AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 459 



Charles I, iu 1G25, issued a proclamation " De herba nicotiana," in 

 which the following appears: "Whereas our most dear father did, 29th 

 September last and the 2d of March last, publish two proclamations 

 prohibiting- the importation of tobacco not the growth of Virginia or 

 the Sommer Islands," gives until the ''fowerth daye" of May next to 

 export any such as may be in the country.' 



So drastic a measure as to require the exportation from England of 

 tobacco not grown in the British possessions appears to have been the 

 cause, in some way, of a proclamation issued the following year (1G26) 

 allowing the importation into England of 50,000 pounds of Spanish or 

 foreign tobacco. '^ 



When the demand for tobacco exceeded the supply, the natural law 

 of trade immediately became in force, and the jirice increased in pro- 

 portion. At one i)eriod it was related that the newest and least worn 

 shillings were laid aside with which to pur- 

 chase an equal weight of the Herba nicotiana. 



In 1626, it is said, " Sir Henry Oglander, in 

 the Isle of Wight, records for eight ounces of 

 tobacco 5 shillings," and in the Journal of 

 Kev. Giles Moore, in 1656, he notes "for two 

 ounces of tobacco 1 shilling." ^ This enormous 

 cost of tobacco would naturally have a ten- 

 dency to reduce the pipe bowl to "eltin" 

 dimensions. p^^ g3 



To what extent the colonists smoked in the brazed iron pipe. 



earlier years we appear to have no record, Cherokee county, isrortu Carolina. 

 but from certain remarks enc(mntered in cat. no. isjeou.s.NiK counted by Gen. 



Thomas A. Duncan. 



some colonial writings we can but infer that 



they indulged in smoking to a less extent than Englishmen did at home. 

 The restrictive legislation of the mother country. against smoking was 

 also enacted in some of the colonies, and the writer is of the impression 

 that the law against smoking in the public streets yet prevails upon 

 the statute books, applying to Boston, Massachusetts, and survives 

 from the laws of the seventeenth century. The tobacco pipe of the 

 famous Miles Standish, who came over in the Mayflower, and which was 

 smoked by him on the day of his death, is referred to as a little iron 

 affair about the size and shape of a common clay pipe,^ probably just 

 such an iron pipe as is often found in European countries and com- 

 monly, but erroneously, the writer thinks, attributed to the Roman 

 period. 

 A very primitive yet a substantial metal pipe (fig. 83) from Cherokee 



1 Robert Sanderson, Rymeri Fcedera, p. 19, quoting First Charles I. 



2 Idem, p. 849. 



*F. W. Fairludt, Tobacco and its Associations, p. 104, London, 18.o9. 

 ■^Antiquity oftlie Tobacco Pipe in Europe, referring to tlie Albany Journal, Amer- 

 ican Antiquarian, II, p. 6. 



