Pipes and smoking customs of the American aborigines, based on material in the U.S. National Museum / by Joseph D. McGuire.

  • McGuire, Joseph D. (Joseph Deakins), 1842-1916.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pipes and smoking customs of the American aborigines, based on material in the U.S. National Museum / by Joseph D. McGuire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/316 (page 363)
    There is little room to doubt that the tube or funnel is an implement of great antiquity in smoking elsewhere than on the American conti- nent. Implements figured as Roman pipes, so far as they have come under the writer’s observation, appear to be. modern and of the Eng- lish or French “trade” type. Other plants are so commonly used in the pipe by the Indians of the whole continent and have been so employed, according to early writers, for so long a period as to indicate a very ancient usage. Although there are several native varieties of the family Nicotiana in America, it appears highly probable that the use of tobacco first became general through its cultivation by the Spanish and their trade in it with the natives. The Spanish early cul- tivated it, for next to food they would naturally grow those plants for which there was the greatest demand and the best market among the natives. It is a well-known fact that the English settlers in Virginia during the first half of the seventeenth century more than once brought themselves to the verge of starvation because of their having culti- vated tobacco to the exclusion of necessary vegetables. Throughout the seventeenth century, if not later, smoking was indulged in by Europeans mainly because of the wonderful proper- ties attributed to tobacco. It was supposed not only to cure disease, but was considered a detergent as well. It was said to prevent the pangs of hunger and fatigue, and was long prescribed as a medicine by the physicians of Spam, France, and England. The visitation of the plague m Europe encouraged the use of tobacco enormously, as it was supposed that it would keep off the disease; and was so sought after and so generally prescribed that its use quickly became a confirmed habit among many persons, and the use of that which had been looked upon as a valued medicine became perverted into a vice difficult to eradicate. And as late as the time of Charles II, tobacco was supposed to be a mighty antidote to the plague, and it has been said that at a certain time during his reign the worst Hoggings the boys ever received at Eaton were because they refused to smoke. •The employment of the words “funnel” and “reed” by Pliny may appear to be indefinite references to the pipe, but they are equally as distinct as are many of the early Spanish, French, and English expres- sions used in regard to it, even as late as the first half of the seven- teenth century, at which date the word “tobacco” had not yet come into general use. The most ancient, and at the same time the most reliable evidence of the early employment of the pipe on the American continent is the bas- relief of the Alta Casa or Adoratio, at the entrance of the temple of the Cross, one of the so-called palaces of Palenque, to which attention was called by John L. Stevens, it being deservedly considered one of the most remarkable as well as one of the best known of American antiquities.1 It is shown as the frontispiece. Travels m Central America ami Yucatan, II, p. 354, New York, 1818.