2 CIRCULAR 249, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Tobacco from Spanish settlements had come into use in Europe 
and the British Isles at least 20 years before the colony of Jamestown 
was founded. Its introduction to society in those early days aroused 
much excitement and enthusiastic acclaim, and extravagant medicinal 
properties were ascribed to the weed. ‘Teachers instructed novitiates 
in the most elegant mode of smoking. Enthusiasm for this new fad, 
however, was accompanied by opposition. The Counterblaste to 
Tobacco by James I is a masterpiece of picturesque language employed 
to condemn the tobacco habit. . 
Tobacco probably saved the Jamestown colony from extinction, 
for the colony was founded in the expectation of achieving financial 
success in the production of silk, glass, gold, iron, and other articles, 
most of which proved illusory. According to Robert (23, p. 4) ?— 
The discovery [that tobacco could be successfully grown and profitably sold, 
the most momentous economic fact in the history of seventeenth-century Virginia, 
solved the Colonial problem of finding a satisfactory product to be sent to the 
Mother Country in exchange for those essentials not available in the new land. 
In addition to its importance as an article of commerce between 
the colony and the mother country, tobacco became an article of trade 
between the colonists and the Indians, who early found that the varie- 
ties introduced by the white man were superior to their own. 
From the beginning made by John Rolfe in about 1608 the produc- 
tion of tobacco became the ruling passion at Jamestown, and the 
history of the struggles with recurring periods of surplus, low prices, 
and attempted restriction of production, and the slow evolution of 
marketing methods are among the important chapters in American 
agricultural history. 
Contrary to popular opinion the tobacco in common use today is 
not that which the settlers found growing in the Indian villages along 
the James, Pamunkey, Rappahannock, and other rivers of Tide- 
water Virginia. Most of the tobacco cultivated by the North 
American Indians belonged to the species Nicotiana rustica L. (see 
p. 60), believed to have originated in Mexico, although it appears 
that some other native species have been in use in portions of North 
America. Harrington (1/2) on the authority of Prof. W. A. Setchell, 
University of California, lists three species, one of them represented 
by three varieties, known to have been used by California Indians, 
and two other species used by Indians in the north and northwest. 
N. rustica, the species used on the Atlantic Coast, is not included in 
the list. Several species of the genus Nicotiana are native to North 
America. Although rustica is produced in certain foreign countries, 
the tobacco of commerce in the United States and most of the other 
countries of the world belongs to the species N. tabacum L., which 
is believed to have originated in Brazil. It was common in Central 
and South America and apparently in Yucatan. Seed of both species 
seems to have been introduced into Europe by the early Spanish 
explorers. (See Agricultural Yearbook, 1936, for a discussion of 
origins and early distribution of species (26, p. S06).) 
Tobacco was already being widely cultivated in the Spanish colo- 
nies when Jamestown was settled, and had been introduced into many 
old world countries. The English colonists learned of the milder 
and more aromatic varieties of N. tabacum produced in tropical 
2 Italic numbers in parentheses refer to Literature Cited, p. 128. 
