History and Modern Use of Sacred Tobacco on the Central and Southern Oregon Coast

Abstract

This chapter provides a cultural overview of tobacco use among Native American communities living along the central and southern Oregon Coast during precontact and post-contact times. Interviews from the first half of the twentieth century with tribal elders of the central and southern Oregon coast as well as the writings of nineteenth century pioneers, fur trappers, and explorers shed light on Alsea, Siuslaw, Lower Umpqua, Coos Bay, Lower Coquille, and Southwestern Oregon Athabaskan traditions around smoking and the cultivation of tobacco, and the gathering of other smoke plants. Archaeological sites on the Oregon coast have yielded pipe bowl fragments of sandstone, steatite, schist, or clay, dating as far back as 3000 years before present. While little-known, the reported data demonstrate long-standing cultural importance of the tobacco complex in the region. Today, tobacco is part of a larger cultural renaissance by many native communities, which are reclaiming indigenous tobacco through its traditional propagation and sacred use.