Use of tobacco among North American Indians

by Ralph Linton

There is very little information available on the aboriginal methods of tobacco culture in the eastern United States. Early writers say that it was not grown with other crops, as it was believed to be injurious to them, and was usually cultivated by men. Mr. Milford Chandler informs me that the Cayuga, in New York State, had permanent tobacco beds in which the plant was grown year after year. These beds were lightly manured from time to time, but were not cultivated, and the plants were left to propagate themselves. The leaves were gathered, but the stems, with the seed pods, were left standing in the patch. The Seneca, another tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, simply scattered the seeds on the ground and had a religious prohibition against cultivating the plant. Mr. Alanson Skinner informs me that the Kickapoo and Potawatomi made large brush piles fifty or more feet long and ten or twelve feet wide which they fired about the middle of June. When the ashes were cold, the ground was hoed up, mixed with the ashes, and planted with tobacco and pumpkins. The tobacco gardens were made in the woods, remote from the villages, and were surrounded by brush fences. The Sauk also planted their tobacco in the ashes of brush-fires, but did not break the ground or cultivate the crop. In some cases they simply threw a handful of seeds on the ground near the lodge. The Kickapoo, Potawatomi and Sauk all gathered the leaves of the plant in late August. They spread them on hides or blankets, and when they had wilted, rolled them like tea-leaves. When dry, the leaves were crushed. The reason assigned for the rolling was that leaves treated in this way did not crush to fine powder like those that had been dried flat. Most of the eastern tribes grew only enough tobacco for their own needs, but one, the Tionontati, raised large quantities of it for export and, on this account, were called Tobacco People (Nation de Petun) by the French.

The best published account of aboriginal tobacco-culture is that given to G. L. Wilson by Buffalobird-woman, an old member of the Hidatsa tribe. The Hidatsa raised a different species of tobacco from the eastern Indians (N. quadrivalvis), and their methods were somewhat different. She says, “The old men of the tribe who smoked each had a tobacco garden planted not very far away from our corn-fields, but never in the same plot with one. Tobacco gardens were planted apart, because the tobacco plants have a strong smell which affects the corn; if tobacco is planted near the corn, the growing corn-stalks turn yellow, and the corn is not so good. Tobacco seed was planted at the same time sunflower seed was planted (as early in April as the soil could be worked). The owner took a hoe and made soft every foot of the tobacco garden; and with a rake he made the loosened soil level and smooth. He marked the ground with a stick into rows about eighteen inches apart, and sowed the seed very thickly in the row. He covered the newly sowed soil very lightly with earth which he raked with his hand. When rain came and warmth, the seed sprouted. The plants came up thickly so that they had to be thinned out. The owner of the garden would weed out the weak plants, leaving only the stronger standing. The earth about each plant was hilled up with a buffalo rib into a little hill like a corn hill. A very old man, I remember, used a big buffalo rib, sharpened on the edge, to work the soil and cultivate his tobacco. He caught the rib by both ends with the edge downward; and stooping over, he scraped the soil toward him, now and then raising the rib up and loosening the earth with the point at one end. He knelt as he worked.

“Tobacco plants began to blossom about the middle of June; and picking then began. Tobacco was gathered in two harvests. The first harvest was these blossoms, which we reckoned the best part of the plant for smoking. Blossoms were picked regularly every fourth day. If we neglected to pick them until the fifth day, the blossoms would begin to seed. Only the green part of the blossom was kept. When we fetched the blossoms home to the lodge, my father would spread a dry hide on the floor in front of his sacred objects and spread the blossoms on the hide to dry. The smoke hole of the lodge, being rather large, would let through quite a strong sunbeam, and the drying blossoms were kept directly in the beam.

“When the blossoms had quite dried, my father fetched them over near the fireplace and took a piece of buffalo fat, thrust it on the end of a stick and roasted it slowly over the coals. He touched it lightly here and there to the piled up blossoms, so as to oil them slightly, but not too much. Now and then he would gently stir the pile of blossoms with a little stick, so that the whole mass might be oiled equally. When my father wanted to smoke these dried blossoms, he chopped them fine with a knife, a pipeful at a time. The blossoms were always dried in the lodge: If dried without, the sun and air took away their strength.

“About harvest time, just before frost came, the rest of the plants were gathered. He dried the plants in the lodge. For this he took sticks, about fifteen inches long, and thrust them over the beam between two of the exterior supporting posts, so that the sticks pointed a little upwards. On each of these sticks he hung two or three tobacco plants by thrusting the plants, root up, upon the stick, but without tying them. When the tobacco plants were quite dry, the leaves readily fell off. It was the stems that furnished most of the smoking. They were treated like the blossoms, with buffalo fat. We did not treat tobacco with buffalo fat except as needed for use, and to be put into the tobacco pouch ready for smoking.

“Before putting the tobacco away in the cache pit, my father was careful to put aside seed for the next year’s planting. He gathered the black seeds into a small bundle about as big as a baby’s fist, wrapping them in a piece of soft skin which he tied with a string. He made two or three of these bundles and tied them to the top of his bed, or to a post nearby, where there was no danger of their being disturbed.”

PLATE III.

AMERICAN INDIAN TOBACCO PIPES.

1. PIPE OF ANTELOPE BONE, CHEYENNE. 2–3. STEATITE PIPES, JOHNSON COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 4–5. LARGE STEATITE PIPES, SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES.