Cigar Store Indians

I got this little Ezra Brooks Cigar Store Indian decanter the last time we were down at the lake ($3.00) and it got me wondering about the history of these guys. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them:

"Because of the general illiteracy of the populace, early store owners used descriptive emblems or figures to advertise their shops' wares. Indians and tobacco had always been associated because Indians introduced tobacco to Europeans, and the depiction of native people on smoke-shop signs was inevitable. As early as the seventeenth century, European tobacconists used figures of Indians to advertise their shops. Because European carvers had never seen a Native American, these early cigar-store "Indians" looked more like black slaves with feathered headdresses and other fanciful, exotic features. These carvings were called "Black Boys" or "Virginians" in the trade. Eventually, the European cigar-store figure began to take on a more "authentic" yet highly stylized native visage, and by the time the smoke-shop figure arrived in the Americas in the early eighteenth century, it had become thoroughly "Indian.""

You can see finer, wood-carved examples, and read more about their origins at cigarstoreindianstatue.com