Chapter V: Part 5

The Comanche peyote bird is the “sun-eagle,” said to be just under the rising morning sun; “Comanches always mention that bird in their meeting.” This bird, the kʷina-óhap (literally, “eagle-yellow”), which is represented in the shaped ashes west of the peyote fire, “flashes like the sun; ... water bird feathers are used just because they are pretty.” In this connection it is interesting to recall the Tarahumari place name Couwápigóchi, “place of the wapigóri,” from the name of a fishing bird, “a cross between an eagle and a hawk, with feet like an eagle,” which the Mexicans call aquillala, and the brilliantly colored macao and other birds belonging to the Huichol “Grandfather Fire.”[72]

The Kiowa represent their “water-bird” on peyote tie-slides as a long-necked bird like a kingfisher or crane; these have been traded all over the Plains. If a Kiowa peyote-user sees an eagle in a vision, he thereafter carries his eagle-feather fan in his left hand as a sign of this.[73] The peyote bird is prominent in symbolic Kiowa paintings also. Jonathan Koshiway, the Oto peyote teacher, said:

The peyote spirit is like a little humming bird. When you are
quiet and nothing is disturbing it, it will come to a flower
and get the sweet flavor. But if it is disturbed, it goes quick.

Hence the admonitions to sit quietly in meetings and “study” to see if you can “maybe learn something.” Tom Panther, a Shawnee leader, called the ash-bird

a holy bird; it drinks as well as we do of the holy water
[_i.e._ some of the ritual water is poured on the ash-figure in
the morning] and it gets alive a little when people drink, and
from then on is lively until morning.

The martin is said to be the Shawnee peyote bird, as indicated perhaps in the “scissors-tail” shape of some ashes. A Mexican who had long lived with the Wichita had an interesting vision during the water-ceremonies of an Arapaho meeting, when he saw a white feather of the leader “turn into Christ and boss the bald-eagle feather of the fireman around.” The association of birds with peyotism, therefore, appears to be universal in the Plains and Mexico alike.

_Fetish Peyote._ Peyote is the only plant toward which the Kiowa and other typical non-agricultural Plains tribes have a religious attitude and from which they can get “power.” Yet the fetishistic attitude as a psychological phenomenon is not unknown in the Plains of pre-peyote times; the Kiowa taime or Sun Dance image and the “Ten-Medicine” bundles have widespread parallels in the Plains—the Cheyenne fetish-arrows and sacred heart, the Iowa red bean war-bundles, and the ubiquitous medicine-bundles of which the Blackfoot are a type.[74] The Arapaho wore the fetish-plant in an amulet pouch covered with beads, and when placed on the altar a head-plume was sometimes put nearby. The Cheyenne also carry exceptionally large specimens in beaded buckskin cases,[75]

the bead-work being in the form of a star to represent the sun
[?] and the case being suspended from his neck by four strands
of beads “to represent the four thoughts that lead to peyote.”

A Wichita informant carried a peyote button with him to France in the late War, and the fetish miraculously escaped detection during the sterilizing of uniforms; it protected him until he could return to collect his soldier’s bonus in 1936, when a special meeting was held to thank peyote for these boons.

Some Shawnee call the hogimá or “peyote chief” the messenger between humans and God; others call it the “interpreter” or the Holy Ghost. Crashing Thunder addressed the most holy peyote medicine as “grandfather,” but the usual designation of the fetish is “peyote chief” or “father peyote.” While Wolf (Comanche) called it “elder brother” because as a child one specific plant had protected him during an illness.

