ABSTRACT
On 15 October 1492 Columbus was offered a bunch of dried leaves as a present and, one month later, two of his crew members, returning from a trip into the interior of Cuba, reported seeing Indians smoking leaves (Columbus 1990:39, 73). A bunch of dried leaves would have made very little impression on the Admiral-not only was he interested in something with a little more glitter, but he would have entirely missed the point of being offered these dried leaves (Morison 1974). We do not know how the sailors reacted to the sight of smoking. This episode in the contact between Amerindians and Europeans was not publicized for many decades but it was the beginning of a long series of encounters between the two cultures in which tobacco was exchanged.
