Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/187

 eccentric gestures and distortions of the body, by dances, stampings, and mutterings, and by an uplifting of the hands, and by fixed starings towards the sky. The object of this use of tobacco was to propitiate an evil intelligence, for the same tribute was paid to guns and swords. Crushed into a powder, it was sowed to the wind when a drought prevailed, or when a tempest was brewing on the water; or it was sprinkled over the weirs when the fish began their annual migration from the sea. Air, water, fire, the sun,&#8212;these were the terrible natural elements, the presiding genius of which demanded the most precious gifts as the condition of his favor.

Tobacco seems to have been also employed to give expression to the feeling of gratitude; it was for instance tossed into the air after an escape from some unusual danger, or when the warriors returned to their town after a successful war, hunting expedition, or long journey in which they had been exposed to many perils and hardships. According to the Indian conception, there was a heaven beyond the western mountains and close to the setting sun, which was an abode where kings, werowances, and priests, who alone after death were admitted to its portals, were always singing and dancing, with their hair decorated with feathers of varied and brilliant hues, their bodies anointed with oil and painted with puccoon, and an inexhaustible quantity of beads, hatchets, copper, and tobacco forever near at hand. The dried corpse of a king was stuffed with copper, beads, and pearls, and by its side was laid the pipe the monarch had used in life. The Indians attributed medicinal qualities to tobacco; thus they believed that it had the power to increase virility: