Pituri

Pituri, also known as mingkulpa or bush tobacco, is a mixture of leaves and wood ash traditionally chewed as a stimulant (or, after extended use, a depressant) by Aboriginal Australians widely across the continent. Leaves are gathered from any of several species of native tobacco (Nicotiana) or from at least one distinct population of the species Duboisia hopwoodii. Various species of Acacia, Grevillea and Eucalyptus are burned to produce the ash. The terms pituri and mingkulpa may also refer to the plants from which the leaves are gathered or from which the ash is made. Some authors use the term pituri to refer only to the plant Duboisia hopwoodii and its leaves and any chewing mixture containing its leaves.

History

The earliest record of Aboriginal chewing is found in Joseph Banks's 1770 journal:

We observed that some, though but few, held constantly in their mouths the leaves of an herb which they chewed as a European does tobacco or an East Indian Betel. What sort of plant it was, we had not an opportunity of learning, as we never saw anything but the chaws which they took from their mouths to show us..."

Edmund Kennedy, in his 1847 record of a journey beyond the Barcoo River, described a leaf, tasting strong and hot with the aroma and flavour of tobacco, being chewed by the Aboriginal people. Burke and Wills, on their ill-fated 1861 journey through inland Australia, were given food by local Aboriginal people and also "stuff they call bedgery or pedgery" to chew, which Wills found highly intoxicating even in small amounts. A report from Western Australia described the smoke from burning pituri leaves being used as an anaesthetic during surgical operations such as circumcision.

Other nineteenth-century reports said chewing pituri made old men seers, induced valour in warfare and allowed Aboriginal people to walk hundreds of kilometres without food or water; and a 1901 report claimed they "will usually give anything they possess for it".