The archeological history of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica) is sketchy at best, with few ancient records. The oldest evidence of tobacco use comes from a temple in the state of Chiapsas, Mexico, dated 432 AD, where there is a bas-relief that depicts a priest smoking a pipe during a religious ceremony. The second oldest evidence comes from 650 AD from a Pueblo Indian site located in Northern Arizona. There, loose tobacco was actually found with a pipe, that analysis showed contained nicotine.
It is likely that tobacco was utilized by humans long before these records. Most archeologists believe that tobacco was first domesticated 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Native species of tobacco are found across the Americas that were likely utilized by humans in antiquity. The most commonly grown tobaccos, Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica, originated in the Peruvian/Ecuadorian Andes, and had reached eastern North America before 2,500 BC.
How people came to domesticate Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica is an intriguing puzzle. Both of these species are not found in the wild and are hybrids of two different progenitors found in the South American Andes. Nicotinia rustia is likely a hybrid of N. paniculata and N. undulata, while N. tabacum is a probably a hybrid of N. tomentosiflormis and N. silvestris. It is not known whether humans domesticated rare hybrids from the wild that are now extinct, or they exploited hybrids that appeared in fields of their progenitor species.
When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he and his crew became the first Europeans to be exposed to tobacco and the practice of smoking. Their first contact with the plant came when Columbus, suited in his best clothes, met a boatload of natives who he assumed were Chinese. Understanding the importance of this meeting, the members of the local Arawak tribe, offered Columbus and his entourage gifts of fruit, beads, and dried tobacco leaves. Having no knowledge of tobacco, the Europeans accepted the beads and ate the fruit, but threw the leaves into the sea.
The Europeans first saw people smoke when a group was sent by Columbus on an expedition inland to find Chinese leaders and present them with royal letters of introduction. The party, of course, failed in this mission but did meet up with a group of Indigenous people who were smoking. They had “a little lighted brand made from a kind of a plant whose aroma it was their custom to inhale” (as transcribed by Columbus chronicler Saint Bartolomé).
As the Europeans continued to explore and conquer the New World, reports of tobacco use abounded. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, the military governor of Hispaniola, described dismissingly how chiefs smoked tobacco through their noses for pleasure and how shamans smoked and drank tobacco to aid in their communication with the “devil”. Before he put Montezuma to death, Cortés observed his custom of smoking for relaxation after dinner. The great explorer, Jacques Cartier, smoked a pipe with the Iroquois of Canada and described how its taste was peppery and hot. Amerigo Vespucci told of people placing snuff on their tongues in Brazil, which they had stored in a dried guard.
Reports on the use of tobacco as a panacea also circulated widely in the 1500s. The explorer, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, documented the use of tobacco in Brazil to treat a multitude of ailments including abscesses, fistulas, sores and polyps. The Spanish priest, Bernadino de Sahagun, described in Mexico how smelling fresh green leaves relieved headaches, rubbing powdered leaves inside the mouth cured colds, and crushed leaves healed neck lesions. Various other observers across the Americas noted that tobacco was being used to treat diarrhea, aches and pains, catarrh, burns, and wounds.
Tobacco’s acceptance across the world was remarkably rapid. Europeans were initially fearful of tobacco, but its medical use soon spread, and pipe smoking took England by storm in the 16th century. This English demand for tobacco led to a lucrative farming Industry in the Virginia colonies in the 1700s, and the importation of slaves to boost productivity. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, tobacco continued to be the most important crop of the Virginia Colony and the Carolinas.
Portuguese traders took tobacco to their Asian trading ports and to West Africa, where it became a key item in the trade for slaves on the Guinea coast. Tobacco was introduced into Germany by Spanish soldiers during the reign of Charles V and by 1620 large areas were planted with tobacco. It arrived in Italy from Portugal in 1561 and was taken to Sweden, Denmark and Russia by English sailors around the same time. By the first quarter of the 16th century, tobacco had arrived in India. The tobacco plant was first brought to China in the 1570s from the Philippines and the smoking habit quickly caught on there as well. Tobacco appeared in Persia early in the seventeenth century, and it reached Arabia and Turkey about the same time. It spread so rapidly in Persia, that by 1672 its use was almost universal.
Illustration: Mayan man smoking tobacco. Madrid Codex.
Bibliography
Billings, E.R. 1875. Tobacco; Its history, varieties, culture, manufacture and commerce. American Publishing Company. Hartford, Conn.
Burns, E. 2006. Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Gately, I. (2007). Tobacco: a cultural history of how an exotic plant seduced civilization. Open Road+ Grove/Atlantic.
Gerstel, D.U. and V.A. Sisson. 1995. Tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum (Solanaceae). In: Evolution of crop plants. J. Smartt and N.W. Simmonds (eds.). Longman, Scientific & Technical. Essex, England. pp. 458 – 463.
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Goodspeed, T.H. 1954. The genus Nicotiana. Chronica Botanica, Waltham, Mass.
Groark, K.P. 2010. The angel in the gourd: ritual, therapeutic, and protective uses of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) among the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya of Chiapas, Mexico. Journal of Ethnobiology 30: 5–30
Hancock, J.F. (2022) World Agriculture before and after 1492: Legacy of the Columbian Exchange. Springer
Catalysts of trade and exploration 