i82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



From the point of view here taken in regard to tobacco its 

 most interesting nse by far is for the purpose of producing a state 

 of ecstasy or delirium in which, according to the barbaric theory 

 of animism, the person under its influence could hold communica- 

 tion in dreams and visions with the spirits who brought disease 

 and death, and also with those to whom the savage felt himself 

 indebted for life and all its blessings. The importance attached 

 to dreams by savages is well known. Schoolcraft, in 1823, noted 

 the besotted and spellbound condition of the Indians of the Great 

 Lake regions, due to their implicit belief in the prophetic nature 

 of dreams. " Their whole lives," he remarks, " are rendered a per- 

 fect scene of doubts and fears and terrors by them. Their jug- 

 glers are both dreamers and dream interpreters." In ancient 

 Mexico the will of the gods was made known to the four chief 

 medicine-men in dreams, and Bandelier recalls the familiar story 

 that Montezuma, previous to the coming of the Spaniards, being 

 alarmed by mysterious prognostics, called upon the old men and 

 women, and upon the medicine-men, to report what they might 

 dream or had dreamed within a certain lapse of time. In the same 

 country certain men were particularly expert in dream interpre- 

 tation, so much so that they were generally applied to for that 

 purpose. 



It should be remembered that the capacity of the Indian to 

 withstand the effect of narcotics is much less than that of the 

 European, and that the native practice of inhaling the smoke 

 secured a far deeper and more lasting effect than the modern 

 method. Oviedo is authority for the statement that tobacco was 

 greatly valued by the Caribbees, " who call it kohiba, and im- 

 agined when they were drunk with the fumes of it that they were 

 in some sort inspired." The Carib sorcerer, in evoking a demon or 

 spirit from his patient, would puff tobacco smoke into the air as 

 an agreeable perfume to attract the spirit from the afflicted body. 

 With the aid of tobacco smoke and darkness he could also hold 

 communion with his own familiar demon or guardian spirit. 

 " In La Espanola and the other islands," says Benzoni, " when 

 their doctors wanted to cure a sick man, they went to the place 

 where they were to administer the smoke, and when he was 

 thoroughly intoxicated by it the cure was mostly effected. On 

 returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having 

 been at the councils of the gods, and other high visions." The 

 Indians of California sometimes stupefied children with narcotic 

 drink, in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about 

 their enemies. Dr. E. B. Tylor notes similar practices in Darien, 

 Brazil, and Peru. The Brazilian tribes took tobacco to produce 

 ecstasy, and in this state had supernatural visions. The same 

 custom obtained in North America. A peculiar use of the sweat 



