SwANTON] INDIAN'S OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 383 



with strange gestures, stamping, sometimes dauncing, clapping of hands, holding 

 vp of hands, & staring vp into the heauens, vttering therewithal and chattering 

 strange words & noises. 



We our selues during the time we were there used to suck it after their 

 maner, as also since our returne, & haue found manie rare and wonderful ex- 

 periments of the vertues thereof ; of which the relation woulde require a volume 

 by it selfe : the vse of it by so manie of late, men & women of great calling as 

 else, and some learned Phisitions also, is sufficient witnes. (Harlot, 1893, 

 pp. 25-26.) 



Thus, it was highly esteemed in connection with religious rites, but 

 neither Hariot nor the later Virginia writers assign it any place in 

 the social and political life of the tribes. 



Percy (1607) was conducted by a Powhatan Indian 



to the Wood side, where there was a Garden of Tobacco and other fruits and 

 herbes. He gathered Tobacco, and distributed to every one of us. (Percy in 

 Tyler, 1884 ed., p. 16.) 



Smith (1884 ed., pp. 112-113) found that it was offered to the spirits 

 on altars or thrown into the water, and learned that it was supposed 

 to grow in the world of the dead. Strachey is our only Virginia in- 

 formant who describes it at length : 



There is here great store of tobacco, which the salvages call apooke ; howbeit 

 yt is not of the best kynd, yt is but poore and weake, and of a byting tast, yt 

 growes not fully a yard above ground, bearing a little yellow flower, like to 

 hennebane, the leaves are short and thick, somewhat round at the upper end; 

 whereas the best tobacco of Trynidado and the Oronoque is large, sharpe, and 

 growing two or three yardes from the ground, bearing a flower of the bredth of 

 our bell-flowers in England: the salvages here dry the leaves of this apooke 

 over the fier, and sometymes in the sun, and crumble yt into poulder, stalks, 

 leaves, and all, taking the same in pipes of earth, which very ingeniously they 

 can make. We observe that those Indians which have one, two, or more 

 women, take much, — but such as yet have no appropriate woman take little or 

 none at all. (Strachey, 1849, pp. 121-122.) 



The native tobacco was Nicotiana rusftca, inferior to the West 

 Indian varieties, as Strachey states, which rapidly replaced it for all 

 except ceremonial use. Beverley tells us that by the end of the seven- 

 teenth century the Indians of Virginia were depending mainly upon 

 the English for their ordinary smoking tobacco : 



How the Indians order'd their Tobacco, I am not certain, they now depending 

 chiefly upon the English, for what they smoak : But I am inform'd, they used to 

 let it all run to Seed, only succouring the Leaves, to keep the Sprouts from 

 growing upon, and starving them ; and when it was ripe, they puU'd off the 

 Leaves, cured them in the Sun, and laid them up for Use. But the Planters 

 make a heavy Bustle with it now, and can't please the Market neither. (Beverley, 

 1705, bk. 2, p. 30.) 



Lawson contributes the following regarding the use of tobacco 

 among the Indians immediately southwest of the Algonquian terri- 

 tories : 



