Pipes
For some cigar and tobacco shops, a Cigar Store Indian sits beyond your door. While this could easily be viewed as an unwanted stereotype on the Native American community, it can also be a part of cigar and tobacco history. As some of those wooden Indians appear inviting, happily greeting any incoming customers, others appear defensive, like guarding the store from shop lifters, thieves, and No Smoking ordinances. Nevertheless they appear, they seem often: Cigar Store Indians have grown to be advertising icons on the planet of Pipes.
The same as candy-caned barber poles have grown to be synonymous with barber shops, and talking lizards have grown to be synonymous with car insurance, these wooden Indians have grown to be synonymous with cigar stores, historically serving as an advertisement that tells the masses where tobacco is sold. Nowadays, however, the Cigar Store Indian can be used less as a questionnaire of advertisement and more as a questionnaire of decoration, one which brings dimension and culture to tobacco's colorful past.
How They Began
When Native Americans introduced tobacco to the European populace, they adopted the role as spokespeople for the cigar industry, forever making their culture intertwined with the culture of tobacco. Due to this, a visual picture of an Indian was often used to tell the masses, highly illiterate masses, where they may purchase tobacco.
The 17th Century Europe marked the first time sellers of tobacco used a wooden Indian to peddle their product. However, because those who did the very first carving hadn't actually seen a Native American, the very first wooden Indians that sat on stoops of the cigar stores of Europe often were fanciful, fictional characters. Yet, by the full time the wooden Indian made its way to America, it began to take on a more genuine, authentic appearance.
How They Were Carved
Although some Cigar Store Indians were made of cast iron, most were made of wood. Many them were created by artisans or professional carvers. Using axes, chisels, and mallets on white pine, the wooden figures were carved and then painted in a tapestry of folklore, fine arts, and popular culture. As well as wooden Indians, carvers also produced wooden sports figures, politicians, high society women, and Scotsmen.
What They Looked Like
The initial wooden Indians were both male and female, allowing the vendor to decide on which gender they wanted to greatly help market their goods. Once the wooden Indian craze first began, the feminine wooden Indian was used four times more frequently compared to the male wooden Indian. While female wooden Indians were occasionally carved with a papoose, and donned with a headdress of tobacco leaves as opposed to feathers, male figures were often dressed up in the standard warbonnets (a ceremonial headdress) of the Plains Indians.
Present Day
The height of the wooden Indian fad took devote the 1800's, with a wooden statue standing outside just about any tobacco shop in America. However, in a sad parallel to Native American history, the wooden Indian was often mistreated, damaged by passer-bys. Due to this, the beginning of the 1900's marked a finish to the popular kind of tobacco advertising.
In today's day and age, with a better amount of men and women literate, the necessity for a visual advertisement waned, sidewalk obstruction laws, and high manufacturing costs, the Cigar Store Indian is not as common since it once was. Some still do stand outside cigar shop doorways, but numerous others stand inside museums, representing a part of tobacco history. Another reason for his or her disappearance may be the sensitivity of the subject. Although some people Pipes a Cigar Store Indian as a stereotype, others view it within cigar lore and a laudation for a small grouping of individuals who introduced the blissfulness of tobacco to an unknowing culture.