398 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 23, 1921 



often trivial. The discussion of this portion of Wiener's claim has 

 been taken up by one well qualified to estimate its worth. 1 



The botanical evidence, however, has not been dealt with to any 

 extent by Wiener, and, in fact, he does not seem at all aware that 

 there is any complexity to this side of the question he attempts to 

 settle so readily and so smugly. While we are by no means certain as 

 to the exact sources of the two species of Nicotiana most commonly 

 used for smoking, viz., Nicotiana Tabacum and N. rustica, all evi 

 dence in our possession is strongly against the assumption of a non- 

 American origin. It seems to the botanist that Nicotiana Tabacum, 

 for example, is much more likely to have been carried from Brazil 

 or the West Indies, where its culture was early widespread, if not 

 aboriginal, to Africa, by the very agents who procured the Negro 

 slaves for American use. In doing so, it seems very likely that the 

 Brazilian or other American names may thus have been transferred 

 early to Africa along with the plants to which they belonged, and 

 have become firmly and extensively incorporated into African native 

 languages. However this may or may not be, the strongest botanical 

 evidence for the American origin of the tobaccos, as used by man, 

 is the existence of a large number of species of Nicotiana, undoubt 

 edly native to the Cordilleran ranges, extending from the State of 

 Washington in the United States of North America to the central 

 portions of Chile in South America. The only species of Nicotiana 

 which are undoubtedly extra-American are two, viz., N. suaveolens 

 and N. fragrans, natives of the Australian region, closely related to 

 certain Chilean species, and never used for smoking or similar pur 

 poses before the advent of the white man to the countries where they 

 are known to occur. 



Of the somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy species of 

 Nicotiana generally recognized, there are to be found in North 

 America, either growing wild or in aboriginal cultivation, some four 

 teen species. Of these fourteen North American species, I have 

 evidence of the use of nine species or varieties by different tribes of 

 American Indians at the present time. At present they are used 



i Cf. R. B. Dixon, American Anthropologist, vol. 22, no. 2, April-June, 

 1920, especially pp. 179-181, and "Words for Tobacco in American Indian 

 Languages," ibid., vol. 23, no. i, pp. i9~49- 