The Winnebago are evidently influenced by an older tribal pattern in their use of two sacred peyotes, one “male” and the other “female.” John Wilson in an early Caddo meeting near Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, “before the country opened,” placed three peyote buttons on the moon (symbolizing the Trinity of leaders?); his drummer saw one of these turn into a person he had known in life. The Lipan usually had only one hucdjiya´isia, or “big peyote lying,” but sometimes put buttons in a circle around the fire pit, somewhat like the Comanche who placed them in the sage crescent west of the fire.[76]

The Osage, with their usual flair for ostentation, place the “chief peyote” “within the marked outline of a heart and set upon a beaded cylinder support,” according to Dr. Speck. Iowa father peyotes are notable for their size. The Tonkawa sometimes painted the fuzz on the plant red, as though it were a person. The Taos addressed the peyote chief as “Father Ear,” probably carrying over to peyote a common Pueblo fetishistic attitude toward corn. Lipan and Mescalero father peyotes were an active ally of the shaman leading the meeting, as any attempt at witchcraft would “show” on it and inform him of something amiss.[77]

Some individuals particularly cherish and prize their “father peyotes.” A well-known Wichita leader showed the writer his private collection of them one forenoon after a meeting.[78] Some famous “peyote chiefs” are almost heirlooms. Belo Kozad, a prominent Kiowa peyote leader, has one which once belonged to the famous Comanche chieftain, Quanah Parker. This was passed around at the end of the meeting and handled with the utmost reverence.[79]

_Bible._ Peyote-users have also taken over the typical Protestant fetishism of the Bible, but this Christian element in peyote meetings is confined exclusively to Siouan-speaking groups. Radin states categorically that “the use of the Bible is an entirely new element introduced by the Winnebago,” but there is good reason to believe that Hensley borrowed this trait from more southerly Oklahoma groups which he visited in the early days of Winnebago peyotism. The Omaha placing of an open Bible near the father peyote may indeed have been influenced by the Winnebago (who put the peyote directly on the open book), and so too the Iowa, but the Oto use of the Bible in the Church of the First-born probably preceded it in Oklahoma, where, indeed, John Wilson’s Big Moon cult embodied Christian elements. Further, the reading of the Bible is a feature of the Rave rite only, not of the Clay version, a more aboriginal form.[80]

The Winnebago use the New Testament, especially Revelations. Hensley used to have the singing stop at intervals, so that the younger educated men might translate and interpret portions for non-reading members. For some individuals at least, the Bible was the touchstone of behavior:

Then we went home [says Crashing Thunder] and they showed me a
passage in the Bible where it said that it was a shame for any
man to wear long hair. I looked at the passage. I was not a
man learned in books, but I wanted to give them the impression
that I knew how to read so I told them to cut my hair. I was
still wearing it long at the time. After my hair was cut I took
out a lot of medicines, many small bundles of them. These and
my shorn hair I gave to my brother-in-law. Then I cried and
my brother-in-law also cried. He thanked me, told me that I
understood and that I had done well.

Another time, in a peyote vision, his body deserted Crashing Thunder and turned the leaves of the Bible until it came to Matthew 16 and read[81] that “Peter did not give himself up”; this meant that the peyote was troubling him because he was stubborn and would not acquiesce to its power.[82]

The Bible was also used to support rationalizations after the fact:[83]

At first our meetings were started without following any rule
laid down by the Bible, but afterwards we found a very good
reason for holding our meetings at night. We searched the Bible
and asked many ministers for any evidence of Christ’s ever
having held any meetings in the day-time but we could find
nothing to that effect. We did, however, find evidence that he
had been out all night in prayer. As it is our desire to follow
as closely as we can in the footsteps of Christ, we hold our
meetings at night.

The Bible is said to mention peyote in several places:

And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire,
and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it
(Exodus 12.8).

And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall
keep it as a feast by an ordinance forever (Exodus 12.14).

Mrs. Voegelin cites a Shawnee belief in a Bible reference to peyote, but it is somewhat ambiguous and obscure.[84]

_Altars or “Moons.”_ Peyote altars range in complexity from the simple war-shield of a Comanche war-party leader on which the peyote was laid, to the elaborate permanent symbolic concrete altars in the Big Moon round-house churches. All the Plains variants are built on the standard crescent altar, grooved from tip to tip by the “peyote road” which devotees must follow to a knowledge of peyote.[85] Interpretations of the moon symbolism are almost as numerous as individual users; for, given the physiological effects of peyote and the acceptance in Plains culture of the individual vision “authority,” standardized meanings are not to be expected. One Shawnee, for instance, said the mound represented the mountain of the origin story where “Peyote Woman” first found peyote; another that the place of the peyote on the moon represented the space between Jesus Christ’s eyes, just over the brain, and the arms of the crescent his arms as he lay face downward on the cross: “If we eat the peyote which is on his brain, maybe it will make us think too.”

