TOBACCO

 

All over Native North America tobacco is the most important and sacred plant and the act of smoking tobacco with a pipe is one of the most widespread forms of ritual action, through which a communication is realized between the human world and the world of spirits. The upward rising of smoke was interpreted as a means to send the pleas, invocations and prayers of humankind toward the divine world. Another way to offer tobacco was to put some shredded leaves in a little bag that was hung on the branches of a tree, on a rock, on the river bank or lake shore, as a gift to the spiritual beings that were to be addressed.

 

Tobacco plant in an image of the XVIth century. It was unknown in Europe before the discovery of the New World (Illustration from: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes by Leonhart Fuchs, Basel 1542)

 

The Arapaho attributed the origin of tobacco to a period preceding the actual “generation”, that is one of the previous epochs into which the history of the world was subdivided, according to Native tradition. In that period, several substances were employed for smoking, then an old man obtained through “supernatural ways” the gift of tobacco (Kroeber 1902: 22). The story of the Mandan is much more complex: as the other one, it brings back to the beginning of time, when the earth was brought up from the primordial waters by a water bird, at the presence of the First Creator and of Lone Man. When the earth had been formed and consolidated, around the “centre of the earth” which was identified with a little hill known as Heart Butte, near the Missouri shore, the two primordial beings travelled across the land, creating various aspects of the landscape and meeting several animals, among which the buffalo. It was the buffalo who gave them the tobacco plant and the pipe to smoke it. “They saw that the stem and the bowl  of the pipe had almost come together. The stem of the pipe was the east side and represented man. The part where they put in tobacco was the west side and represented the woman” (Bowers 1950: 363). The tale clarifies the intermediary role of the pipe and tobacco, permitting the communication between men and animals, as well as between man and woman.

 

Tobacco bag and war club that belonged to the well-known Lakota leader Sitting Bull (Peabody Museum of Archaelogy and Ethnology, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

 

For the Cheyenne too, tobacco and buffalo were strictly associated. The myth tells of two heroes with identical clothes and ornaments who entered a spring, where they encountered an old woman, probable personification of the earth, who gave them the corn and the buffalo, but also tobacco and other plants (Grinnell 1907: 179-184). Finally, for the Blackfoot, if on the one hand the tobacco seeds came from the sun (Wissler-Duvall 1908: 80), on the other hand tobacco was part of a ceremony associated with the Beaver Bundle and had been given to humans by the beavers, masters of the water world (Grinnell 1892 [1962:117-124]). The owners of these sacred bundles had the duty to call the buffalo during the winter and to cultivate the tobacco plants. Furthermore, they were regarded as specialists in the observation of the sky and were the custodians of the ceremonial calendar  (Ewers 1958: 167-168).
This last detail is revealing, because among the Crow tobacco was identified with the stars in general and particularly with the Morning Star (Lowie 1935 [1983: 274, 295]). According to a myth, a man coming from the stars had turned himself into the tobacco plant (Lowie 1918: 15).

 

Shield made around the first decades of the 1900, of probable Crow execution, showing a decoration with stellar motifs (Private collection)

 

The Crow dedicated themselves to this only cultivation, before contact with the Whites, which was intended to a purely ceremonial employment. This was supervised by the members of the Tobacco Society (bacúsuə), composed by men and women who had the duty to superintend to a complex series of ceremonies that took place in the course of the year. The plant of a particular variety of tobacco op’púmite (“short tobacco”) (Nicotiana multivalvis), after having been cared for and gathered with special solemnity, were thrown into the waters of the river (Lowie 1935 [1983: 295]). According to the Crow, the tobacco was the “sacred body” of a star, the Morning Star, but at the same time it was associated with the underwater world because it was related to the beaver: they had to “throw the stem into the water. It needs the water” (Lowie 1919c: 178). Though it could seem paradoxical, this particular kind of sacred tobacco was never smoked by the Crow. On the other hand, the employment of tobacco leaves as offering to the spirits was a widespread practice all through the American continent (Comba 2012).

 

Sacred bundle with weasel skins and other objects, that belonged to the Tobacco Society of the Crow Indians (Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming)