384 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Their teeth are yellow with smoking tobacco, which both men and women are 

 much addicted to. They tell us that they had tobacco amongst them before the 

 Europeans made any discovery of that continent. It differs in the leaf from the 

 sweet scented, and Oroonoko, which are the plants we raise and cutlvate In 

 America. Theirs differs likewise much in tlio smell, when green, from our 

 tobacco before cured. They do not use the same way to cure it as we do, and 

 therefore the difference must be very considerable in taste ; for all men that 

 know tobacco must allow that it is the ordering thereof which gives a hogoo to 

 that weed rather than any natural relish it possesses when green. Although they 

 are great smokers, yet they never are seen to take it in snuff or chew it. 

 (Lawson, 1860, p. 283.) 



The native tobacco {Nicotiana rustica) was cultivated by the Chero- 

 kee and occupied, and still occupies, an important position in the cere- 

 monial life of the tribe and in the native pharmacopoea, but Timber- 

 lake (Williams ed., 1927, p. 69) may very well be right when he inti- 

 mates that relatively little time was devoted to the care of it. 



The same impression has been conveyed to the writer regarding the 

 position of the old native tobacco among the Creeks, the hitci pakpagi 

 as it is called, a shortened form of hitci atculi pakpagi, "blossom of 

 the ancient people's tobacco.'' This was a common ingredient of 

 their medicines. It was used as a "foundation" for their busk medi- 

 cines, that is, leaves of it were put into the pot before the other 

 medicines were added. Some of it was often laid in the post holes 

 when new cabins were erected in a Square Ground. In particular, it 

 was a specific against ghosts. At an earlier period it may have been 

 the favorite smoking tobacco, but it has now been replaced so long by 

 the superior tobaccos of the white men, that this has been forgotten, 

 and there is no evidence that it has been used in historic times in the 

 ceremonial smoking in connection with assemblies for religious or social 

 purposes. The Tukabahchee believed that the first tobacco plant was 

 found springing from the grave of one of a group of supernatural 

 culture heroes called Ispokogi. 



The position of tobacco among the Chickasaw appears to have been 

 a replica of that it held with the Creeks. An old prophet of that 

 nation informed Adair that the eating of green tobacco leaves, prob- 

 ably of the native tobacco, was among the rites he had undergone in 

 the interest of his people (Adair, 1775, p. 93). Before the new fire 

 was lighted at the great annual ceremony, the high priest, this writer 

 tells us, "puts a few roots of the button-snake-root, with some green 

 leaves of an uncommon small sort of tobacco, and a little of the new 

 fruits, at the bottom of the fire-place" (Adair, 1775, p. 106). 



Without specifying the kind of tobacco, Romans says of the 

 Choctaw : 



They raise some tobacco, and even sell some to the traders, but when they 

 use it for smoaking they mix it with tlie leaves of the two species of the Car- 



