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While the sixteenth-century transculturation of tobacco was an event of momentous significance in European and Amerindian history, no thorough, anthropological analysis of its effects has heretofore been attempted. This may be attributed partly to traditional acculturation models which have tended to emphasize only changes inflicted on native populations and have often failed to contextualize natives and newcomers within a single bilateral, historical trajectory. This study surveys the effects of smoking on European culture and on colonial activities in America. This is followed by an extensive scrutiny of ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence relating to the use of pipes and tobacco at all socio-political, economic and ideological levels of contact between Europeans and North American Indians. While sharing the pipe fortified native institutions and served as a lubricant in relations between two very different peoples, it eroded the intellectual boundaries between "savagery" and "civilization." The final chapters of the study trace the reactions to this erosion in both academic and popular discourse.