The American Tobacco Company. was founded by James Buchanan
"Buck" Duke, who created a colossal trust by merging his father's
company with four other major tobacco firms.

Tobacco is native to the western hemisphere and was probably first used
by the ancient Maya peoples. The Native North American
Indians believed tobacco had medicinal properties and used it in ceremonies.
It was smoked thru a tube called a tobago, from which the name originated.
In 1556 tobacco was brought first to Spain and then to France.
In 1585 the English navigator Sir Francis Drake took tobacco to England,
and English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the practice of
pipe smoking to the Elizabethan court. Tobacco use spread throughout
Europe and Russia, and by the 17th century it reached China, Japan,
and the west coast of Africa.In colonial America tobacco use began
as early as 1615 in the settlement of Jamestown and became
the staple crop and principal currency of the colony.

Featured on this certificate in the middle of the tobacco field is a Cherokee,
a tribe of the Iroquoian linguistic family and the Southeast culture area.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Cherokee migrated in prehistoric
times from present-day Texas or northern Mexico to the Great Lakes area.
Wars with the Iroquois and the Delaware Indian groups
pushed them southeast to North and South Carolina,
Tennessee, and northern Georgia and Alabama.

In 1791 a treaty ceded part of Cherokee territory to the United States.
Between 1790 and 1819, several thousand Cherokee migrated west of the
Mississippi River, becoming known as the Western Band.
In 1827 the tribe drafted a constitution and incorporated as the Cherokee Nation.
After valuable gold deposits were discovered in tribal lands, the state
of Georgia outlawed the Cherokee government and confiscated tribal lands.
Although their actions were repudiated by more than nine-tenths of the tribe,
Cherokee leaders agreed in 1835 to cede the tribal territory in
exchange for $5,700,000 and land in Indian Territory ( now Oklahoma ).
In 1838 federal troops began forcibly evicting the Cherokee. Several hundred
purchased land in the North Carolina mountains. Meanwhile, most of the tribe
were driven west in a forced march of more than 480 kilometers
( about 300 miles ), known as the Trail of Tears. The march included
20,000 people, of whom about 4000 perished through hunger, disease,
and exposure. In Indian Territory the Cherokee reorganized their government
under their chief, John Ross. The General Allotment Act of 1887 dissolved
the Cherokee Nation's government, and its people became U.S. citizens
when Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907. Surplus lands were parceled
out by the federal government, and in 1891 the tribe's western land
extension, the Cherokee Strip, was sold to the United States.