Tobacco

The production of tobacco was a significant component of the colonial economy. The demands of that production encouraged the growth of indentured servitude and slavery in the Chesapeake area colonies as well as the expansion of white colonists onto Indian lands.

Many Native Americans cultivated tahacum and rustica, two of 60 species of the genus Nicotiana of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family. They ingested it by chewing, snuffing, and drinking, and even with enemas, but mostly by smoking. Tobacco was used for medicinal, ceremonial (especially peacemaking), and religious purposes. Practice and belief varied, but hallucinations (induced by strong nicotine content or mixing with other substances) were widely construed as representing communication with spirits occupying tobacco plants.

Europeans initially viewed tobacco medicinally, especially after Spanish physician Nicholas Monardes rated it

This engraving shows tobacco leaves being pressed, cured, and packed by slaves. (Hulton/Archive)

A panacea in 1571. CONSUMPTION increased as availability rose and prices fell. English imports, 25,000 pounds in 1603, reached 38,000,000 by 1700; meanwhile prices declined from 40 pence per pound in 1618 to 1 pence by the 1660s. Mass consumption, with 25 percent of adults smoking a pipeful each day, appeared in England by the 1670s and in much of Europe by 1750. Pipes were favored initially (although Iberians, like Native South Americans, preferred cigars), but snuff became more common in the 18th century. Consumption was not restricted by class, race, or gender, although 18th-century elites incorporated tobacco into genteel rituals, while others used “sot weed” for their own hallucinogenic and recreational purposes.

Tobacco was cultivated in Amazon settlements and Guiana from 1609, Bermuda and Virginia from 1612, and Maryland from 1634, and the Caribbean colonies St. Kitts, Barbados, Providence Island, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat were founded on tobacco. From the mid-17th century island production declined in favor of cotton, indigo, and especially sugar.

The Chesapeake region became the New World’s largest producer, exporting more than 100 million pounds in 1771. Tobacco proved so profitable after JOHN Rolee’s experiments in JAMESTOWN beginning in 1612, Virginians dedicated their efforts almost totally to producing tobacco and failed to grow sufficient food, thereby contributing to the colony’s near collapse. Despite falling prices and wartime disruptions, tobacco remained fundamental to the Chesapeake economy and society: “our meat, drinke, cloathing and monies,” according to Reverend Hugh Jones in 1699.

Cultivation required about 50 acres of land per worker, accounting for rapid but scattered settlement. Although labor intensive, the crop yielded little economy of scale, and small farms remained common in the Chesapeake area. From the 1680s the supply of indentured servants declined, and larger planters amassed sufficient capital to buy slaves. Chesapeake area slaves increased rapidly, from 1,708 in 1660 to 189,000 in 1760, rising from 5 percent to 38 percent of the population. From the 1660s law and custom forged greater distance between the races, and this allowed development of semiautonomous African-American community, culture, and resistance. A slaveholding plantocracy appeared by the 1690s, consolidating its wealth dynastically. It developed a genteel “tobacco culture” that emerged from a consignment system of direct market and social relationships with British merchants. Material inequality rose (70 percent of white householders owned land in 1660, but only 50 percent by 1760), yet white racial solidarity increased as Euro-Americans envisioned themselves as part of a superior race. Wider access to markets, credit, and imported goods (including slaves) through Scottish merchants in the Chesapeake region raised standards of living among most white people after 1730, creating a more stable white society.

Further reading: Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena Walsh, Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (New York: Routledge, 1993); Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

—Steven Sarson

Tomochichi (1 650?-1 739) chief

Tomochichi was the chief, or mico, of the Yamacraw tribe whose village was adjacent to John and Mary Bosomworth Musgrove’s trading post, later to be the site of the town of Savannah. Tomochichi was born in the mid-17th century and during his childhood lived in the Creek town of Coweta. The Yamacraw were a small, isolated group who had been expelled from the main Creek lands some years earlier. Tomochichi believed that his people were best served by a close trading relationship with the English, first in Carolina, later in Georgia. The English provided them with weapons for defense and with trade goods. When James Oglethorpe landed on Savannah bluff in February 1733, Tomochichi was quick to forge an alliance with the assistance of the half-Creek, half-English Mary Musgrove. He summoned the Creek to meet with Oglethorpe and arranged for the first land concessions in Georgia to the English. His friendship with Oglethorpe ensured that the infant colony received supplies, advice, and technological aid from Native

Americans. When Oglethorpe returned to England in 1734, he took Tomochichi with him, presenting him to King George II (1727-60) and the Georgia trustees and gaining favorable publicity for the colony in the process. On his death in 1739, Tomochichi was accorded a formal burial by Oglethorpe; his tomb still stands under a monument in one of Savannah’s squares.

—Timothy James Lockley