236 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 



possessing some value in relation to the history of the singular 

 native custom for which such implements were constructed, and to its 

 early practice in Europe. Meanwhile it may be noted that the terms 

 existing in the widely diversified native vocabularies are irreconcileable 

 with the idea of the introduction of tobacco among the northern 

 tribes of the American continent as a recently borrowed novelty. 

 "We learn from the narative of Father Francisco Creuxio, that the 

 Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, found tobacco in abundant 

 use among the Indians of Canada. So early as 1629 he describes 

 the Hurons as smoking immoderately the dried leaves and stalks of 

 the nicotian plant commonly called tobacco or petune ; and such was 

 their addiction to the practice that one of their tribes in Upper 

 Canada, received the designation of the Petunians, or smokers, 

 from the latter name for the favourite weed.* This tprm appears to 

 be of Floridian origin, and was perhaps introduced by the missionaries 

 themselves from the southern vocabulary. But the the Chippeway 

 name for tobacco is asamah, seemingly, as Dr. O'Meara — now, and for 

 many years resident missionary among the Indians of theManitouanin 

 Islands, — assures me, a native radical having no other significance or 

 application. So also the Chippeways have the word butta to express 

 smoke, as the smoke of a fire ; but for tobacco fumes they 

 employ a distinct term : hicwanag, literally : " it smokes," the 

 puckwana of Longfellow's " Hiawatha." Picahgun is a " tobacco 

 pipe;" and with the peculiar power of compound words and inflec- 

 tion, so remarkable iu the languages of tribes so rude as those of the 

 American forests, we have from this root : nipivaJiguneka : " I make 

 pipes," kipivaliguneka : "thou makest pipes," pwahgunea : "he 

 makes pipes, &c," so also, nisuggaswa : " 1 smoke a pipe." kisug- 

 gasiva : "thou smokest," suggaswa ; "he smokes." While there- 

 fore, Europe has borrowed the name of the Indian weed from that 

 portion of the new world first visited by its Genoese discoverer, the 

 lauguage of the great Algonquin nation exhibits an ancient and 

 entirely independent northern vocabulary associated with the use of 

 tobacco, betraying none of the traces of compounded descriptive 

 terms so discernible in all those applied to objects of European 



*"Ad insaniam quoque adamant Fumum ex siccatis foliis stirpis snperiore seculo in 

 galliam illa'-o: (ab eius qui intulit nomine nicotiam plaeuit appcllare : nunc tabacum seu 

 petunum vulgo vocant : atque inde noinen apud Gallos invcnit, quae inter Canadensea 

 populos Nat : o Petuniorum dicitur) eo, quod cerebri exsiecandi vim miram habet, nti per 

 navigationes EJuropaei eonsueverant primum, nunc vol ab eis vcl a Canadensibus res translata 

 ad crapulam. Hi certe ne passum quidem progrediantursine tubo longiusculo, quo ejusmodi 

 fumos baurhmt, ac fere ad temulentiam ; peitcntant enim cerebrum, ebrietateinqne dcnrmm 

 inducnnt, vini instar." '-Historice Canadensis, seu Novce Fruncice." Paris: 1661. Page 76. 



