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It is thought that tobacco started growing in the Americas some time around 6,000 BCE. It grew unmolested for almost 5,000 years until the Mayans of Central America started using the leaves of the tobacco plant for smoking and chewing around 1,000 BCE.
The Mayans found that the leaves were effective in treating wounds and reducing pain. They also smoked the leaf as part of their religious ceremonies. Evidence of the Mayans using tobacco has been found in ancient carvings on temple walls showing a priest smoking a pipe. The Mayans may have also smoked crude cigars.
When Mayan civilization ended, the tribes scattered, taking tobacco with them into South America. The precious weed also found its way into the pipes and the religions of the Indian tribes along the Mississippi River.
Centuries later, European explorers sought to find the way to Asia by sailing west. Although it took them years to discover that there was no mythical Northwest Passage to the Orient, they did discover the mystical weed tobacco on their first voyage.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the island he named San Salvador where he met members of the Arawak Indian tribe, who considered him and his men as divine beings sent from the gods.
The Arawaks gave Columbus’ expedition gifts of wild fruit, spears and dried leaves, of which Columbus wrote in his journal, emitted a distinct fragrance. Columbus and his men accepted the gifts and ate the fruit, but seeing no value in the dried leaves, they threw them away.
On the very first expedition to “The New World” Columbus is thought to have been the first person outside of the Americas to see, smell and touch tobacco.
Later in 1492 Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis Torres landed on Cuba while attempting to discover a route to China. Jerez and Torres witnessed the island’s inhabitants wrapping tobacco leaves in palm or maize leaves, lighting one end of the concoction and inhaling smoke from the other.
Jerez and Torres are most likely the first Europeans to have seen smoking and Jerez may well have been the first non-American smoker.
On his return from Cuba, Jerez frightened locals who saw smoke coming from his mouth and nose. Inquisitors, who held great power at the time, considered Jerez to be possessed and imprisoned him for seven years.
By the time Jerez was released, smoking had become popular in Spain, and by the 1530s, tobacco cultivation in the Americas had become a lucrative business with European colonists braving the harrowing Atlantic voyage to establish large tobacco plantations.
Tobacco use was limited to the Iberian Peninsula until 1561 when Jean Nicot de Villemaine introduced it to the French court. Born in Nîmes, in the south of France in 1530, Nicot was the French ambassador in Lisbon, Portugal, from 1559 to 1561, sent to negotiate the marriage of six-year-old Princess Marguerite de Valois to five-year-old King Sebastian of Portugal.
The marriage never took place but Nicot’s trip was not useless. When Nicot returned to France, he brought tobacco plants with them. The first snuff mill had been established in Seville, Spain, in the 16th century, and Nicot believing in tobacco’s curative powers, sent a small gift of snuff to Catherine de Medici, King François II’s mother, in hopes to relieve the French king’s headaches.
The remedy proved effective and Catherine de Medici became a natural spokesperson for nasal snuff. From that moment, snuff usage spread rapidly throughout the French court and other royal families began to use it as well. Nasal snuff became the tobacco of choice for much of Europe’s aristocratic class and Nicot became a celebrity.
Snuff became popular among English commoners after the capture, in 1702, of a Spanish convoy by Admiral Sir George Rooke in Vigo Bay. Among the loot taken from the Spanish fleet was a large consignment of snuff, which found its way to London and and was brought to ports and coastal towns by discharged sailors who had received it in partial payment of their services and prize money.
From 1702, snuff taking steadily increased in England and snuff mills were established in many parts of the country, notably in London, Bristol, Sheffield and Kendal. More than 300 years later, English snuff is still made in Sheffield by Wilson & Co., and in Kendal by Gawith, Hoggarth & Co. and by Samuel Gawith.
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| Snuff Guide (C) 2006-2007 |
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