\j6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gious systems of the Americans. References to these minor usages 

 are so abundant in the writings of those who have described the 

 customs and arts of the aborigines, and so familiar to the general 

 reader, that they may be here omitted. 



Of more importance are the accounts of the employment of to- 

 bacco as sacrifice and incense. Hariot, the historian of Sir Rich- 

 ard Grenville's expedition to Virginia in 1584, after speaking of 

 the cultivation and use by the natives of tobacco, or uppowoc, 

 says: "This uppowoc is of so precious estimation among them 

 that they think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith ; 

 whereupon they sometimes make hallowed fires, and cast some of 

 the powder therein for a sacrifice. Being in a storme upon the 

 waters, to pacifie their gods they cast some up into the aire, and 

 into the water ; so a weare for fish being newly set up, they cast 

 some therein, and into the aire ; also after an escape of danger 

 they cast some into the aire likewise; but all done with such 

 strange gestures, stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands, 

 holding up of hands, and staring up into the heavens, uttering 

 therewithal, and chattering strange words and noises." In the 

 narrative of the voyage of Drake, in 1572, it is noted that the na- 

 tives brought little rush baskets filled with tabah, offering them 

 to the whites, as the narrator says, " upon the persuasion that we 

 were gods." The Jesuit missionary Allouez, in 1671, visited the 

 Foxes, in the neighborhood of Green Bay, and after some trouble 

 succeeded in inducing them to listen to his preaching, which was, 

 as Parkman relates, so successful at length that when he showed 

 them his crucifix they would throw tobacco on it as an offering. 

 An early missionary among the Hurons states that they wor- 

 shiped an oki, or spirit, who dwelt in a certain rock, and who 

 could give success to travelers. Into the clefts of the rock they 

 were accustomed to place offerings of tobacco, praying for protec- 

 tion from their enemies and from shipwreck. Early explorers 

 frequently refer to offerings of tobacco found near prominent 

 hills, rocks, and trees, and in the vicinity of dangerous rapids and 

 falls — places, as the poet Moore has it — 



" "Where the trembling Indian brings 

 Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings, 

 Tributes, to be hung in air, 

 To the fiend presiding there." 



In the narrative of his captivity among the Indians of Lake 

 Superior John Tanner gives a prayer which he heard recited by 

 the leader of a fleet of canoes upon the lake, asking for a safe 

 voyage. At its conclusion the chief threw tobacco into the water, 

 and the occupants of each canoe followed his example. Coming 

 down to more recent times, the presence of two sacred bowlders 



