Smoking Out the Facts

WINDOW ROCK – If Native Americans had a communal Facebook page, their relationship status with tobacco might say, “It’s complicated.”

Archeologists believe indigenous Americans have been cultivating tobacco since about 1 B.C., using it in ceremonies and for medicinal purposes such as dressing wounds and curing toothaches.

By the time indigenous Caribbeans discovered Christopher Columbus, the herb was well entrenched in their culture. It didn’t take Europeans long to pick up the habit, and within a century finding suitable climates to cultivate the crop became a driving force for colonization and slave labor.

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