Origin of Name
The basis for the name Tobacco Root is unclear. John Willard says “Indians and early trappers found a root in these mountains that, when dried and mixed with larb, made a suitable substitute for real tobacco. The root was a species of mullein.”
The term "tobacco root" is also an old name for species of arnica; native and European-introduced arnica are wildflowers in Western Montana, including the Tobacco Root Mountains.
Tansley, Shaffer and Hart (1933) attribute the practice of drying a species of mullein and mixing it with kinnikinic (bearberry) to replace tobacco to John Edwards, a prospector from Flint Creek, in the 1860s. He also gave the name to the hills in which the root was found. Kinnikinic, as the name of a mixture and not the bearberry plant, was a leaf-bark mixture, including sumac and dogwood leaves, smoked by Indians and pioneers in the Ohio Valley in the 18th Century. It was probably more or less the same as the “larb” mentioned above.
Other sources have reported the root to be a variety of the bitterroot, Montana’s protected state flower. Shoshone Indians reportedly cooked the root and ate it, and it supposedly smelled like tobacco.
Read more about this topic: Tobacco Root Mountains
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