Note 68 — Chapter II · The Sioux or Dakotahs.
Reading edition
The word tobacco (West Indian, tobago or tobacco, a peculiar pipe), which has spread through Europe, Asia, and Africa, seems to prove the origin of the nicotiana, and the non-mention of smoking in the “Arabian Nights” disproves the habit of inhaling any other succedaneum.
[69] It has long been disputed whether maize was indigenous to America or to Asia; learned names are found on both sides of the question. In Central Africa the cereal is now called as in English, “Indian corn,” proving that in that continent it first was introduced from Hindostan. The Italians have named it Gran’ Turco, showing whence it was imported by them. The word maiz, mays, maize, or mahiz, is a Carib word introduced by the Spaniards into Europe; in the United States, where “corn” is universally used, maize is intelligible only to the educated.
[70] Properly Jamestown weed, the Datura stramonium, the English thorn-apple, unprettily called in the Northern States of America “stinkweed.” It found its way into the higher latitudes from Jamestown (Virginia), where it was first observed springing on heaps of ballast and other rubbish discharged from vessels. According to Beverly (“History of Virginia,” book ii., quoted by Mr. Bartlett), it is “one of the greatest coolers in the world;” and in some young soldiers who ate plentifully of it as a salad, to pacify the troubles of bacon, the effect was “a very pleasant remedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days.”
[71] The wild rose is every where met with growing in bouquets on the prairies.
[72] The Lobelia inflata, or Indian tobacco, is corrupted by the ignorant Western man to low belia in contradistinction to high belia, better varieties of the plant.
[73] The calumet, a word introduced by the old French, is the red sandstone pipe, described in a previous page, with a long tube, generally a reed, adorned with feathers. It is the Indian symbol of hatred or amity; there is a calumet of war as well as a calumet of peace. To accept the calumet is to come to terms; to refuse it is to reject them. The same is expressed by burying and digging up the tomahawk or hatchet. The tomahawk and calumet are sometimes made of one piece of stone; specimens, however, have become very rare since the introduction of the iron axe. The “Song of Hiawatha” (Canto I., The Peace Pipe) and the interesting “Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians” (vol. ii., p. 160), have made the Red Pipe-stone Quarry familiar to the Englishman.