Tobacco and Snuff

“Take that same stuff, that snuff, but it must be burned.” A New Orleans informant was explaining how a woman running a house kept men coming back: she burned ordinary snuff and dropped the ashes in their drinks, cup after cup (Hyatt 2674 · New Orleans, La. · informant 828).

Tobacco was everywhere in the South Hyatt recorded. It was chewed, dipped, smoked and grown, and conjure put every form of it to work: plug and snuff, cigars and their ashes, even the paper and the cloth sacks it came in.

What it is

In Hyatt’s volumes tobacco and snuff turn up in tricks, cures, law work, love work and luck. They were cheap, always at hand, and strong to the nose and eye.

• Chewing tobacco and plug: chewed against the hag, mixed into baths and poultices, or washed in urine for a husband.
• Snuff: put in coffee, shoes, drinks and on handwriting; held under a sleeper’s nose.
• Cigars: dressed for gambling luck, burned before the judge.
• Cigar and cigarette ashes: in liquor, to stop a drinker or bring customers back.
• Tobacco sacks and tin foil: the Bull Durham sack as a ready-made mojo bag; the silver paper as quicksilver.

What Hyatt’s informants said

Snuff could reveal a thief. In Fayetteville the method was coffee in a cup, three breaths blown into it, snuff added and the coffee poured off. When the cup dried upside down, “de picture of who stole it will be in de cup” (Hyatt 622 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1450).

It could test a trick. A Norfolk man who could neither stay away from a girl nor stay with his wife was told by a root worker to soak snuff in vinegar and “put it under his girl’s nose at night”. If she slept through it, he had been fixed (Hyatt 621 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 315).

It could cripple. In Waycross an informant described laying a person’s handwriting on a table, covering it with Railroad Snuff and a wet cloth, until the writer’s hand pained and wasted: “Aftah while yo’ git tuh de place dat hand is no good to yuh” (Hyatt 8860 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1097).

Variations

• Chewing tobacco under the pillow with silver money; a chew and a count of the coins drove off the night hag (Hyatt 531 · Little Rock, Ark. · informant 896).
• Snuff and burned red pepper put in a rival woman’s shoe to drive her away from a husband (Hyatt 5199 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1391).
• Snuff ground with cayenne, salt and kerosene and given to a wife, which ate her up inside (Hyatt 3164 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 474).
• A pinch of snuff and sugar put in the bottom of a condom, so a woman’s customers would keep coming and spending (Hyatt 13134 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 962).
• Tobacco set smouldering in a pan to smoke a room clean of germs (Hyatt 1584 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1476).

What it was used for

Drink came up again and again. Cigar or cigarette ashes in liquor were a cure for the heavy drinker in Waycross and Memphis (Hyatt 7011 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 936). Hyatt noted that he found tobacco ashes used for this everywhere.

The same ashes worked the other way. A Florida bootlegger was told to drop cigar dust or ashes in his customers’ glasses on his opening night, to bring them back (Hyatt 7012 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1043).

Court work used the cigar. In New Orleans two John Ruskin cigars were set smoking in a new glass on a cake of ice, ringed by nine new glasses holding white candles, all burning while the case went on (Hyatt 2915 · New Orleans, La. · informant 824).

Healing used the leaf. A Wilmington informant was bathed from hip to foot in salt, sulphur, three dimes and Brown Mule tobacco boiled together (Hyatt 1536 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 313).

In their own words

“yo’ git some likkah an’ put cigah ashes in dere an’ den yo’ make ’em drink off it. He won’t drink no mo’.”

(Hyatt 7010 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1092)

“yo’ kin take some of dis Hearts Cologne an’ po’ about nine drops in dere on dat cigar”

(Hyatt 2338 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1434)

“The judge will discharge you.”

(Hyatt 2915 · New Orleans, La. · informant 824)

How it’s worked today

Tobacco is still one of the commonest materials in conjure. Cigars, loose tobacco and snuff are given to spirits and ancestors on altars and graves, and cigar smoke is blown over people and objects in cleansing and blessing.

Snuff remains an ingredient in powders for crossing, driving away and foot track work, often with red pepper, just as in Hyatt’s day.

The Bull Durham sack has gone, but the small drawstring bag that replaced it is still the standard mojo bag. Tobacco ash, cigar butts and dressed cigars for gambling luck are all still in use.

Learn the work

← Back to The Hyatt Files

Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations from Hyatt’s informants for reference.