The native, however, simply chewed the dried leaves mixed with lime or other alkalis. Such coca chewing still prevails in the area indicated on the map and has spread to the natives of other parts of both continents, as well as to the whites themselves.
As will be noted, the chewing of tobacco is found in South America contiguous to the coca-chewing area, but it also occurs on the Pacific Coast of America.[1] One peculiarity of the latter habit is that the tobacco is taken with pulverized shells or ashes, ground fine in mortars; in other words, after the coca method. The appearance of this trait in these two disconnected areas and its analogy to the betel nut culture of Melanesia and southeastern Asia is truly puzzling.
The taking of snuff is also largely correlated with chewing, since we find it in both the chewing areas, though it extended rather well over the Amazon country and even to the West Indies. However, the usual substance for making snuff powder is said to be the Acacia niopo berry. Along with chewing tobacco go various forms of eating, drinking, licking, etc.
Yet, the most widely distributed method of using tobacco was smoking, of which three aboriginal forms can be localized. First, we have the true pipe found in the greater part of the United States and Canada and in the lower Atlantic side of South America; secondly, the cigar in the West Indies and the greater part of the Amazon country; and lastly, the tubular pipe in western United States, Mexico, and Central America. The usual form of this last is a small section of cane stuffed with crushed tobacco to which the name cigarette is applied. These methods of smoking are not so exclusively localized as the map would imply, but grade one into the other.
The map indicates the approximate extent of smoking in 1492, but as we all know, the custom was quickly carried to all parts of the world, both savage and civilized. The Asiatic peoples have a distinct type of pipe and a different method of smoking, which in late times has reached the Eskimo of Alaska from Siberia.
- ↑ McGuire, 1899. I; Krause, 1885. I.