Again, given these factors and the nature of peyote leadership, it is not surprising to find variations run riot; sometimes even the same leader does not conduct two meetings exactly alike, or construct the moon precisely the same (changing the ashes, etc.) Three Osage leaders, for example, change the tribal altar by simply turning everything through 180° to make a “West Moon.” John Elcare (Delaware) is said to have a unique “fish moon,” north of the fire and facing east, which he feeds and gives to drink. The Omaha[86] dug a heart-shaped fireplace eight to twelve inches deep to represent the heart of Jesus. We were unable to discover the exact nature of Leonard Taylor’s (Cheyenne) “Heart Moon,” no longer conducted, but it appears rather to resemble a Winnebago altar figured by Densmore: a heart superimposed on a cross in the fireplace, under the fire, with a small mound to the east representing the earth.

This mound opposite and to the east of the crescent appears to be of Caddoan origin.[87] Jimmy Hunter’s moon shows this in perhaps its earliest, and certainly its simplest form: a line joining the mound and the center of the crescent, with another crossing this from horn to horn of the crescent. Bob Dunlap’s moon has a further minor addition, a heart at the juncture of the crossed lines. The moon of Ernest Spybuck, pictured in Harrington, is Shawnee rather than Delaware-Caddo, but shows definite Big Moon influence; it is intermediate in complexity, perhaps, between the Caddoan small moons and the elaborately symbolic John Wilson Big Moon. The Enoch Hoag moon[88] (a favorite among the Caddo nowadays) shows features parallel with the Wilson moon: it has a star and a heart at the hair-parting or forehead of the altar “face,” ash mounds simulating eyes, an inverted heart at the crossing of the altar-lines as a nose, four concentric lozenges for an oracular mouth, and another heart east of this resembling a cleft chin; the moon itself is the figure’s hair. Moonhead’s (i.e. John Wilson’s) altar similarly represents a man’s head, and contains the leader’s initials or “foot-prints” and his “grave” alongside that of Jesus. The Black Wolf moon is another elaboration of the Big Moon type.

It must not be thought, however, that the bold innovations begun by John Wilson and others have resulted in a complete chaos of individualism. It requires considerable prestige and force of personality to vision a moon impressively enough to gain an adequate following. In recent years leaders in the Native American Church have expressed themselves unfavorably on the growing variety and profusion of rival moons, and have urged a return to the standardized simplicity of the older more deeply entrenched forms. Perhaps for this reason, and personality factors as well, several new “moons” have been considerably less than complete successes. A case in point is that of Albert Stamp (Seminole). His design is not strikingly original or different from the moons of the Caddo among whom he lives: he has six concentric lozenges to Hoag’s four and has added three concentric triangles. That is all. But his moon has not found acceptance, and he has dismantled his cement altar, removing the entire central symbolic portion, leaving only the crescent and simple polygonal apron.[89]

This is only a single instance of a general movement back to more “pure” original forms, stimulated perhaps by the standardizing influence of the Native American Church. This sentiment has had its effect even upon followers of the Wilson Big Moon rite, which is apparently dying out among the Caddo-Delaware (though still strong among the Osage and Quapaw), in favor of the “more Caddo” Hoag moon. If a generalization might be made about the influence of the three tribes most important in the diffusion of Plains peyotism—the Kiowa, the Comanche and the Caddo (who because of their southerly position first received the new religion)[90]—we might call the Kiowa the original standardizers and teachers, who have departed only in the most minute ways from earlier forms; the Comanche the proselytizers and missionaries of the new religion; and the Caddo[91] the innovators.

