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Tobacco: The Nasty Weed

© Audrey Stallsmith

The Indian weed, withered quite;
Green at morn, cut down at night;
Shows thy decay: all flesh is hay
This think, then drink Tobacco.
Anonymous English Ballad

As a Sunday-School child, I was taught to chant, "Tobacco is a nasty weed, and from the devil it doth proceed. It robs your pockets, stinks your clothes, and makes a smokestack out of your nose." This early, if somewhat primitive, version of the "just-say-no" program must have had the desired effect, since I remain a non-smoker!

I suspect, however, that my parents, also non-smokers, deserve most of the credit for that. My grandmother was so averse to tobacco that she would even weed the ornamental type out of flower seed mixes.

Not being inclined to blame plants for the strange uses that people make of them, I enjoy growing the decorative varieties of nicotiana myself. One large, white-flowered specimen returns every year to the sheltered corner southeast of our front porch steps. In July and August, when the windows are open, its jasmine-like scent sweetens our long summer evenings. In her poem, "There at Dusk I Found You," Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote of the "dumb white nicotine" which "wakes and utters her fragrance in a garden sleeping.

Having thus discovered that even this plant has its benefits as well as its drawbacks, I am reluctant to describe it as "nasty." Besides, whether or not we like the fact, American history--like a smoker's clothes--is permeated with the smell of tobacco.

It is an entirely New World herb, being unknown in Europe before Columbus's expeditions. Native Americans had had long exposure to the plant, however. The oldest known image of a person smoking decorates a piece of Mayan pottery which dates to between 600 and 1,000 AD.

Although the "best" variety, nicotiana tabacum, was grown in South and Central America, North American Indians had their own types. Those in the east preferred nicotiana rustica, which later became known as Turkish tobacco. Tribes near the Missouri and Columbiana Rivers grew nicotiana quadrivalvis, and the western-most harvested nicotiana attenuata, otherwise known as Coyote Tobacco. After its introduction to Europe, tobacco was commonly known there as Indian Weed or Indian Drug. Native Americans believed that "drinking smoke" warmed and invigorated the body.

When Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492, he recorded in his journal that the inhabitants made him gifts of "fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance." A later explorer, Rodrigo de Jerez, observed Cuban natives smoking leaves rolled up inside palm or maize fronds. He adopted the habit himself and, when he returned to Spain "breathing smoke," was promptly jailed by the Inquisition for seven years!