Man cultivates tradition
Sep 18, 2007, 14:02
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LEONARD - The smell of home-cured tobacco rises from a clay bowl that Bill Breckinridge has lit with a smudge of sage. The aroma drifts upward with an earthy odor. "This is not a commodity," he said. "But it's a living creature on this planet that we need to learn how to develop a relationship with." Breckinridge, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation tribal member, has grown noncommercial tobacco on his family's Creek allotment land for about 16 years. He has developed a strain that he calls "Muscogee Tobacco." He grows more than 10 pounds of noncommercial tobacco a year in a garden plot no bigger than the back end of a pickup. He points to tobacco seeds that sit in a ceramic bowl. The tobacco seeds make coffee grounds look sizable. "This whole bowl could grow about 640 acres of tobacco," he said. "Tobacco is wonderfully hearty and relatively easy to grow, once you know what to do with it." He laments that the traditional use of tobacco has been all but forgotten by the public, who associate tobacco with the marketed cigarettes that come 20 to a pack. "Children have no concept of what a tobacco plant looks like, so much has the image of commercial tobacco pervaded our culture," he said. A nonsmoker, Breckinridge prefers to make gifts of his home-cultivated tobacco to be used in Indian ceremonies. No additives or pesticides go in his mix. He has tins of it, marked by the year's harvest, sitting on his kitchen table. The number of Xs on the tag denote Breckinridge's rating of the tobacco he grew that year, with one X being fair and three being great. He opens a Danish cookie tin marked 2005, sniffs it and shrugs. "You can really tell a good season because the resulting tobacco can keep and be used for up to 10 years," he said. Breckinridge admits he is not familiar with the folk remedies using natural tobacco. He has heard of tobacco being used as a purgative and in bee-sting treatment. But this he does know: Some of the natural varieties that are grown are too strong in their natural state to smoke alone. The nicotine content is so high that the smoke induces nausea, dizziness and headaches, he said. At home, Breckinridge burns his tobacco on a wood stove to help purify the air and his thoughts. "All tobacco on this planet is descended from tobacco that was cultivated by Native Americans," he said. "And they know this, when I show it to Indian people, they're drawn to it. They seem to know inherently that it's sacred."
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