Aboriginal Tobaccos is a short booklet about the cultivation and use of tobacco by native American populations, written in 1921 by William Albert Setchell for American Anthropologist. Setchell studied the use of tobacco in native populations at the time he was writing, and also the history of its use and cultivation.
The booklet discusses the spread of each of the types of tobacco used in the Americas prior to European colonization:
- Nicotiana Tabacum, the species that is almost always used in smoking products, is of unknown tropical origin. Setchell hypothesizes it originated somewhere in Brazil / on the slopes of the Andes. This type of tobacco was used throughout Mexico, Central America, and northern South America at the time Europeans entered the picture.
- Nicotiana Rustica is a hardier species, likely with its origin in Mexico. It was “cultivated and smoked by all of the Indian tribes of North America east of the Mississippi River and by most of those immediately to the west of it.”1 There is some evidence that it was grown significantly beyond those borders as well.
- Nicotiana acuminata was grown and used in central California
- Nicotiana Clevelandii was grown and used in southwestern California
- Nicotiana repanda was grown and used in Southwestern Texas and parts of Mexico
- Nicotiana plumbaginifolia was grown and used in northeastern Mexico and adjoining parts of Texas
- Nicotiana Stocktoni was grown and used on Guadalupe Island off of California
- Nicotiana multivalvis was grown and used in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana
- Nicotiana quadrivalvis was grown and used in North Dakota
Aboriginal Tobaccos is in the public domain and can be read for free on the Anthrosource Online Library.
- William Albert Setchell, Aboriginal Tobaccos, 1921, pg. 401 [↩]