is
like Elias' cloud, which was no bigger than a man's hand,
that hath suddenly covered the face of the earth; the low
countries, Germany, Poland, Arabia, Persia, Turkey, almost
all countries, drive a trade of it; and there is no
commodity that hath advanced so many from small fortunes to
gain great estates in the world. Sailors will be supplied
with it for their long voyages. Soldiers cannot (but) want
it when they keep guard all night, or upon other hard duties
in cold and tempestuous weather. Farmers, ploughmen, and
almost all labouring men, plead for it. If we reflect upon
our forefathers, and that within the time of less than one
hundred years, before the use of tobacco came to be known
amongst us, we cannot but wonder how they did to subsist
without it; for were the planting or traffick of tobacco now
hindered, millions of this nation in all probability must
perish for the want of food, their whole livelihood almost
depending upon it."

When first discovered in America, and particularly by the English in Virginia, the plant was cultivated only by the females of the tribes, the chiefs and warriors engaging only in the chase or following the warpath. They cultivated a few plants around their wigwams, and cured a few pounds for their own use. The smoke, as it ascended from their pipes and circled around their rude huts and out into the air, seemed typical of the race--the original cultivators and smokers of the plant. But, unlike the great herb which they cherished and gave to civilization, they have gradually grown weak in numbers and faded away, while the great plant has gone on its way, ever assuming more and more sway over the commercial and social world, until it now takes high rank among the leading elements of mercantile and agricultural greatness.