To explain the origin of the custom of inhaling tobacco smoke from a pipe is indeed a simple matter. The ancient ritual censer of the Mexican priesthood, many examples of which have been unearthed, was almost identical in shape with the well known calabash pipe so popular among the Dutch of South Africa today, but perhaps a dozen sizes larger, and was moulded from brick-red clay. Its bowl was, however, proportionally more shallow and curved outward at the edges. The stem was about fifteen inches long and ended with a very definite mouthpiece. The officiating priest took a quantity of dried tobacco-leaf from a pouch of ocelot skin which hung from his belt, stuffed it into the bowl, lit it and brought it to a glow by suction of the cheeks when puffing at the mouthpiece, precisely as does a modern smoker. But instead of continuing to inhale the smoke, his purpose was to exhale it by blowing through the shank so that it might create a fragrant rising cloud which might titillate the nostrils of the divine image to whom he ministered.

Thus, it would seem, the practice of smoking tobacco was discovered. By inhaling the smoke in the initial stage of censing, the Mexican priesthood must gradually have come to do so habitually, privately enjoying its flavour, not doubt, and at first retaining the practice among their own circle as a caste privilege, more especially because tobacco was regarded as a sacred substance and probably taboo to the multitude. By degrees the habit would be communicated to persons outside the caste, especially those of rank and distinction, and doubtless the acolytes who were responsible for gathering and preparing the weed introduced it to the people at large as a pleasant habit.

The popular rite of smoking cigarettes before the images or altars of the gods seems, however, to have had a later origin. In 1907 Mr. Walter Fewkes found in the fireplaces of six ceremonial rooms excavated by him at Casa Grande, in Arizona, hundreds of tubes to which such ‘fags’ had been attached, while large numbers of these were found by Cushing in ceremonial caves in the Gila and Salt River Valleys.

The Mexican priests were in the habit of chewing tobacco as a drug for inducing prophetic visions, mixing it with other herbs and substances which had the effect of bringing about partial trance, while necromancers and witches prepared themselves for the commission of magical acts by the same process. Indeed it is notable that nearly all the early writers in describing the use of the tobacco leaf lay stress upon its properties as an intoxicant.

But it is when we consider the manner in which the Indian tribes of North America employed tobacco, and the spirit in which they approached its use, that we discover evidence more valuable and enlightening to explain its associations with religious customs and ritual practice.

Says Brinton: "If there is one formula more frequently mentioned by travellers than another as an indispensable preliminary to all serious business, it is that of smoking, and the prescribed and traditional rule was that the first puff should be to the sky and then one to each of the corners of the earth, or the cardinal points." "In the councils of some tribes," says Maguire, "The pipe was handed to the head chief by his official pipe-keeper. After lighting it he handed it on and it was passed around in the council house, usually from left to right (that is, with the course of the sun), until each one had smoked and thus fitted himself for serious deliberation. Among some tribes the pipe, in being passed from one individual to another during a ceremony, is differently grasped and held, according to the nature of the ceremony or to the taboo obligation of the individual...Every individual engaged in war or hunting, fishing or husbandry, and every clan made supplication to the gods by means of smoke, which was believed to bring good and arrest evil, to give protection from enemies, to bring game or fish, allay storms and protect one while journeying." This is a fairly comprehensive statement of the general attitude of the Amerindian folk of North America to the religious use of the sacred plant.

Here is a most interesting literary relic which casts some light upon the Indian doctrine respecting ceremonial smoking. In a letter written by an English interpreter on behalf of Panhekoe, Sachem of the Mohegan tribe in 1703, to his "loving neighbour Mr. Nicholas Hallam," that dignitary remarks that his claim to dominion was conferred upon him not by the English but by the gods, who presented his forefather with "one of their own tobacco pipes, which strange wonderment was taken upon the beach of Seabrook, or thereabouts, it being like ivory, with two stems and the boll (bowl) in the middle. This strange pipe, not made by man, is kept choicer than gold from generation to generation. It animates all the royal society with a full persuasion that the said token is sufficient evidence that they shall sit among the gods in the long hunting-house and there smoke tobacco as the highest point of honour and dignity."

The chief here makes it clear that he and his tribesmen smoked tobacco not only as a kind of incense to the gods, but also as a rite, which in some sense brought them into communion with deity. Thomas Herriot, servant to Sir Walter Raleigh, in his Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, composed in 1587, provides further evidence of the superstitious uses to which tobacco was put by the natives of that province. After alluding to its medical qualities, he tells us that "uppawoc," as he calls tobacco, using the Virginian name for it, "is of so precious estimation among them that they think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith; whereupon, sometimes they make hallowed fires and cast some of the powder therein for a sacrifice, and being in a storm upon the waters, to pacify their gods, they cast some up into the air, and into the water; so a weir for fish being newly set up, they cast some into the air likewise, but all done with strange gestures, stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands, holding up of hands, and staring up into the heavens uttering therewithal, and chattering strange words and noises."

This account seems to emphasize the magical nature of the tobacco plant, which, probably because of its religious significance as a gift of the gods, was thought of as possessing a wonder-working potency.

If we seek to account for the use of tobacco in ritual, we shall probably be on the right track if we take into account the general reasons for fumigation by censing as they apply to an early stage of religious belief. In all likelihood, tobacco came to be regarded as a sacred substance given to man by the gods because it was found to be so admirable a material for the purpose of censing or fumigation. The practice of censing itself originated, one is convinced, not merely in the belief that fragrant smoke of any kind must prove an acceptable offering to the gods, though we must not altogether discount that possibility, but more probably because smoke, steam, mist, cloud and other vaporous exhalations recalled to primitive man the ghostly nature and unsubstantial essence of which he believed the gods, and indeed all spiritual beings, were composed. To put the matter plainly, that which resembled the essence of the gods must itself be godlike or sacred. The suggestion may not be too strained that vapour which ascended to heaven, appearing to be lost or absorbed, may have come to be regarded as nourishing the spirit-bodies of the divinities precisely as offerings of blood were considered as reinforcing them for the task of providing a plentiful supply of rain in season, as the peoples of Mexico and Central America firmly believed.

Nor can the magical protective efficacy attributed to tobacco by the hunter, the fisher, and the husbandman among many of the North American tribes while pursuing their avocations, be otherwise accounted for than as the employment of a sacred substance, the very essence of the divine spirit of the herb, to avert evil or malignant agencies or drive away the demons of tempest, or the devouring goblins of the lake or river when agitated by the storms. Offerings of the kind were actually made to spirits in Scotland only a generation or so ago. Fishermen on the Tweed cast salt upon the surface of the river in order to "drive away the fairies." In Derbyshire and in Ireland, not so very long ago, tobacco pipes were offered up to the elves, a custom which may or may not have been introduced by returned colonists from the American provinces, while countless analogies of sacred substances being cast in the path of eddies of wind or whirlwinds could be adduced from Greece, Arabia, and the East, as well as from Scotland and Ireland.