Like any other quality spirit or wine, cigar is one of the pleasures of life. A product that has a history steeped in civilizations, religion, and voyages.
One must talk about tobacco to talk about cigars. The origin of tobacco plant is a mystery, no one can point out a date or year when it was introduced or planted. The oldest traces of cigars take us to the Mayan civilization, where they have found ancient artifacts from around AD250 to AD900 that depicts a Spider monkey smoking something. What they call “The Vase of the Smoking Monkey”. It’s said the ancient Mayans would wrap these leaves in palm or plantain leaves and smoke it.
Different Mayan artifacts have indicated the smoking of tobacco as a ritual and ceremonial activity. According to speculation, the word 'Cigar' may have originated from the Mayan word 'Sikar'. The Sikars were often offered to the Gods, burning like an incense stick or as smoke being released by the mouths of worshippers.
Fast forwarding to the new world, the year was 1492 when the journey of modern cigar began with an exploration by Christopher Columbus. Legend has it that, on October 12th of 1492, when Columbus landed in the Bahamas, he received a gift from the natives of San Salvador. He notes in his diary:
“The natives brought fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance.”
Since the leaves were inedible, he threw them overboard.
From there, it was another 16 days of sailing before they arrived off the coast of Cuba on October 28, 1492. Two of his crewmates, Luis de Torres, and Rodrigo de Jerez, went offshore for some food and supplies. On the shore were the Taíno people, who inhabited not only Cuba but also Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
They were taken captive to their tribe and were taken to the chieftain of the tribe to find out if they came to harm the tribe. The explorers came upon an unusual sight, rituals with pure solid gold utensils and the indigenous inhabitants were puffing away; most likely rolled plant leaves stuffed with tobacco, or, as the locals called it, cojoba (alt. cohiba). It was used by the chieftain in a ritual, where he would smoke this leaf and connect to higher powers to make a judgement. The chieftain of Taine tribe was called “Behike”.
Later there rolled leaves were presented to Luis de Torres, and Rodrigo de Jerez; who became the first Europeans to smoke a cigar. They took the seed to Spain, and it slowly went to the rest of the world.
Rodrigo de Jerez, hooked on the habit of smoking and took it to Spain, he walked around smoking these new leaves in the area and people didn’t know want to make of it. He was reported and then imprisoned for that, as authorities believed “Only Satan would be able to make people blow smoke out of their mouths,” and the first European smoker wound up in jail for 7 years because, well, people thought he was Satan.
And that was the beginning of Cigars to the new world.
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