404 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 18J»7. 



ai)pear to have prevailed iu the northwestern part of North America 

 from any very early period, but seems to have been introduced from 

 Japan by way of Siberia, if we may Judge from the form of the pipes. 

 How and where the smoking habit originated must remain largely a 

 matter of conjecture. The effect on the system of tobacco smoking is 

 sedative as well as stimulating, and the belief iu its sup])osed medicinal 

 properties is yet by no means obsolete either among the Indians or 

 the whites. As McCulloh tersely remarks, "smoking among the rude 

 Indians of Korth America became the pledge of their hospitality, like 

 the salt of the Arab." ' The use of tobacco and other plants, smoked 

 in tubes or pipes, on the northern continent is most intimately asso- 

 ciated with the life history of tlie Indian, not only as a sovereign 

 remedy for most human ailments, but as a necessary function in all 

 ceremonies, whether of the individual, of the clan, the tribe, or the 

 confederacy. The hunter smoked to bring him game, the traveler to 

 bring him a successful end to his journey, those on the water offered 

 tobacco to the water to quiet the waves, or, if on land, to propitiate 

 the winds which Avere the living evidences of good or evil creatures, 

 and the smoking of the pipe throughout the whole of what is now 

 the territory of the United States became souiething more than a flag 

 of truce, for it was an evidence of friendship and its smoke the symbol 

 of the spirit world. The practice of chewing tobacco was tirst noticed 

 on the coast of South America by the Spaniards in 1502,^ but does not 

 appear to have been indulged in to any general extent elsewhere among 

 the natives. 



There appears to be no positive evidence of the extent to which the 

 early Spanish settlers cultivated the tobacco plant, but that tlieir first 

 plantations were largely devoted to its growth there is no doubt. 



Cigarettes and cigars among the Spanish-American peoples are 

 employed almost to the exclusion of the pipe, and it may well be that 

 such was the custom of those countries occupied by them from a time 

 antedating the Spanish invasion. 



As late as 1731 John Cockburn says that throughout New Spain 

 there was " no such thing as a tobacco pipe, but poor awkward tools 

 used by negroes and Indians."-' 



Wherever we find the tobacco plant mentioned in early chronicles it 

 is invariably spoken of as possessed of remarkable medicinal i)roperties, 

 and this view of it was indorsed as late as the tirst half of the seven- 

 teenth century by the medical fraternity of the whole of Europe. 



The Inca (Jarcillasso de la Vega (1688) says: "The herb or plant 

 which the Spaniards call tobacco and the Indians sayri is of admirable 

 use iu many diseases amongst them; particularly. being taken at the 



1 J. H. McCnlloh, ResearcLes, p. 92, Baltimore, 1829. 

 ^Eucyclopu'dia Britiinnica. 



^A .Jonrnoy Overl:uHl IVoni the Onlfof Honduras to the South Sea, performed by 

 John Coukburu and live other Euylish (-eutlemeu, j). 139, London, 1735. 



