Native American Tobacco Use
Troy University Professor says it was used in Alabama much earlier than thought.
A Troy University professor was part of a research project that shows Native Americans in Alabama were using tobacco for religious and ritual some 1,500 years earlier than thought.
From a Troy University news release:
“Dr. Stephen Carmody, an assistant professor of anthropology, along with Dr. Jon Russ of Rhodes College and Dr. Jera Davis of New South Associates Inc., recently discovered evidence that native people were using tobacco more than a millennium earlier than previously believed.
“This new discovery changes how we think about the past,” said Carmody, who has studied ritual plant use for years. “Tobacco is one of the most, if not the most, important plants to native peoples. We’ve now dated its use in our area 1,500 years earlier than the earliest dates we had.”
The discovery came from tests that found traces of nicotine in a pipe (or “medicine tube”) found decades ago at a now-submerged site along the Flint River in northern Alabama, a tributary of the Tennessee River.
While smoking pipes have been found at much older sites, until now the earliest evidence for tobacco use came from a smoking tube dated between 500 and 300 B.C.
The new discovery dates to the hunter-gatherer societies of the Late Archaic period, 1685-1530 B.C.”
There are apparently many Native-American stories about tobacco, and some of the can be found HERE:
“Tobacco was considered a gift from the Creator in many Native American cultures; according to some of them, tobacco smoke is a means of carrying the smoker’s prayers to God. Many tribes have important myths about the origin of the first tobacco. In some North American tribes, tobacco was exclusively farmed by men, and women were forbidden from touching the growing plants. Once it had been harvested, however, Native American men and women both smoked. Tobacco leaves were smoked at rituals, ceremonies, and important social events, and also as medicine for any number of ailments. Tobacco is associated with relaxation, healing, and peace. In some tribes, particularly in North America, the pipes used for smoking tobacco are themselves considered highly sacred. In others, tobacco pipes are purely utilitarian or decorative objects. Tobacco is one of the herbs frequently included in medicine bundles, and is still popularly used as an offering or gift today.
Tobacco is also used as a clan symbol in some Native American cultures. Tribes with Tobacco Clans include the Hopi tribe (whose Tobacco Clan is called Pipngyam or Bif-wungwa), the Zuni tribe (whose Tobacco plan is named Ana-kwe), the Navajo, the Mohave, and the Pueblo tribes.”
