The Tobacco Plant
The tobacco plant (genus Nicotiana, from the shade family), was first used by the native people of the Americas. It later came into use in Europe and in the rest of the world.
Archaeological finds indicate that humans in the Americas began using tobacco as far back as 12,300 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously documented.
Tobacco had already long been used in the Americas by the time European visitors arrived and took the practice across the Atlantic, where it became popular. Eastern North American tribes have historically carried tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item, as well as smoking it in pipe ceremonies, whether for sacred ceremonies or those to seal a treaty or agreement.
In addition to use in spiritual and religious ceremonies, tobacco is also used in indigenous traditional-medicine systems for the treatment of physical conditions. As a pain killer it has been used for earache and toothache and occasionally as a poultice. Some indigenous peoples in California have used tobacco as the base ingredient in smoking mixtures used for treating colds; usually it is mixed with other traditional medicinals such as Salvia dorrii or Lomatium dissectum (the addition of which was thought to be particularly good for asthma and tuberculosis). Tobacco was also heavily cultivated in the Chesapeake Colonies area from the 1620s on, where it was sometimes used as a form of currency.
According to Iroquois mythology, tobacco first grew out of Atahensic’s head after she died giving birth to her twin sons, Sapling and Flint.
Religious use of tobacco is still common to this day amongst many indigenous peoples, particularly in the Americas. Among the Cree and Ojibwe of Canada and the north-central United States, it is offered to the Creator, with prayers, and is used in sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies, and presented as a gift. A gift of tobacco is traditional when asking an Ojibwe elder a question of a spiritual nature.
