Cohoba
/ koh-OH-bah /
Culture & CollectingTaino
Definition
The Taino ceremonial rite in which a cacique or religious specialist inhaled powdered tobacco through a Y-shaped pipe, inducing a trance state believed to allow communication with ancestral spirits.
Why it matters
Cohoba is the earliest well-documented use of tobacco in the Caribbean, predating Columbus by centuries. It establishes that tobacco entered European awareness already carrying deep ceremonial weight, not as a recreational curiosity Europeans simply discovered.
In context
"Surviving European accounts of the cohoba ritual are secondhand and Spanish-authored, so much of what is known about its exact practice is reconstructed rather than directly recorded."
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