372 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897, 



All early references to smoking are exceedingly indefinite, due to the 

 writers trying to convey to their readers their impressions of something 

 entirely novel, and consequently most difficult to describe for want of 

 something with which to compare it. 



It must be admitted that the early references to smoking in America, 

 while showing it to be a common practice among the Mexicans, so far 

 as known to the writer do not suggest the rectangular pipe. All Spanish 

 American people smoke the cigarette or cigar. As early as 175H it was 

 said of the natives of Carthagena : " Every one smokes, men and women 

 alike, without distinction of age or rank. They petiin everywhere and 

 on all occasions. The women hold in their mouths a iiiece of lighted 

 tobacco, from which they draw the smoke for quite a length of time 

 without letting it go out and without the fire inconveniencing them, 



and one of the greatest acts of 

 '.'.'•-. if',*"'.. friendship which they can evi- 



dence to a person is to light the 

 tobacco for them." ' 



This refers apparently to cigar 

 or cigarette smoking, which was 

 probabl}^ the survival of a native 

 custom. 



Edward B. Tylor says "the 

 Mexicans were cultivating 

 tobacco when the Spaniards in- 

 vaded the country, and had done 

 so for ages; it had gotten its 

 name from the languageof Haiti, 

 meaning not the tobacco itself 

 but the cigars made of it."^ 



There is no doubt that tobacco 

 was cultivated ; but only to a lim- 

 ited extent, prior to the Spanish invasion. As soon as the conijuest was 

 accomplished the Spaniards put the natives to work in mining the 

 precious metals and in growing tobacco, for which there was a con- 

 stant and increasing demand. 



De Solis says of Montezuma: "He used to smoke tobacco perfumed 

 with liquid amber [Liquiclambar sti/racijiua, or sweet gum], and this 

 vicious habit passed for a medicine with the Indians, which withal had 

 somewhat in it of superstition, for the juice of tliis herb was one of the 

 ingredients with which the priests were worked up into madness and 

 fury as often as they were obliged to prepare themselves by losing their 

 understanding to receive the devil's oracles." ^ 



imTT^ 



Fig. 3. 



MEXICAN SMOKING. 



From The Manuscript Troan. 



' Antonio <le Ulloa, Voyage Historique do I'Amerique Meridionale, Book I, p. 35, 

 Amsterdam and Leipsic, 1752. 

 ^Anahuac, p. 228, London, 1861. 

 ^ History of tLe Conquest of Mexico, Book III, p. 81, London, 1724. 



