1920] Lowie, Crow Tobacco Society. Ill 



THE TOBACCO AND THE SOCIETY. 



The only attempt at cultivation made by the Crow before tfheir 

 contact with the whites consisted in the annual planting of tobacco for 

 purely ceremonial purposes. This practice, which persists to the present 

 day, is mentioned by Beckwourth 1 and Maximilian. The former gives 

 no hint of the species grown, but Maximilian identifies it with the 

 tobacco of the village tribes of the Upper Missouri. He writes: 



Diese Indianer sind ein umherziehendes Jagervolk, welches weder, wie die Man- 

 dans, Monnitarris und Arikkaras, in feststehenden Dorfern wohnt, noch Pflanzun- 

 gen anlegt, wenn man eine kleine Aussaat von Tabak (Nicotiana quadrivalvis) 

 ausnimmt, welche sie gewohnlich machen sollen. 2 



What is the warrant for this identification? It is true that Maxi- 

 milian secured tobacco seed from several unspecified Plains tribes, which 

 was afterward planted in botanical gardens and led to the determina- 

 tion of the tobacco as Nicotiana quadrivalvis. 3 However, there is con- 

 vincing evidence that Maximilian either did not obtain Crow seed at all 

 and gratuitously assumed its identity with that brought from the 

 Mandan and Hidatsa; 4 or that the seed was indeed Crow but repre- 

 sented a species borrowed from the Hidatsa and only planted incidentally. 

 For the Crow distinguish two varieties of Indian (as opposed to trader's) 

 tobacco, Tall Tobacco (op'hdtskite) and Short Tobacco (op'pumite): 

 and Grandmother's-knife identifies the tall variety with the dpu'pe of 

 the Hidatsa. "dp" hdtskite," as he put it, "awace kd d-\-uk*," (' Tobac- 

 co-tall, the Hidatsa own that"). My impression is that both kinds are 

 planted nowadays, though it is certain that only the Short Tobacco is 

 considered sacred and that the annual planting has for its primary 

 object the preservation of this purely ceremonial plant. From my 

 photographs of the Lodge Grass garden in which this species was 

 grown in 1910, as well as from a pressed specimen of the entire plant, 

 Professor W A. Setchell, of the University of California, concluded 

 that the Short Tobacco differed specifically from the Hidatsa tobacco, 

 being Nicotiana multivalvis, not quadrivalvis. Of the Crow plant Pro- 

 fessor Setchell writes that it apparently does not exist apart from cul- 

 tivation, but can be produced by selection from the ordinary wild tobacco 

 of northern California. 5 The Crow view as to the diversity of the 

 Hidatsa and Crow tobacco thus has a botanical foundation, and I am 



iBonner, Beckwourth, 259, 301, 325, 369. 

 2 Maximilian, I, 399. 

 *lbid., II, 122. 



4 The form of statement in the quoted passage indicates that Maximilian had only hearsay evidence 

 as to the Crow tobacco. 



5 Letters of June 18, 1912; May 20, 1914. 



