FF.WKES] RELIC4I0N <)3 



him iimn\- strokes with :i stick, breaking his arms or legs. Others 

 gouged out his eyes or lacerated his private parts. 



NARCOTICS 



Under the above title the author includes herbs and intoxicating 

 drinks used to create certain ecstatic conditions as a preliminary to 

 religious rites and ceremonies. In this category may be considered 

 the practice of smoking, snuffing, and chewing tobacco, called eohiha," 

 and the use of an intoxicating drink of corn ]uice, called chU-chia. 



Tobacco in a number of different forms was commonly used in all 

 ceremonies. Its smoke was the incense with which the priests accom- 

 panied their praj'ers to their gods; and with snuff, or powdei'ed tobacco, 

 they sometimes sprinkled the heads of their idols. The hoii stupefied 

 themselves with this herb when they consulted oracles in divination, 

 and by it they cured the sick in medicinal practices. The process of 

 inhaling the smoke through the nostrils is mentioned in sevei'al early 

 accounts, and, according to many authorities, special tables on which 

 the herb was placed stood before their idols. The method of inhaling 

 was as follows: Partially dried tobacco was first spread on a half- 

 lighted brazier, after which a tube was placed in the smoke and the 

 other extremit}', provided with two branches, inserted in the nostrils; 

 the smoke was then snuffed up, mounting quickly to the brain. The 

 user generally succumbed to the narcotic and remained where he fell, 

 stupefied. A cacique thus affected was raised by a woman and car- 

 ried to bed. If during this drunkenness or stupefaction he had a 

 dream, it was regarded as a vision "from heaven." 



The aboriginal method of smoking ceremonially, according to another 

 author, was to place the powdered herli on a small brasier called a tahlu 

 and snuff it through a tube. The powder was used also to sprinkle the 

 idols before which the fahla stood, in the same way that the Hopi 

 sprinkle their idols with meal and pollen. It would be interesting to 

 discover whether in this method of eohiba the tobacco was smoked or 

 not. While there can be no doubt that in some cases the herb was 

 ignited, in many other instances there is no evidence that the tobacco 

 was burning or giving off smoke when thus used, and it seems to have 

 been simply snuffed into the nostrils. A bifurcated tube, evidently 

 one of those by which the herb (snuff) or its smoke was taken into 

 the nostrils, is figured liy Oviedo, but no specimen of this kind of 

 Antillean pipe is known in any collection that has been made on any 

 of the islands. 



The forms of pipe common among the North American Indians are 

 not mentioned in the accounts which have come down to us in the 



oThe Antillean -words for the plant Xicatiana, called by Europeans tobacco, are cohilia, ror/iba, 

 cof/nba. C'lrjioha, coliut. etc. The aborigines applied the name tobacco to a pipe or roll of dried leaves 

 called a cigar. Ceremonial smoking has the same names. 



