American Indians first producers of tobacco

THE American Indians didn’t plan it this way but tobacco became the perfect revenge for the plunder of their lands and persecution of their people.

Columbus was the first explorer to take away samples of the strange plant he saw native peoples burning in ceremonial pipes and by the mid-1600s it was the must-have novelty in the wealthy drawing rooms of Europe.

The first commercial crops were grown by early settlers in the eastern states of North America in the 1600s but smoking only became widespread with mass production of cigarettes in the last 150 years.