Ohio History Journal

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NICOTIANA:

NICOTIANA:

AN ETHNOLOGIC, HISTORIC AND LITERARY

NOVELTY1

 

BY HENRY CLYDE SHETRONE

 

The complete story of man, his institutions, activities and

habits, cannot be compiled solely from documentary evidence.

Man's physical origin, and the spinning of the threads which were

to determine the pattern of his behavior, antedate by ages his

realization of the importance of intentional records. Such pur-

poseful records, moreover, constituting what is popularly known

as history, supply only the latter chapters of the story of mankind;

the earlier chapters must be written, if at all, on the evidence of

unintentional records, through the methods of archaeology. The

investigations of the historian, and the archaeologist or pre-

historian, taken together, constitute history in its broader defini-

tion. The efforts of these two classes of specialists are inter-

dependent and, for best results, inseparable. To illustrate: The

ancient mounds and habitation sites of Ohio have produced strik-

ing material evidences of the prehistoric use of tobacco. The

numerous tobacco pipes, constituting the bulk of the evidence,

would defy identification had not the custom of smoking persisted

into modern times. But for the comparisons and analogies made

possible by the survival of the trait, these specimens would have

remained as unintelligible objects, to be classified and catalogued

merely as "ceremonial" or "problematical."

As a part of the task of evaluating these evidences from the

Ohio mounds, your speaker has made a somewhat detailed study

of the use of tobacco in historic times. The substance of this

paper is a brief resume of that study. It may prove of interest

to you, and will serve to illustrate something of archaeological

method in contributing to the story of mankind.

1Delivered at the Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, 1933.

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