NARCOTIC PLANTS AND STIMULANTS OF THE ANCIENT 



AMERICANS.^ 



By W. E. Satfokd, 

 Economic Botanist, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



[With 17 plates.] 



The use of narcotic plants and stimulants was widely spread in 

 both North and South America long before the discover}'^, not only 

 for the purpose of exhilaration or intoxication, but also in connection 

 with the practice of necromancy and in religious rituals and cere- 

 monies accompanying the initiation of boys into the status of man- 

 hood. The companions of Columbus on his first voyage obserA^ed 

 the custom of smoking cigars made of bundles of tobacco leaves as 

 practiced by the aborigines of Hispaniola, or Haiti, and the same 

 custom was observed on the Isthmus of Panama. The use of this 

 plant was found to be very widely spread on the mainland of both 

 North and South America. In Mexico tobacco was used in religious 

 rituals like incense, and its leaves were chewed with lime. Though 

 of subtropical origin, its cultivation extended as far north as the 

 St. Lawrence River. The antiquity of tobacco smoking in North 

 America is attested by the discovery of ceremonial tobacco pipes 

 in prehistoric mounds and graves. 



A narcotic snuff called cohoba, described by Ramon Pane, who 

 accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, has been confused with 

 tobacco. It was used by the natives of Hispaniola, who inhaled 

 it through the nostrils by means of a bifurcated tube. Snuff simi- 

 larly inhaled was afterwards found among several Indian tribes of 

 South America. It proved to be a powder prepared from the seeds 

 of a mimosalike tree, Piptadenia peregrina^ to be described below. 



Among the Aztecs, in addition to tobacco, two other narcotic 

 plants, a small, fleshy spineless cactus mistaken by early writers for 

 a fungus from the appearance of its dried discoid sections and the 

 seeds of a species of Datura called ololiuhqui, were used by priests 

 and magicians in their incantations. So holy were these plants 

 held that collectors sent in quest of the cactus (peyotl) were con- 

 secrated with incense before starting on their journey, and it was 



1 Published by the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture. 



38T 



