Cigar Box Label "Our Kitties" - Americana

Inv# CB1074 Cigar Box Label

So Popular with Cat Lovers! Cute and Fun!!! Although the specific origin of the cigar is unknown, a Mayan ceramic pot from Guatemala dating back to the 10th century depicts people smoking tobacco leaves tied together with a string. The practice of tobacco smoking was widely diffused among many of the islands of the Caribbean in the pre-Contact period. It was first observed by European Age of Discovery explorers when encountering the indigenous Taino people of Cuba in 1492. The Spanish historian, landowner, and Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas vividly described how the first scouts sent by Christopher Columbus into the interior of Cuba found:

Men with half-burned wood in their hands and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, like those the boys make on the day of the Passover of the Holy Ghost; and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb, or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue. These, muskets as we will call them, they call tabacos. I knew Spaniards on this island of Española who were accustomed to take it, and being reprimanded for it, by telling them it was a vice, they replied they were unable to cease using it. I do not know what relish or benefit they found in it.