Native Americans grew and smoked tobacco. It wasn't a crop of the stereotypical plains Indians like the Sioux or Lakota being that it is a subtropical to tropical plant, but it was common among the Native American tribes of the Gulf Coast and Caribbean. There is documentation from the journals of early explorers that encountered the Calusa of Florida, Lucayna or the Bahamas and Cuba, Mayans in the Ukatan, etc. who all grew, smoked, and traded tobacco. The invention of the cigar is often credited to the Myans. As America grew Native Americas were often involved in the tobacco industry when it came to jobs like rolling cigars. My Great Grandmother was a Native American cigar roller in Key West, and then in Tampa during the height of the Great depression. Being a Native American crop that was traded to Europeans and eventually bread and commercialized, Native Americans were probably seen as experts on the stuff, thus used as a marketing gimmick to represent authenticity and quality. Maybe an element of the product being exotic and from the new world was also a marketing goal... Drawings of the Sioux or Lakota were probably just more familiar to European markets as they would be seen in news papers as westward expansion occurred.
The use of Native images on commercial tobacco products is a manipulation of a cultural history and practice for the sake of cigarette sales. It is common for cigarette brands to use stereotypical Native American images and motifs for branding and advertising, sometimes as a ploy to convince smokers that these cigarettes are more “natural” or health conscious. Research has found that Non-Hispanic American Indians and Alaska Natives are also more exposed to tobacco advertisements in stores than Non-Hispanic Whites
Chief Junglethunder was actually my great great great great great great grandfather and I guarantee you he grew tobacco. He had a tobaccos field in (what we now call) Florida. Only the Indians with 4 feathers or more were allowed in his field
Native American use of tobacco dates back over 2000 years. American Indians introduced tobacco to Europeans, so the association of Indians and tobacco has always been strong in North Ameria. Just like a barber shop displayed a barber pole and a pawn shop three gold balls, a tobacco shop put an Indian out front, and used Indians in advertising.
The current crop of millennials claim that (racist, of course) Europeans brought all sorts of diseases to the Indians (assisting in wiping them out), but they conveniently ignore the scourge that tobacco use has brought to the "white man". FAR... more people have died as a result of tobacco use than those from measles, chicken pox, or any other disease.
Something to keep in mind is that until the 20th Century (1901), literacy in the USA was not common. It didn't do a business much good to hang a sign if half of the people looking at it couldn't read what it said. Sign or not, a "Cigar Store Indian" out front automatically meant a tobacco shop.
I think you meant native Americans, based on the image you chose. I’m not sure if Indians have any iconic connection to tobacco. Some native Americans did grow tobacco, among other things commonly used in some of their rituals. Peace pipes were and are real.
Maybe trying to just give them representation for Something? There really isn’t any representation for them right? The redskins removal was a bad idea. They should have kept it Native American related.
