Europeans who have visited this tobacco-producing district speak of a practice common among the inhabitants of rolling up tobacco for smoking in a separate leaf into cylindrical form, of the size of a large cigar. This simple circumstance is suggestive; it recalls to the memory what the first European adventurers in the New World have told us of the way the natives made up their herb for smoking. The Spaniards had observed the natives of Cuba and of Central America doing precisely the same thing; rolling up tobacco in a leaf of maize, or of the tobacco-plant, for smoking in the same way as do these denizens of the Flowery Land. And our countryman, Thomas Harriot, the historian of Raleigh’s first colonists, in his Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, says: ‘Soon after we made our peace with the natives we found them making a fume of a dried leaf, which they rolled up in a leaf of maize, of the bigness of a man’s finger … putting a light to the leaf as they smoked it, as is done by all men in these days.’ This identity of practice and habit points to a new link in the chain of evidence, connecting the inhabitants of the New World with the nations of eastern Asia, more particularly with China.
INDIAN PIPE-HEADS FOUND IN MOUND CITY, OHIO.
Bearing on the ethnological aspect of the subject is the fact that pipes have been found on many different occasions in the ancient earth-mounds of Ohio, in the valley of the Mississippi, and in Mexico, some of which are carved in the form of human heads of an unmistakably Mongolian type. Soon after the discovery of America the question of the origin of its inhabitants became a fertile source of conjecture among speculative thinkers. Probably Gregorio Garcia, a missionary who had for twenty years lived in South America, was the first to reject the general opinion that they were a new race of beings sprung from the soil they inhabited, and to suggest for them an Asiatic source. He published his views on the question in a work entitled The Origin of the Indians of the New World (Valencia, 1607), wherein he expresses himself as opposed to the autochthonous character of the inhabitants, and points out reasons for thinking that the country had been peopled by Tartars and Chinese. Brerewood also, in his Diversities of Languages and Religions (1632-5), assigned the American people an Eastern, and chiefly Tartar, origin. But Hugh Grotius argued that North America was peopled from a Scandinavian stock, though probably the Peruvians were from China. Coming to more recent times may be mentioned Professor Smith Barton of Pennsylvania, who, in his New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, contends that they are descended from Asiatic nations, though he is unable to point to any particular source from which they have emanated. And John Delafield’s Enquiries into the Origin of the Antiquities of America lead him to the conclusion that the Mexicans were from the riper nations of Hindustan and Egypt, and that the more barbarous red men were from the Mongol stock. Alexander von Humboldt during his travels in South America gave the weight of his vast knowledge and shrewd observation to a consideration of the subject. In their habits of life, in their arts and leading ideas, and in their form of government, in their personal appearance—as the yellowish hue of their complexions and the Chinese cast of features, more particularly as noticed among the tribes of Peru and Brazil—he saw indubious evidence of an Asiatic origin. Everywhere he discerned indications, not of a primitive race, but of the scattered remnants of a civilisation early lost. It is to be earnestly hoped that an inquiry so full of deep interest may not be allowed to die out for want of organised effort to examine and establish the prehistoric connection of these early inhabitants of America with the Old World, possibly with the earliest dynasties of Egypt, before the ravages of time and advancing civilisation have effaced all traces. These traces are still visible and within reach; they are revealed in the buried cities of Central America, in elaborate inscriptions on the massive stonework of Mexico and Guatemala, and in other decorative masonry of a people who have left behind no other vestige of their existence, saving the outcast wanderers who still haunt the forest and prairie.
The question, then, naturally arises, may not the Chinese and other half civilized nations of Asia, in their prehistoric migrations to the shores of America, have carried with them not only a knowledge of the tobacco-plant and its use, but also the seed of the plant? Certainly they would do so at one period or another with such things as could be conveniently carried for the supply of their immediate wants. A knowledge and use of the tobacco-plant in China, before the days of Columbus, is established; incidental mention is made of tobacco or some other plant that may be used in like manner, in their national records of the year 1300. It has been the custom of every writer on the subject to decry all attempts to seek for the origin of the habit in any part of the Old World. Doctor Cleland, in his learned treatise on The History and Properties of Tobacco (Glasgow, 1840), dismisses the inquiry as the growth of wild assertions by Eastern travellers, or, at best, a mere tradition of the people among whom they travelled, and ‘obviously of no conceivable weight, from the love of antiquity which is so well known a mania of the inhabitants of oriental countries.’ This summary treatment may be convenient, but it is not convincing; nor is it consistent with the open spirit of fair inquiry which would characterise all endeavour to arrive at truth, or to extend the sphere of knowledge.
After all, then, we find ourselves in presence of the not improbable hypothesis of an Eastern origin for the tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its leaves. Let it be conceded that in this we have an instance, among many other of the Chinaman’s way of forestalling the rest of mankind; that it was he who, long ages ago, first planted in American soil the perennial weed which Europe to-day presents to him as a new indulgence discovered by Western enterprise.
It must be borne in mind, however, that we have still to deal with another Eastern nation, namely Japan, whose history and associations are closely interwoven with the commerce, customs and culture of China. China in the past was to Japan what Greece in olden times was to Rome. The younger nation derived from the elder much of its knowledge in the arts and habits of life. Viewed in this light it seems altogether reasonable to suppose that if the tobacco plant and the practice of smoking its leaves were known in China before the discovery of America the Japanese would not be ignorant of these things. The question will be considered in the next chapter.