Not Just for Smoking

The other day we were talking about Jamestown, Virginia in social studies. We are studying the southeast region of the United States, and one of our tour stops was the first permanent English settlement in the United States. The discussion started with the difficulty the settlers had surviving. The students were amazed that people kept going to live in Jamestown even though so many people died. I then explained that growing tobacco changed the outlook of Jamestown.

As soon as I mentioned tobacco, 20 out of 23 hands were up. the first question was, "Isn't tobacco that stuff people smoke?"

I replied, "Yes, people smoke tobacco. It's in cigarettes, cigars, and some people use pipes to smoke it. Back in those days they used to grind up tobacco leaves and shove it up their noses."

I got the expected reaction on that one. Lots of "eeeeew, grooooosssssss, and really?"

Then someone asked, "Why do people do that anyway?"

Before I had a chance to respond someone else blurted out, "Oh I heard it's kinda like drinking or something."

At this point I tried to reel the kids back in to our discussion, but then I made the mistake of calling on Alexander. "Well can't you, like, chew, it or something."

I said, "Yes you can chew it too. The settlers were able to sell the tobacco to the people in England because they enjoyed doing all these things."

Another hand up. "Well, did they sprinkle it on their food and stuff too?"

"No. They didn't sprinkle it on their food. Let's get back to what happened later in Jamestown."

Joel's hand shot up and I, against my better judgement, impatiently said, "Yes Joel?"

"Isn't there something called.. tobacco sauce?"

I couldn't hold in a little chuckle, "No, you're thinking of Tabasco Sauce. That's just a spicy pepper sauce. It has nothing to do with tobacco. Aaaaand with that, we are officially done talking about tobacco."