Cannabis originated in Central Asia and while psychoactive forms of the drug were widely used throughout Asia and parts of Africa and Europe before 1492, there's zero evidence it came to the New World before Columbian Contact. See Warf (2014) for a good overview of cannabis use throughout global history (1). For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to psychoactive cannabis as “marijuana” and the non-psychoactive form as “hemp”.
The historic references are often vague about the distinction between marijuana, hemp, and other fiber plants. The term “Indian hemp” was widespread in the English-speaking world in the 1800s and early 1900s, and could mean both marijuana or non-cannabis plants used for fiber. In British usage, “Indian hemp” referred to marijuana, and the term was derived from the Indian subcontinent, not American Indians. However, the same term is also used North America to refer to non-cannabis indigenous plants used for fiber (like apocynum cannabinum) (2). By the mid-1800s, the Ogallala (Sioux) language used the word "wahupta", which probably originally meant an indigenous fiber plant but was also applied to hemp (3). The US government was encouraging Native Americans to grow hemp on Indian trust lands in the late 1800s, but there’s no evidence this was related to marijuana usage.
So, if you see the term “Indian hemp” in historic British usage, it almost always means marijuana, but if you see it in US/Canadian sources, it depends on the context.
Marijuana usage in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean may have begun as early as the 1700s, but the drug’s popularity increased dramatically when (Asian) Indian farm workers entered the Caribbean and northern South America in the mid-late 1800s (1 & 5). It’s been suggested that the Nahuatl (Aztec) word "pipiltzintzintli" referred to the marijuana plant as early as 1772 (4), but this identification is uncertain, and for the most part, only hemp was grown in Mexico during this period.
Native Americans in Belize were apparently widely growing marijuana plants in the early 20th century (5). The Cuna in Panama were recorded in 1975 as using marijuana medicinally, but this is noted to be common only with "accultured" Cuna (6), suggesting it didn't have a long history of use.
In the US, a 1929 Montana newspaper reporting on state efforts to control marijuana usage reported that it was "a plant used by Mexicans and cultivated for sale by Indians” (7:1014). Given the fact that the article goes on to revel in "reefer-madness-like" anti-Mexican racial stereotypes, the literal accuracy of this statement is highly questionable. Marijuana use was heavily linked to negative stereotypes of Mexicans at the time (much like the "drunken Irish" trope).
There are some youtube videos that imply that marijuana was adopted into Native American usage in the US in the 1700 and 1800s, but I haven’t seen any reliable sources for this. Warf refers to Mexican Indians using marijuana in ceremonial offerings, but the context suggests a fairly recent date, after the mid-1800s.
So, although psychoactive cannabis was adopted by some Native American communities for both casual and ceremonial usage, this happened mostly due to direct or indirect influence from Southeast Asia via Mexico and the Caribbean after the mid-1800s. In the US and Canada, marijuana usage in general grew most rapidly after the early 1900s. Finally, it’s worth noting that Native American usage could be considered “traditional” even if it started in the last 150 years or so.
Turner, Nancy J. and Dawn C. Loewen, “The Original "Free Trade": Exchange of Botanical Products and Associated Plant Knowledgein Northwestern North America” Anthropologica, Vol. 40, No. 1, L'Ethnobiologie / Ethnobiology (1998), pp. 49-70, Canadian Anthropology Society
Murphy, Lori, “Enough Rope: Why United States V White Plume Was Wrong On Hemp And Treaty Rights, And What It Could Cost the Federal Government”, American Indian Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2010-2011), pp. 767-788, University of Oklahoma College of Law
L. J. Valdés, III, G. M. Hatfield, M. Koreeda and A. G. Paul, “Studies of Salvia divinorum (Lamiaceae), an Hallucinogenic Mint from the Sierra Mazatecain Oaxaca, Central Mexico”, Economic Botany, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr-Jun, 1987), pp. 283-291
Fraser, H. Aubrey “The Law and Cannabis In The West Indies”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (September 1974), pp. 361-385, Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies
Duke, James A. "Ethnobotanical Observations on the Cuna Indians", Economic Botany, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jul-Sep, 1975), pp. 278-293
Bonnie, Richard J & Charles H Whitebread II, “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition”, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 6 (Oct, 1970), pp. 971-1203
Edit: minor formatting
There is a common assumption that peace pipes contained cannabis, but this seems to not be true historically. I was unable to find reliable evidence that even modern native communities use cannabis for this, despite some rumors. The answer by u/Reedstilt from last time a similar question was asked explains that widespread cannabis use for its psychoactive effects north of Mexico is relatively new, in the last century or so. This leaves a pretty narrow window between the popularization of the plant as a recreational drug by Mexican immigrants after 1910 and its subsequent federal ban in 1937. Most states had already passed their own bans before 1937 as well, including the border states of California in 1913 and Texas in 1923, further restricting the period of potential legal adoption of the practice by native communities.
However, the US recognized cannabis as a pharmaceutical by 1850, and was discussed as a recreational narcotic as early as 1854. Native Americans also lived within Mexico before the Mexican Revolution, where they could have picked up the practice. A book of Indian medicine from 1980 suggests Native's use of seeds, juice, and roots for a variety of ailments for some time before its publication. By 1980 in the US, marijuana had been used by a higher percentage Native Americans than whites, mirroring the more general trend of higher rates of substance abuse by Native Americans, though usage frequency among abusers in both populations was similar.
The use of cannabis for both medicine and for recreation seems to have entered the Native American cultural consciousness from the same sources and at (approximately) the same time as it did for Euro-Americans, so it is likely they used it in pretty much the same way. I am not a historian, so hopefully someone with more expertise can fill in more details.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: Credit to user answering previous Askhistorians question.
To subscribe to this thread through the Remind Me Bot, send it a note through this link. If you subscribed and have come back to read the answer after being reminded by the bot, please respond here and let us know!
Hi, everybody! So, you've probably clicked on this thread because it has so many upvotes and you assume that means there's an answer - but that's not how /r/AskHistorians works. In general, people upvote threads here because they want an answer. The thing is, it can often take time for a good answer to be written. Our mission is to provide users with in-depth and comprehensive responses, and our rules are intended to facilitate that purpose. That's why we remove comments that are very short, based on speculation, or just plain inaccurate. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply makes the problem worse. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the rules: we don't want to have to give you a temporary ban for ignoring them.
While you wait, you can check out places our already-answered questions are featured, including Twitter, the Sunday Digest, the Monthly "Best Of" feature, and now, Facebook. Statistically speaking, it's very likely that the question will be answered in a few hours, so please check back in later.
Finally, while we always appreciate feedback, we ask that any comments about our moderation style and rules be sent to modmail, or a META thread. Please be aware that we've considered and discarded the idea of an "answered" flair and an automatic "free talk" comment thread many times already. Thank you!