Tobacco use first recordedIn 1492, Christopher Columbus noted in his Journal the use of tobacco among Indians—the first recorded reference to tobacco. The translation of this Journal of the First Voyage by John Boyd Thatcher (1903) reads: “I found a man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread ... water, ... and some dry leaves which must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a present at San Salvador.” The use of the leaves is made more clear in a journal entry on 5 Nov 1492 which records on the island of Cuba, “men and women with ... herbs to smoke, which they are in the habit of doing.” The translator adds in his footnote that Columbus thus “refers to a practice he had already observed among the inhabitants of Guanahani or Watling Island.”«[This is the corrected date. It was previously an entry on this site for 15 Nov 1492.] |
