Tobacco

Religious Practices of the Diegueño Indians, by T.T. Waterman, [1910], at sacred-texts.com

TOBACCO.

While the Diegueño do not seem to attach much ceremonial importance to plants, there is a definite religious feeling associated with tobacco. The shape of the Diegueño stone pipe (pl. 21, fig. 4) indicates that tobacco was used by them primarily in a ceremonial way. This pipe was not adapted for ordinary smoking, since it is a short, thick cylinder in outline. In smoking it has to be held in a perpendicular position, with the head tipped back and the face turned upward. Tobacco smoke was blown on a man in

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case of sickness. Tobacco smoke was also blown three times into the air to prevent disease and misfortune when ill-omened events occurred, for instance the cawing of a crow or the cry of a coyote. The religious use of tobacco seems to be older than the awik or jimsonweed cultus, since it occurs in Diegueño mythology. For instance: ¹³¹ "'I don't know which of us will get the best of it,' said the boy. But he had some tobacco in a piece of cane which he took from his ear and smoked, and blew the smoke at the bear and put him to sleep so that he passed on. . . . The bear woke up and said . . . 'He has more power than I.'" As just noted, tobacco is still used ceremonially in the Horloi dance, though its exact significance in native thought could not be ascertained.

Footnotes

336:131 Journ. Am. Folk-Lore, XIX, 161, 1906.