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deluxestogie

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PipeSmokers_TiahuanacoBolivia_400.jpg

Ancient carving found at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia.


Where did the various species of tobacco come from? Some are wild, others were cultivated and traded over thousands of miles, before the European discovery of America. Nicotiana rustica, which I had always assumed was wild, is apparently a species intentionally cultivated by particular Indian tribes in southern Mexico, and its seeds were included as an agricultural trade item that reached as far as the Great Lakes. The following material and maps may be useful in considering some of the more obscure accessions in the GRIN database.

This is a quick survey of some of the material found in:

Spinden, Herbert Joseph: Tobacco is American: the story of tobacco before the coming of the white man.
New York Public Library, 1950.

This book, and many more, can be found in The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture at http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/. (Thanks to FmGrowit for providing this lead.) There are only a half-dozen books there with the word, "tobacco" in the title, but the entire library contains many thousands of books, all readable on-line.

This curious 141 page book was actually published by the New York Public Library, and only 500 copies were ever printed. It was written by an anthropologist who studied the written documentation from hundreds of sources (listed at the end of the book), dating back to 1492, as well as archeologic discoveries from throughout North, Central and South America. Much of the early part of the book is dedicated to the linguistic evidence of tobacco's names and usages. Here is some material from later in the book.

"It should be kept in mind as regards commercial tobacco: the straits of Yucatan and of Florida separate the two domesticated tobaccos of pre-Columbian times so that north and west of this line only Nicotiana rustica was available, and south and east of it only Nicotiana tabacum, while the two species mingled in the general region of Panama."

"The old tobaccos of Mexico and the United States were essentially pipe and cigarette tobaccos. The South American species with a larger and broader leaf gave rise to our cigar, or bundle of smaller leaves wrapped in a larger leaf of the same material."

"Perhaps cigars, in our sense, were known and used already to a limited extent by Maya and Aztec smokers when the Spaniards arrived, but cane or cornhusk cigarettes certainly were more usual."

"...in 1528, we must assume that the people of the Valley of Mexico had at least some trading knowledge of the large-leaved Nicotiana tabacum, which already had penetrated the northern continent as a contribution of recent immigrants from South America."

"It now seems likely that Nicotiana rustica must have spread south from Mexico as a domesticated plant, certainly over Colombia and Ecuador, possibly as far south as Chile."


RangeOfCultivatedRustica_400.jpg

Map of Western Hemisphere showing, in black area, the extent of the spread of Nicotiana rustica which was aboriginally cultivated in Mexico and Central America. In Virginia, it was soon replaced in English cultivation with Nicotiana tabacum introduced from the Orinoco [Venezuela].


RangeOfCultivatedTabacum_400.jpg

Darkened areas in Central and South America show Indian cultivation of Nicotiana tabacum. It originated as a hybrid on the eastern slopes of the Andes.


RangeOfWildNicotiana_400.jpg

Darkened areas show where wild tobaccos grow; about sixty species appear in the two mountainous areas of America, the heaviest concentration being in Chile and Argentina.


RangeOfWildNicotianaNorthAmericaBySpecies_400.jpg

Wild tobaccos in the Northwestern Frontier. Nicotiana attenuata (black) reaches farthest north of the indigenous tobaccos; Nicotiana bigelovii (cross-hatching), a wild and semi-domesticated species in California, comes next. Also shown in cross-hatching is N. quadrivalvis which survives in North Dakota among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians (the tribe of Buffalo Bird Woman).

Bob
 

BaccaChew

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Do you ever wonder what all the species of Nicotiana descended from? Must have been some wild-a$$ plant eh? I bet GRIN is fresh outa those seeds!
 

FmGrowit

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I've also read Orinoco is said to be one of the earliest plants cultivated in S.America and that all N. Tobaccum strains originated from it. Of course this was a post Colombian translation of a pre- Colombian event...probably 1000's of years before the new world was "discovered".
 

deluxestogie

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I can add that Nicotiana tabacum, as a species, derived from a mish-mash, freak crossing between a female N. sylvestris, and the pollen of an unusual hybrid of N. tomentosa. It (N. tabacum) ended up with twice as many chromosomes as either parent species, and produces, as we know, very big leaves. This improbable event seems to have occurred at least several thousand years ago on the eastern slopes of the Andes.

