Santo Domingo Punche

Santo Domingo Punche is the ceremonial tobacco of Santo Domingo Pueblo in Sandoval County, New Mexico, collected into the Native Seeds/SEARCH bank in 1978 from a site at roughly 5,200 feet. It differs from the drier-grown Southwestern tobaccos in how it was farmed: NS/S records it as a cultivated annual raised in irrigated Pueblo gardens, and calls the plants abundantly productive, a leaf-yield note that few tobacco accessions carry. Among the Rio Grande Pueblos the leaf is used for prayer, protection and healing, and in rain ceremonies it is burned with other wild herbs whose scent is held to be sacred. Because of that ceremonial role NS/S has taken the variety out of public distribution: it is not for sale and moves only through the Native American Seed Share. It is best understood as a documented community tobacco with an unusually well-recorded collection history rather than as a variety to plant.