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Cigarettes
in the Southwest
In Mexico
and its territories, cigarettes and cigars were the preferred means of
nicotine delivery in the early 1800’s.
In 1826 Captain F.F. Lyon visited a government cigarette factory
near Villa Neuva, Mexico. According to
Lyon
there were 750 people employed here, reportedly making 750,000 cigarettes
per day. These cigarettes were
made of “rasped” tobacco rolled in paper, and packed in paper packages
of 32 cigarettes each. Five
cigarettes per minute was a typical production rate for these
employees.
Paper for rolling
cigarettes was both expensive and scarce in the Mexican colonies.
In
New Mexico
corn husks were used in place of cigarette papers, and the resulting
product was called a “shuck cigarillo” by visiting Americans.
Lewis Garrard (reference)
describes the process of rolling a shuck cigarillo in 1846 as follows:
“The shuck is scraped to free it from roughness and cut in
slips, one and a half inches broad by three in length; then moistened to
prevent splitting, but putting it in the mouth and drawing out with
compressed lips. The tobacco
of the country-bland and fragrant-is sprinkled on one edge, and with a
slight-o’-hand motion of the fingers, rolled up.
The ends are pinched, to retain the contents.”
Many American traders and trappers in the southwest, when exposed
to cigarettes quickly adapted the habit of their Mexican hosts.
In the
United States
at the time, it was socially unacceptable for women to smoke whereas in
Mexico and its colonies there were no prohibitions on women, or even
children smoking. First time
visitors to Mexican Taos and Sante Fe were scandalized by the sight of
women smoking shamelessly in public. Josiah
Gregg
(Reference) records the
following in 1831. “Of all the petty vices practised by the New
Mexicans, the vicio inocente of smoking among ladies, is the most
intolerable; and yet it is a habit of which the loveliest and the most
refined equally partake. The puro or cigarro is seen in the mouths of all:
it is handed round in the parlor, and introduced at the dinner table even
in the ball-room it is presented to ladies as regularly as any other
species of 'refreshment;'”
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Tobacco in the Mountains
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