THE SOT WEED “The savages of America raised a grain, now known by the appellation of Indian corn.... They were ignorant of the art of procuring ... a fermented liquor, nor had they any other kind of intoxication than what arose from the use of tobacco smoaked in a stone pipe. This narcotick weed was the only repast which they took to regale themselves with.” — James Sullivan, THE HISTORY OF THE PENOBSCOT INDIANS, COLLECTIONS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Series I, Volume 9 (1804; reprinted 1857):207-232 In Thoreau’s Journal: Tobacco Nicotiana tabacum II............................................................................................221 XII......................................................................... 340, 341[EP] (flower) VII.............................................................................................8 (plant) XII.........................................................................................341 THE NIGHTSHADES (SOLANACEAE) •— Potato Solanum tuberosum •— Tomato Lycopersicon esculentum • — chili peppers •— eggplant • — deadly nightshade •— Tobacco Nicotiana tabacum • — henbane • — Jimson weed • — petunia • — plus some 2,000 other species grouped into 75 genera 1250 At about this point, the technique of the distillation of alcohol became known in Europe, making it possible to produce more potent and convenient alcoholic beverages. Until the 16th century, however, distilled or spiritous liquors primarily would be being distilled out of wine (the result of this is termed brandy), would be consequently somewhat pricey, and would find use only by the wealthy and only as medicine. Credited with extraordinary healing powers, their common name would be aqua vitae, “water of life.” HDT WHAT? INDEX SIK’AR PLANTS 1492 October 12, Friday: There is no separate entry for this day either in the lying official log or in the fantastical private log of Christopher Columbus. The expedition landed at what Christopher Columbus called “San Salvador,” and the natives called “Guanahaní” (and may possibly be Watling Island). It is not known for sure which island they had sighted; however, it is known that he and some of his crew did get ashore on this date somewhere in the Caribbean. Columbus would immediately jot down a thought that came to his mind, that the people he was meeting “should make good servants.” The people he was meeting were the graceful, handsome, and pleasant Bahamian Tainos. Noting that “They do not carry arms and have no knowledge of them,” our guy would soon be suggesting that “With fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” –Twelve years later, not a single person of that population of 40,000-odd graceful, handsome, and pleasant Americans would still exist. All would have died under the lash, laboring for the man, and their sole record of existence would be the hammock, and that loan-word in our European languages. Centuries later a faithful student of Harvard College Professor Louis Agassiz, W.K. Brooks, would obtain some of their skulls and derogate them as primitive and worthy of being dominated and exterminated. He would offer that the “outlines of the skulls have none of the softness and delicacy which characterizes those of the more civilized and gentle races of men,” men such as the Spaniards who dominated and exterminated these primitives who “could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” I ... gave to some among them some red caps and some glass beads, which they hung round their necks, and many other things of little value. At this they were greatly pleased and became so entirely our friends that it was a wonder to see. Afterwards they came swimming to the ships’ boats, where we were, and brought us parrots and cotton thread in balls, and spears and many other things, and we exchanged for them other things, such as small glass beads and hawks’ bells, which we gave to them. In fact, they took all and gave all, such as they had.... They all go naked as their mothers bore them, and the women also, although I saw only one very young girl. And all those whom I did see were youths, so that I did not see one who was over thirty years of age; they were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces. Their hair is coarse and 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PLANTS SIK’AR short, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail; they wear their hair down over their eyebrows, except for a few strands behind which they wear long and never cut. Some of them are painted black, and they are the color of the people of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some of them are painted white and some red and some in any color that they find.... They are all generally fairly tall, good looking and well proportioned. I saw some who bore marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to them to ask how this came about, and they indicated to me that people had come from other islands, which are near, and wished to capture them, and they had defended themselves.... They should be good servants and of quick intelligence. Samuel Eliot Morison has commented on this that “to the intellectuals of Europe it seemed that Christopher Columbus had stepped back several millennia, and encountered people living in the Golden Age, that bright morning of humanity which existed only in the imagination of poets. Columbus’s discovery enabled Europeans to see their own ancestors, as it were, in a ‘state of nature,’ before Pandora’s box was opened. The ‘virtuous savage’ myth, which reached its height in the 18th Century, began at Guanahaní on October 12, 1492.”1 The great man (Columbus, not Morison) wrote in his journal about gifts offered by the natives: “the natives brought fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance.” As each item seemed much-prized; Columbus accepted the gifts and ordered them brought back to the ship. The fruit they ate; the pungent “certain dried leaves,” presumably tobacco, they had the uncommon good sense to throw away.2 1. Professor Morison was the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work. He taught the young Harvard men while attired in riding breeches. He refused to teach the Radcliffe girls because girls are so frivolous. He believed so passionately that the writing of history was an art that, when interrupted at his desk by the barking of a dog, he shot the dog. After WWII he taught while attired in an Admiral’s uniform. 2. Unfortunately for us, our attitude would change. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX SIK’AR PLANTS October 15, Monday (Old Style): On this date a white man, Christopher Columbus, first took note of the practice of smoking, although he had not yet witnessed the act itself: “In the middle of the gulf between these two islands.... I found a man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to Fernandina. He had food and water and some dry leaves which must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a present.” A few weeks later, on another island, Columbus would watch while the people “drank smoke.” The tobacco plant as we know it today had originated somewhere in the Americas around 6000 BCE. At about the turnover from the BCE to the CE calendar, native Americans had begun making use of tobacco in various ways, such as smoking it in a number of different manners, using it in smaller doses for an enema, and using it in massive doses for suicide or execution. At about 600 CE to 1000 CE, in Uaxactun in what is now Guatemala, we have what is at present the earliest discovered pictorial record of smoking: a pottery vessel found there dating from prior to the 11th Century depicts a Maya smoking a roll of tobacco leaves tied with a string. The Mayan term for smoking was sik’ar. October 28, Sunday-November 6, Tuesday: During this timeframe Christopher Columbus would be becoming aware of the existence of the island of Cuba. (It had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed.) As 1st actual observation of the use of tobacco by the natives, by Europeans, the natives were seen to be holding a tizón, or firebrand, made of yerbas, or plant substance, in their hands while inhaling the smoke. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PLANTS SIK’AR November: Rodrígo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, in Cuba searching for the Khan of Cathay (China), are credited as being the 1st white men to observe the act of smoking tobacco. They reported that they witnessed natives3 wrapping dried leaves in palm or maize “in the manner of a musket formed of paper.” They saw them light one end, then commence “drinking” the smoke through the other (they weren’t making this up, Bob Newhart would insist in “Button Down Comedy”). Jerez became a confirmed smoker, and is thought to be the first outside of the Americas. When he brought the habit back to his hometown, the smoke billowing from his mouth and nose so frightened his neighbors that he would for 7 years be imprisoned for this “devilish habit” by the holy inquisitors — by the time he would be released, smoking would have become a Spanish craze (just think of how Bob Newhart would have spun that one, pretending that he’d just gotten out of jail after being there 7 years for smoking –and was noticing a bunch of people, smoking: “Hey, excuse me, are you sure you should be doing that?”). 1494 Romano Pane, the friar who was accompanying Christopher Columbus, recorded that “Indians” were using tobacco by reducing it to a powder that “they take through a cane half a cubit long: one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder.” 1497 Robert Pane, who had accompanied Christopher Columbus on his 2d voyage in 1493, made the 1st report of native tobacco use to appear in Europe.