AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 308 



There is little room to doubt that the tube or funnel is an implement 

 of great anti(|uity iu smoking elsewhere than on the American conti- 

 nent. Implements figured as Roman pipes, so far as they have come 

 under the writer's observation, appear to be modern and of the Eng- 

 lish or French "trade" type. Other plants are so commonly used in 

 the pipe by the Indians of the whole continent and have been so 

 employed, according to early writers, for so long a jieriod as to indicate 

 a very ancient usage. Although there are several native varieties of 

 the family Ificotiana in America, it appears highly probable that the 

 use of tobacco first became general through its cultivation by the 

 Spanish and their trade in it with the natives. The Spanish early cul- 

 tivated it, for next to food they would naturally grow those plants for 

 which there was the greatest demand and the best market among the 

 natives. It is a well-known fact that the English settlers in Virginia 

 during the first half of the seventeenth century more than once brought 

 themselves to the verge of starvation because of their having culti- 

 vated tobac<!o to the exclusion of necessary vegetables. 



Throughout the seventeenth century, if not later, smoking was 

 indulged iu by Europeans mainly because of the wonderful proper- 

 ties attributed to tobacco. It was supposed not only to cure disease, 

 but was considered a detergent as well. It was said to prevent the 

 pangs of hunger and fatigue, and was long prescribed as a medicine by 

 the physicians of Spain, France, and England. The visitation of the 

 plague m Europe encouraged the use of tobacco enormously, as it was 

 sui)posed that it would keep off the disease; and was so sought after and 

 so generally prescribed that its use quickly became a confirmed habit 

 among many persons, and the use of that which had been looked npon 

 as a valued medicine became perverted into a vice difficult to eradicate. 

 And as late as the time of Charles II, tobacco was supposed to be a 

 mighty antidote to the plague, and it has been said that at a certain 

 time during his reign the worst floggings the boys ever received at 

 Eaton were because they refused to smoke. 



The employment of the words "funnel" and "reed" by Pliny may 

 appear to be indefinite references to the pipe, but they are equally as 

 distinct as are many of the early Spanish, French, and English expres- 

 sions used in regard to it, even as late as the first half of the seven- 

 teenth century, at which date the word "tobacco" had not yet come 

 into general use. 



The most ancient, and at the same time the most reliable evidence of 

 the early employment of the pipe on the American continent is the bas- 

 relief of the Alta Casa or Adoratio, at the entrance of the temple of 

 the Cross, one of the so-called palaces of Palenque, to which attention 

 was called by John L. Stevens, it being deservedly considered one of 

 the most remarkable as well as one of the best known of American 

 antiquities.^ It is shown as the frontispiece. 



1 Travels lu Central America aucl Yucatan, II, j). 354, New York, 1848. 



