Because of the general illiteracy of the populace, early store owners used descriptive emblems or figures to advertise their shop's wares. Indians and tobacco had always been associated, 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." The early cigar-store Indians could be purchased as either male or female and were fashioned both in wood and cast iron. In the early years the female figure (with or without papoose) was by far the more popular, outnumbering the male figures four to one. Occasionally, the female figure was adorned with a headdress of tobacco leaves in place of the more standard feathers. By the late 1800s the cigar-store Indian was doomed to extinction, relegated to the museum and the antique shop by new sidewalk-obstruction laws and the need for sidewalk space for venders of fruit and other goods. To all but the serious collector or museum curator, the cigar-store Indian is today considered the native equivalent of the black lawn jockey — a stereotypical and thus demeaning portrayal of Native Americans.

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