562 safford: narcotic snuff, cohoba 



encamped near the cataracts of the Orinoco. In his account of 

 it he says: "In the modern niopo, as I saw it prepared by the 

 Guahibos themselves, there is no admixture of quicklime, and 

 that is the sole difference [from the method of its preparation 

 described by Humboldt]." He describes the process of roasting 

 and powdering the seeds, and the snuff-tube made of the leg 

 bones of birds, shaped somewhat like a tuning fork, with the 

 forked ends tipped with small black knobs (the endosperms of a 

 palm). This instrument, which he secured and deposited in the 

 Museum of Vegetable Products at Kew, is almost identical in 

 form with that of the Otomac Indians in the Berlin Museum 

 (fig. 2), and also very much like the one used in ancient Haiti, 

 so accurately described by Las Casas and incorrectly figured by 

 Oviedo. 



SUMMARY 



Cohoba, a narcotic snuff which the aboriginal inhabitants of 

 Haiti took by means of a bifurcated tube, has hitherto been 

 regarded by most writers as a form of tobacco. It was, how- 

 ever, prepared from the seeds of a Mimosa-like tree, Piptadenia 

 peregrina. This tree is widely spread in South America, and by 

 several tribes of Indians its seeds are used, or have been used 

 until recently, as a source of snuff, the effects of which are highly 

 intoxicating. Among several of these tribes the snuffing tubes 

 are bifurcated and very similar to those of the ancient Haitians. 

 The source of the snuff on the island of Haiti has remained 

 unknown for so long a time on account of the early annihilation 

 of the aborigines and their replacement by Africans, who did not 

 adopt the habit of snuffing. The most remarkable fact con- 

 nected with Piptadenia peregrina, or " tree-tobacco," is that, 

 though its fruit has been reported by many explorers and botan- 

 ists as highly narcotic, it has never been studied chemically or 

 therapeutically, and the source of its intoxicating properties still 

 remains unknown. Abundant material may be obtained from 

 the island of Porto Rico, where the tree is common, and it is 

 hoped that a careful study may be made of the seeds, the 

 peculiar properties of which were noticed in the very first work 

 which treated of the ethnology of the New World. 



