Sot-weed

These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar [more recent explanatory foot-note] Sot-Weed, i. e. the sot making or inebriating weed; a name for tobacco, used at that time. A Sot-weed Factor, was a tobacco agent or supercargo.

The Sot-Weed Factor [title]

the effects of smoking sotweed... Depressions would produce modest efforts to diversify the economy but as soon as tobacco prices rose again, planters returned to “sotweed making”.

John Rolfe toiled over his tobacco plants, spending four years perfecting the cultivation and curing of his “sot weed”