Tobacco History

"Tobacco-producing plants are derived from the genus Nicotiana of the nightshade family. Other well-known nightshades in the service of mankind include food plants like potato, tomato, pepper, and eggplant; hallucinogens like thorn apple, mandrake, henbane, and belladona; and several garden ornamentals like petunia, which derives its name from the TupÐ"­an designation petÐ"Ñ"n for tobacco, the most notorious nightshade of them all."

P. Xvi

"But from pre-Contact times to roughly 1700 of the historic era, tobacco seems primarily to have served magico-religious and more or less related medicinal ends (Cooper 1949:526-27). As a result, the plant had a major impact on tribal value systems until, under the influence of the advancing frontier, the ideological tenets of tobacco beliefs began to shift increasingly from the religious to the profane."

P. Xvii

"Prehistoric evidence for tobacco use in South America may go back som efifteen hundred years in the case of an assemblage of shaman's paraphernalia from NiÐ"±o Korin, sixteen hundred years in a Nasca burial (WassÐ"©n 1972:7-114; Bruhn et al. 1976:45) or even as far as three thousand years, in the case of tubular pipes from MarajÐ"Ñ- Island (Meggers and Evans 1957:197, fig. 58) and the lower Amazon (Hilbert 1968 pl. 12). But ritual tobacco is certainly much older on the continent than these dates suggest." The parent species of Nicotiana rustica and N. Tabacum have have been cultivated as far back as 8,000 years ago, and may be the first cultivated plant of the Americas. (Furst 1976:27).

Chapter 1: Wild and Cultivated Nicotianas

p. 1

The genus Nicotiana Linnaeus is of South American origin. Tobacco-producing plants are of the genus Nicotiana, which belong to "one of the largest genera of the nightshade family. (Solanaceae)."

P. 2

The genetic and distributional data points to South America as the origin of tobacco, spreading to North America, Australia, and the South Pacific. They seem to have originated in the Andean region. Wild nicotiana spread to Australia and the Pacific via the Antarctic. A lone African species (Namibia) may have spread in early geologic times.

P. 4

Tobacco use (and other psychotropic plants) in South America almost exclusively limited to horticultural peoples. "In the Tropical Forest tobacco was the principal and nearly universal intoxicant used (Steward 1949:678)."

Not all Nicotiana species produce nicotine in large amounts, or even at all. The two species that have achieved widest dissemination as intoxicants are Nicotiana rustica and N. Tabacum. The African species of Nicotiana doesn't seem to have been used as tobacco.

P. 5: DRAWING: Nicotiana rustica var brasilia.

P. 6

Nicotiana rustica was probably the first of the two principal tobacco cultigens; "in its disperal, N. Rustica rivaled even maize."

P. 7: DRAWING: Nicotiana tabacum Linnaeus.

P. 8

"...pests are removed by hand and flower buds frequently nipped. To protect their tobacco plants from a particular ground worm, Barama River Caribs soak the soil around the roots at intervals with fish poison, which kills the vermin (Gillin 1936:66). Many plants, however, are lost to a variety of worms, beetles, and butterfly larvae, and tobacco gardens need considerable care. The first leaves can be harvested after two or three months by removing a few at a time to avoid destroying the plant."

Chapter 2: Methods of Tobacco Use in South America

p. 10

The first to mention Ð''tobaco': Oviedo y ValdÐ"©s (1851-55, 2:298-99) about the Caquetio of northern Venezuela

They venerate and dread the devil very much, and the boratios say they can see him and have seen him many times. They paint his figure on their jewels and on wood in relief and on all the things and places which they esteem the most. These boratios are their priests and in every important town there is a boratio to whom everyone goes to ask what is going to happen, whether it will rain, or whether the year will be dry or abundant, or whether they should go to war against their enemies or refrain from doing so, or whether the Christians are well-disposed or will kill them, or finally, they ask all they wish to know. And the boratio says he will reply, after having a consultation with the devil. And in order to have the consultation he shuts himself into a cabin alone, and there he makes use of some [things] which they call tabacos, smoked with such herbs as deprive them of sense; and one day, or two or three, passes and still the boratio is shut up and does not come out. And as soon as he comes out he says this is what the devil tells him, answering the questions which have been asked, according to the desires of those whom he wishes to satisfy. And for this work they give a gold jewel or other things to the boratio. For those matters which are not of such importance the Indians have another method. There is in the country an herb which they call tabaco, which is a kind of plant, the stalk of which is as tall as the chest of a man....and they sow this herb and they keep the seed which it produces to sow the next year and they cure it carefully for the purpose of securing predictions. When they cut the leaves they put them together and having hung them up they dry them in the smoke in bunches and they keep them there, and the product is much esteemed by the Indians.... To find out whether to fish or plant or to know if he should hunt or if his wife loves him each one is his own prophet, since, having twisted the leaves of this herb in a roll to the size of an ear of corn, they light it at one end, and they hold it in their mouth while it burns, and blow forth [smoke], and when it is half burnt, they throw down what is rolled up [i.e., the cigar]. If the burned part of the tobacco stays fixed in the form of a curved sickle, it is a sign that the thing which they desire will be given; if the burned portion is straight, it is a sign that the contrary of what is desired will happen, and what they hope to be good will be bad. And they believe this so firmly that no one nor any reason can be enough to cause them to