What do the first nations smoke?

Answer 1

Smoking was widespread among natives in North, Central and South America, often by women as well as men. The pipes known to white people as "peace pipes" were actually sacred forms of pipe smoked for any kind of important gathering, including making treaties or plans for war - so the term "peace pipe" is not really appropriate. Such pipes would be passed around a council of elders (often four times around the circle) and generally had very long stems.

Tobacco, very similar to modern kinds, was grown and smoked in the south-eastern parts of the current USA and into Mexico and Central America; further north in the woodlands and to the west on the Great Plains tobacco was not available so alternatives were found.

Red willow bark, dried and crushed, makes a tolerable tobacco substitute and smells very much like pipe tobacco; the Natick (Massachusetts) word kinukkinuk meaning "mixed" was commonly used to describe any mixture of dried bark, bearberry leaves and other plant material smoked in pipes. When tobacco was available from white traders, tribes simply added it to the kinnikinnick mixture.

Some people claim that the dried "tassels" from cornhusks were used for smoking, but this may be a later habit among white settlers.

On the Plains, no tobacco was grown for smoking (the Crows grew sacred tobacco plants from carefully-kept seed for ceremonies, but did not use it for smoking); they obtained tobacco "plugs" from traders or used a mixture of dried herbs, bark and leaves that continued to be known as kinnikinnik, even though that was not a Plains word. Red willow bark (cansasa) was a particular favourite of the Sioux tribes, who considered it sacred.

The links below take you to images of modern kinnikinnick and the bearberry plant that was often included:

Answer 2

We Indians smoke that cush...before yall called it cush. PUre petoye and marijuana. mixed and laced ...man u could see the moon if you wanted to

Answer 3

Tobacco, Tobacco products and Hemp and Hemp products.