Bob
 

Chicken

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if you believe.. in the fact that our world was a lot more civilized,, at one time thousands of years ago,,, and then we fell back into a dark age,,,

the seeds could have come from anywhere,

aint it odd how our world is billions of years old,,, yet we have such a small time scale of history??
 

Tom_in_TN

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if you believe.. in the fact that our world was a lot more civilized,, at one time thousands of years ago,,, and then we fell back into a dark age,,,

the seeds could have come from anywhere,

aint it odd how our world is billions of years old,,, yet we have such a small time scale of history??


Chicken, you've got some keen insight and can figure this out: Consider the ancient structures at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia built out of stone blocks weighing 1200 tons or thereabouts. They were quarryed hundreds of miles away. Who, Why and How were the stones moved over 200 miles and across a mountain range with 15,000 feet elavation?
 

deluxestogie

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Another few historical tidbits before Columbus.

Glanville J. Improper Archeology: Fabulous Saltville said:
Counties_swVirginia.JPG


We can plausibly argue that the first ascertainable fact of North American history was a mastodon feast in the Saltville [Smyth County, Virginia] valley about 14,500 B.C.
[p81]

AD. 600 to 800. Well-made tobacco pipes made their first appearance; early specimens resemble large, straight cigars. Tobacco arrived in Southwest Virginia, perhaps around AD. 200 to 400.
[p67]

Late Woodland period cultural characteristics were established in Southwest Virginia by around 1150 (± 100 years) AD....Tobacco pipes took more elaborate forms. Southwest Virginia during this period enjoyed ample contacts with peoples and cultures of neighboring regions.
[p70]

http://www.holstonia.net/files/ImproperArcheology2005.pdf
Of note, De Soto's Spanish exploration in 1540 traveled as far north as Tennessee. A splinter expedition of his Spaniards attacked Saltville in 1567. That was just enough to expose the residents to European diseases. By the time that English settlers explored the area, much later, there were no signs of any native settlements in that region of southwest Virginia. By rights, southwest Virginia was part of Spanish Florida.

Bob
 
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webmost

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Another few historical tidbits before Columbus.


Of note, De Soto's Spanish exploration in 1540 traveled as far north as Tennessee. A splinter expedition of his Spaniards attacked Saltville in 1567. That was just enough to expose the residents to European diseases. By the time that English settlers explored the area, much later, there were no signs of any native settlements in that region of southwest Virginia. By rights, southwest Virginia was part of Spanish Florida.

Bob

Actually, they stumbled north as far as Illinois; almost to the Great Lake near Chicago. Read the wonderful account by "a gentleman from Elvas" (we don't know his name) who went with. Or you can listen to his story translated into plain English in free downloadable mp3 available at laterdude.com

Four years, all told. Wandered down the Father of Waters from there. Crossed it. Arkansas. As far west as Texas. Said "this place sucks", came back to the Mississippi, built some boats, and crossed the Gulf to Spanish Mexico. Everyone there thought they had died.

Great story, DeSoto. Ought to name a car after the man.
 

deluxestogie

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Yes. Those were interesting explorations. It appears from their known path that they steadily climbed the piedmont of the Atlantic coast, climbed across the Appalachians, then descended into the drainage of the Tennessee River. Had the sub-group that went as far as Saltville (VA) ventured another 50 miles farther east, they would have stumbled into the New River, which flows north through West Virginia, and into the Ohio River. Had they gone even farther east, they would have reached coastal Virginia way ahead of the English. Then I would now be living in Ferdinandia.

But the Spanish were not looking for territory. They wanted treasure. The conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Inca in Peru bankrolled the Spanish wars in Europe, and purchased the Spanish Armada that failed to conquer England. The substantial power of Spain was entirely based on the pillaging of the New World. But that's a different subject.

Bob
 

burge

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I do know that Native Americans smoked tobacco when the first settlers came to Canada.
 
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