Temperance by W. N. Glenn

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 15, 1883

Temperance.

By W. N. Glenn

Why Indians Use Tobacco.

BY W. N. GLENN.

Devil-worship is quite common with the heathen, in fact with some who claim to be more enlightened than the material idol worshipers. One instance is no doubt fresh in the minds of many Californians, of a Spiritualist “professor” whose prelude to a lecture in San Jose was a prayer to Satan. The American Indians, in their savage state, are no exception to this idea of appeasing the wrath of bad spirits and soliciting their favor.

An old missionary among the western tribes, who is well acquainted with the Indian customs, and has inquired into the reasons for many of their habits and ceremonies, informs us that tobacco-smoking with them is really a form of devil-worship; that they imagine that producing tobacco fumes, and teaching the practice to their little ones, are very pleasing to the bad spirits.

This venerable missionary also informs us that he has seen many savage Indians converted to Christianity by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that they invariably threw away their pipes and tobacco, without any special instruction on that point.

To this testimony it may be added, that in both the form of devil-worship and the discarding of tobacco upon espousing Christianity, the Indian idea of the “eternal fitness of things” is to be commended. A more convincing evidence of true conversion on their part could hardly be given, and their example in this respect is worthy of imitation by all professing Christians.