Shopfronts - Smoke Shop Ceramic Ornament

Designs by Susan Savad -- The cigar store Indian is part of the history of the tobacco industry and a piece of Americana and have become synonymous with cigar stores. Native Americans introduced tobacco to the Europeans and and thus Indians became associated with the tobacco industry and were used in front of cigar shops to indicate that tobacco were sold there. The height of the popularity of the cigar store Indian was in the 1800s through the early 1900s. I saw this beautiful, wooden cigar store Indian in front of a shop selling tobacco in Hoboken, New Jersey.