Alaska Native Collections – Sharing Knowledge

Before direct trade with Russian fur companies and American whaling vessels, peoples in northwest Alaska obtained Russian leaf tobacco from the Chukchi through exchange networks and trade fairs in Alaska and eastern Siberia.(1) When visiting villages in the Bering Strait region in the 1880s, Edward Nelson observed local custom by giving headmen gifts of tobacco.(2) He also traded tobacco and other items such as needles and buttons for Native-made objects.(3) Nelson observed that a man’s smoking implements—pipe, flint and steel, tinder and pouch of tobacco—and snuff implements—snuff box and tube—were usually placed in his coffin.(4)

Both men and women used snuff or chewing tobacco, while most smokers were men.(5) To make chewing tobacco, the leaves were chopped, mixed with ash, and kneaded into balls—also called quids or plugs—that were kept in small boxes. The ash was made by burning birch tree fungus, obtained through trade with Athabascan peoples of interior Alaska.

(6) Tar scraped from the inside of pipe stems was also added.(7) Chewing tobacco was held in the cheek and the juice swallowed.(8)

To make snuff, tobacco leaves were cut, dried, and ground into powder in a pestle and wooden mortar. The powder was sifted and kept in a small box.(9) Snuff was taken by inhaling the powder into the nose through a tube. Snuff tubes were usually hollow wing bones of geese or ducks, engraved with designs.(10) Small amounts of snuff were sometimes carried in little seal-intestine pouches tied with sealskin string, usually with the snuff tube attached.(11)

Men made small boxes to store ash, quids, and snuff. Tobacco boxes came in a variety of shapes and were often decorated with engravings, animal and human figures, bone or ivory inlays, and beads.(12)

1. Bockstoce 1977:71; Burch 1988:234-38; Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:164-65; Gordon 1906:74; Michael 1967:100; Murdoch 1892:49, 65; Nelson 1899:228-29, 271; Ray 1966:9, 45; Ray 1885:47; Simpson 1875:266; Thornton 1931:44, 120, 216

2. Nelson 1899:286, 354, 357, 367

3. Nelson 1899:308

4. Nelson 1899:310-11

5. Bruce 1894:104; Nelson 1899:310-11; Stoney 1900:100; Thornton 1931:216

6. Nelson 1899:271

7. Nelson 1899:272

8. Bruce 1894:104; Nelson 1899:271; Ray 1966:46; Thornton 1931:216

9. Bruce 1894:105; Nelson 1899:272-73; Thornton 1931:217

10. Bruce 1894:105-06; Nelson 1899:273, 275; Ray 1966:46; Thornton 1931:217

11. Bruce 1894:105

12. Bruce 1894:106; Nelson 1899:272-80