550 safford: narcotic snuff, cohoba 



by Ramon Pane, who accompanied Columbus on his second 

 voyage. This paper, originally in Spanish, is best known through 

 an Italian translation published as an appendix to the Historie 

 of Fernando Colombo (1571), now a rare work, a copy of which 

 is in the Library of Congress. The author, whose name appears 

 in the introduction as "Frate Roman, povero Eremita del Tor- 

 dine di San Gieronimo," wrote, in obedience to the command 

 of the illustrious Lord Admiral and Viceroy, what he was able to 

 learn concerning the beliefs and idolatry of the Indians. In 

 describing their snuff he calls it in one place cohoba and elsewhere 

 cogioba (Italian orthography, like "Gieronimo" quoted above). 

 Writing in the present tense, he says: "This powder they draw 

 up through the nose, and it intoxicates them to such an extent 

 that when they are under its influence they know not what they 

 do." 5 In striking contrast to Oviedo, Fra Ramon wrote only 

 what he had actually seen, and he confined the field of his obser- 

 vations to the natives of the island of Hispaniola, stating: 

 "Color, de' quali cio scrivo, son dellTsola Spagnuola; percioche 

 delle altre Isole io non so cosa alcuna, non haven do mai veduto." 6 

 Peter Martyr's account of the inhabitants of Hispaniola, in 

 his De Orbe Novo, is simply a paraphrase of Fra Ramon's paper, 

 in Latin. It adds nothing to his description of cohoba, but on the 

 other hand it is misleading, since it refers to it as "an herb which 

 they pound up and drink;" and though it states that the natives 

 "absorb the intoxicating herb called cohobba, which is the same 

 as that used by the bovites to excite their frenzy," it fails to 



with a forked pipe fitted to both nostrils, holding the single end in the smoke 

 of that herb burning in the fire until they became senseless. Their priests most 

 used this, who, coming to themselves after this sleepy fume, delivered the oracles 

 of their zemes or devils, which sometimes spake by them." — Purchas, His Pil- 

 grimage, 5: 957. 1626. Among the latest authorities to be misled by Oviedo 

 is H. Ling Roth; see his account of tobacco in The aborigines of Hispaniola, in 

 Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 16: 258. 1887. See also, Bourne, Edward Gaylord, 

 in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, n. s., 17: 327. 

 1906; and Fewkes, J. W., in Twenty-fifth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., 630. 1907. 



6 "Una certa polvere, chiamata Cohoba, tirandola a se per il naso, la quale 

 gli imbriaga de tal maniera, che non sanno quel, che si fanno." — Ramon Pane, 

 (1496), in appendix to Fernando Colombo's Historie, cap. XV, f. 134. 1571. 



6 Ramon Pane, op. cit., f. 126. 1571. 



