CIGAR HISTORY
The cigar’s history began with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island of San Salvador, and his subsequent exploration of the large island called Cuba, which he reached on October 28, 1492. It was noted in his log that his colleagues met many male and female Indians who carried a little lighted catapult made from a kind of plant.
Christopher Columbus not only discovered the New World but was astounded to find its native inhabitants smoking prototypes of the cigar. One of his Lieutenants, Luis de Torres, observed that the natives carried a lighted piece of coal and some grasses, and inhaled using catapults, which in their language they called tobaccos. The catapult may have been a tube-shaped construction of plant leaves filled with tobacco. Columbus himself observed that these Indians called the plant Cohiba, a word that has survived 500 years to become the brand name Cohiba, one of the preeminent cigars of Castro’s Cuba, Historians emphasize the role of Rodrigo de Xeres, a fellow explorer who was the first to smoke a cigar-like object, and did so every day of the exploration.
Columbus returned three more times to the New World in the next 22 years, which was an incredible feat in that era, and explored the tobacco lands of San Salvador, Cuba, Guadalupe, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Venezuela, Columbia, Honduras and the island of Hispaniola, which later became the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Other explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci, Alveres Pedro Cabal, and Ferdinand Magellan, also encountered tobacco first hand. Some Spanish historians say Cortez was the first to bring tobacco back to Europe in 1518. Others credit Francisco Hernandez Goncalo as late as 1570. Portuguese experts say it was Hernandez de Toledo in 1520, who brought leaves harvested in the Tobasco province of the Yucatan, back in Lisbon. The Dutch claim it was Damien De Goes, who brought the seed from Florida and presented it to King Sebastian of Portugal.
The origin of the word cigar has been linked falsely to the Spanish word cigaral (cicada), In fact, it comes from the ancient Mayans. The Popol Vuh, a chronicle of the Quiche tribe, gives the cigar a name pronounced Jiq or Ciq. The Spanish cigarro is derived from the Maya word Ciq-Sigan. Actually, the word floated and danced in oral and written tradition for two centuries until it appeared as cigale in the writings of Father Labat, (circa 1700), and as Seegar in the New English Dictionary of 1735. The noble cigar store Indian is a very real and appropriate symbol for tobacco.
The French Ambassador to Lisbon, Jean Nicot, was such an enthusiast that the tobacco plant Nicotiana Tabacum was named for him. He gave it to Catherine de Medici in France, who claimed it had medicinal value. By the late sixteenth century, Spain, Italy, and England were familiar with tobacco. While tobacco recruited enthusiasts in the Old World, it also inspired enemies.
After Queen Victoria’s death, the English King Edward VII uttered the words “Gentlemen, you may smoke”. The English king James I, denounced it in 1619 as “stinking grass”, and disapproved of the fashion, “which was imitating the beastly manners of those godless and slavish Indians”. Other monarchs who had previously encouraged importation, echoed similar sentiments. Pope Urban VIII forbade Spanish priests from smoking cigars. Sultan Ahmed hacked off the noses of any subjects found smoking a cigar. Russian Czar Michael Fedorivich III, the Persian Shah Abbas I, and the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV, all took sides against tobacco, The great fire of Moscow in 1650 was conveniently blamed on a smoker. In France, Cardinal Richelieu laid a heavy tax on tobacco use.
From the start, the Spanish were prime architects of the cigar industry. By the early 1800’s the royal cigar factories of Sevilla were experiencing astounding growth. It is important to note that no one in South or Central America had made a cigar as we know today. That credit goes to the Spaniards. Prior to that time, New World natives had wrapped tobacco leaves of other plants like palm or maize. In 1831 King Ferdinand VII granted Cubans the right to produce and sell tobacco in their homeland. The island soon swarmed with producers who were the exclusive makers for the Spanish Crown. This tradition continued even under the regime of Fidel Castro, who was known to send a symbolic batch of the best cigars consisting of Cohibas and Trinidads to the Spanish King. To this day, Spain remains the worlds largest importer of Cuban Cigars and offers them to its people at the lowest prices.
Tobacco was cultivated widely in the British colonies of North America, but at first the crops were intended for pipe smokers. In 1762, Israel Putnam returned to Connecticut form active duty with the British army in Cuba bearing a large supply of cigars and introduced the miracle to Connecticut. Putnam was a hero at the battle of Bunker Hill and went on to become a Revolutionary War General. Following the war, factories for cigars sprang up in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. The word Stogie comes from Conestoga, Pennsylvania, which had cigar factories and later produced the famed covered wagons that carried American settlers westward.
The rare American label Old Sport, was printed in New York City. English veterans of the 1814 campaign against Napoleonic forces in Spain brought the cigar to England, while French troops introduced it to Paris. In 1823 only 15,000 cigars were imported into Britain. By 1840 that figure jumped to 13 million. They were also favored by Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Charles Baudelaire, as well as composers Georges Bizet and Maurice Ravel. During the 1880’s, London financier Leopold de Rothschild instructed the Hoyo de Monterrey factory in Havana to make a short cigar with a large ring size so that he could enjoy full flavor in a short time.
Paul Garmirian notes in his book, The Gourmet Guide of Cigars that the English consumption of imported cigars remained low because the cigars were heavily taxed as a luxury item, whereas pipe tobacco was not. Domestically made English cigars, even though constructed with imported tobacco, were taxed less heavily.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) smoked as many as 20 cigars a day and encouraged his colleagues to smoke them. Despite the tariff, Spanish cigars known as Sevilles, were popular in London and Paris, where the post-prandial cigar became a tradition. Smoking rooms called Divans sprang up In London, while British and European railroads introduced smoking cars. Silk smoking jackets came into vogue allowing gentlemen to bask in smoke and ash without stinking up their fine clothes. The smoking jacket evolved into the tuxedo, which to this day the French refer to as le smoking. France remains one of the most cigar friendly countries in the world.
Cigar smoking in America rose dramatically after the Civil war with many U.S. companies producing cigars made of domestic wrappers and Havana fillers. Cigars and Cuban-American politics have long been mixed. From 1881-1895, the Cuban writer and Revolutionary Jose Marti lived in New York City. When he finally returned to liberate Cuba from Spanish rule, he headed the support of thousands of Cuban cigar makers who fled to Key West and Tampa. The plans for the rebellion were sent from Key West to Havana rolled in a cigar. This first revolution, with the morale building presence of Teddy Roosevelt and American forces at San Juan Hill was successful although it caused the death of Marti, who is considered the Cuban equivalent of George Washington. Sixty years later in 1955, Castro’s supporters delivered messages hidden in cigars to Fidel Castro in his Cuban prison on the Isle of Pines.
