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Recently, a man that walked by me was smoking a pipe and for an instant, the smell of the tobacco brought on a craving. Later I was talking to someone that was a heavy cigarette smoker and the smell of smoke on his clothes was heavy.
We have family living in the Lancaster County area, and we enjoy driving through the farm country and seeing how the Amish work their tobacco fields. One thing that I've never seen growing in Bradford County is tobacco. It must have been grown here at one time because I remember seeing a tobacco barn just outside of New Albany.
Tobacco has always been known as a cash crop.
Today, we seldom see cigarette smokers on television and never see smoking advertisements on television due to laws forbidding it. At one time, ads were always on television urging you to smoke. During the 1970s, the government began telling us that smoking was bad for our health. At the government's urging, the tobacco companies began an advertising campaign, saying that smoking is bad for our health. This campaign was done for the public to believe that the tobacco companies were sincere in their efforts to have people quit smoking.
However, at the same time, the tobacco companies increased the nicotine in their cigarettes by an average of 10%. With more nicotine in cigarettes, the harder it was to quit smoking.
A Huron Indian myth about tobacco goes like this: When the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the Earth, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco.
Tobacco has a very long and colorful history, however there is no indication of tobacco being used either in the ancient world or on any continent other than the Americas. In the Americas, tobacco was found growing everywhere. Between 470 and 630 A.D., the Mayas began to scatter tobacco seeds as far east as the Mississippi Valley. The first pictorial record of smoking was found in Guatemala, dating before the 11th century.
The picture depicts a Mayan man with a roll of tobacco leaves tied with a string. The Mayan term for smoking was sik'ar.
The sailors on voyages with Columbus found Arawak and Taino Indians smoking tobacco. They also observed the Indians of the Caribbean drawing smoke through their nostrils with a Y-shaped pipe called a tabaca. Columbus took tobacco seeds back to Europe, and from there, tobacco began to spread worldwide.
Jean Nicot, the French Ambassador to Portugal, introduced tobacco to France and also gave his name to the genus Nicotiana to which tobacco belongs.
England's King James I disliked the odor of tobacco and without much success, forbade its use. In 1610, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that tobacco use was increasing and hard to quit. In China, there was an Imperial Edict forbidding the planting and use of tobacco.
Spain took a different view, and King Phillip II decreed that tobacco could only be grown in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. The sale of tobacco to foreigners was punishable by death.
By 1617, Dr. William Vaughn writes:
“Tobacco that outlandish weed
“It spends the braine and spoiles the seede
“It dulls the spirit, it dims the sight
“It robs a woman of her right.”
John Rolfe, the husband of the famous Native American princess Pocahontas, planted South American tobacco seeds in the rich Virginia soil and began the highly profitable trade of the North American colonies. He sent the first shipment of Virginia tobacco from Jamestown to England. The Virginia colony entered the world tobacco market under English protection even though growing tobacco in the colony was frowned upon because it tempted farmers to neglect needed food crops. Despite being frowned upon, tobacco was being used as a substitute for money.
In 1619, the first shipment of women that were to become the settler's wives arrived in Jamestown. A prospective husband had to pay 120 pounds of tobacco for his chosen mate. By 1727, tobacco notes became legal tender in Virginia, and throughout the 18th century, tobacco was used as a money exchange.
In New England, laws were passed to prohibit smoking because it was thought to be a non-productive pastime.
Along the Chesapeake Bay, the American Revolution was known as the Tobacco War because tobacco helped finance the war by serving as collateral for the loan that Benjamin Franklin won from France.
On their exploration of the Northwest in 1804-1806, Lewis and Clark took tobacco along with other gifts to give to the Native Americans as peace offerings.
During the Mexican War, our soldiers brought back a taste for the darker richer tobacco grown in that area, causing an increase in cigar smoking. By 1855, New York's anti-smoking society called tobacco a fashionable poison and warned against addiction. The society claimed that one half of all deaths of smokers between the ages of 35 and 50 were caused by smoking.
In 1862, the federal government put a U.S. tax on tobacco to help pay for the Civil War. During World War I, the use of cigarettes increased dramatically, and during World War II, there was such a great demand for cigarettes that a shortage developed in America. By 1950, American smokers were averaging a pack of cigarettes a day.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, the medical community started a campaign against smoking, and in 1954, Eva Cooper filed the first tobacco lawsuit, claiming her husband died of lung cancer from smoking. She sought to recover damages for his death and added pain and suffering, however she lost the lawsuit.
After 14 years of smoking, I quit the day after doe season ended in 1970. With all the information being released on how bad smoking was for our health, my family wanted me to quit. Each day my boys, who were encouraged at school to tell their parents to quit smoking, would hide my pipes and tobacco. Since this was happening during the hunting season, with long hours, I told them that I would quit when the deer season ended. On the morning after the season ended, my boys threw my pipes and tobacco into the garbage can. I quit cold turkey but did chew a lot of gum.
Through the years my late friend Jack Kuyper smoked a pipe, and even though it had been many years since I quit, his pipe tobacco smelled great and for a moment a craving would hit me. I hope you don't smoke but if you do, quit.
If you don't smoke, help someone else to quit..
Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.