Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1917 — Passing of Cigar Store Indians. [ARTICLE]

Passing of Cigar Store Indians.

Whither are they gons, the cigar store Indians? History tells us that It was a pesky redskin who first slipped a sample package of Pocohontas Mixture to Capt. John Smith. Soon, thanks to Sir Walter Raleigh, the world’s first tobacco press* agent L all lire. colonists anda lot the folks at home were cultivating Jimmy pipes or teaming to roll their own. And succeeding generations, anxious to give the red man his due, set up his wooden image before the door of every tobacco shop. Stiff and proud stood old Chief Colorado Maduro, in one hand a bundle of wooden cigars, grasped tightly; in the other a wooden tomahawk. He was an unendifig source of inspiration and pleasure to all small boys, their glass of fashion and mold of for in, A romantic figure, too constant reminder of the poetry of tobacco smoke. Now they axe gone, these silent braves, gone up perhaps along with the priee of tobacco. In their place the boys of today arc being brought up on pictures of shiny gentlemen in dress suits who live in palatial clubs and roll cigarettes from 5-cent packets of “smoking mixtures.” Forgotten is the full flavored romance of tobacco smoke.