_Fire._ Nowhere is the kind of wood for the fire ritually prescribed. Mulberry, slippery elm, cottonwood and black jack are said not to be good because they pop and give off sparks, tending to scatter the carefully piled-up ashes. Red bud, which gives off much light and little heat, is a favorite for summer use, while box alder is considered good for winter. But “Grandfather Fire” (as the Delaware, Winnebago, Kickapoo and Shawnee address it) is built in a ritually prescribed way, like the angle of a worm-fence with the apex to the west. The Shawnee say the first four sticks represent tipi poles. The ritual number of peyotism, seven, appears in the number of sticks prescribed for the Northern Cheyenne and Taos.[92]

The fire stick at a Kickapoo-Shawnee meeting attended near McCloud, Oklahoma, was elaborately carved with a crescent, a bird, a father peyote on a rosette, the word “Christ” and crossed sticks.[93] The Caddo say this fire stick is the “heart,” while the twelve interlacing sticks of the fire are the “ribs” and the two ash mounds the “lungs” of Jesus; in some Caddo moons two fireman put sticks on alternately.[94] The Wilson moon of the Quapaw and Delaware has three firemen who sit by the door to fan entrants. The Arapaho[95] leader chooses his hictänäⁿtcä or “fire chief” by silently pointing an eagle wing-feather at him, which the latter uses as a fan during the ceremony; the feather of the Ponca fireman is a symbol of authority. The ceremonial fire as a trait is Mexican, Southwestern, Southeastern and southern Plains (e.g., Caddo and Hasinai), but as involved in peyotism it is a Mexican-Southwestern borrowing rather than Southeastern.[96]

_Ashes._ An interesting feature, remotely suggesting the Southwest, is the building up of the ashes of the peyote fire into a figure. The commonest form is a crescent, smaller than and parallel to the crescent of the earthen moon, which is nearly universal in the Plains. At an early date the Comanche began making the ashes into the shape of a “sun eagle” and the Kiowa into a “humming-bird.” The Shawnee and Kickapoo call it a “water bird”; one Shawnee leader occasionally makes buffalo heads. A Pawnee leader, Good Sun, makes an “eagle” in the ashes. Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) says the bird is “the holy spirit when Jesus was baptized; it’s got good eyes like an eagle—you can’t fool it.”[97]

The separation of the ashes into two piles in the Big Moon rite comes in for similarly varying interpretations. A Delaware informant said that on one’s journey in life toward the peyote “if you’re the right kind of fellow you can pass the fire and everything opens up” like the Red Sea. Some say the two ash piles are the lungs of Jesus; others that one is the grave of John Wilson and the other the grave of Jesus Christ. Some Osage say the whole interior of the altar represents a grave.

_Smoking._ Most of the variations in this ceremony are rather minor. In some groups like the Kiowa only the leader or an older man prays; in others like the Oto all pray aloud at the same time with individual prayers. The Kickapoo ask permission of the leader to make a smoke prayer. The Caddo stop the singing while a prayer is going on, but this is not universal elsewhere. The rule not to pass a smoker or a person chewing peyote appears everywhere, save in the Wilson rite; in this only the leader smoked, and “show-offs” who made requests for tobacco were frowned upon. This descriptive fact is minuscule in importance, save in pointing out the authority of the leader and personality traits of Wilson himself. The original ceremony, as indicated by the Lipan, was a communal smoke at the beginning. The Osage are said to smoke cigars in their peyote meetings, but the usual insistence is on native materials, the corn shuck or, occasionally, the oak leaf cigarette.[98]

In view of the nearly universal ritual use of tobacco in the Americas, the negative cases which occur are interesting. This is traceable to the influence of White Protestantism of the “Russellite” sect in Kansas upon the founder of the Church of the First-born, Jonathan Koshiway. Persuaded by the Kiowa, however, Koshiway and the Oto later abandoned this prohibition, but meanwhile it had spread to other groups. The Iowa[99] “threw away” smoking along with liquor, and did not smoke in peyote meetings. The conjectured Oto origin of Winnebago peyotism is seemingly confirmed by their rejection of smoking in the Jesse Clay meetings:[100]

My elder brother [says Crashing Thunder upon conversion to
peyote] hereafter I shall only regard Earthmaker as holy. I
will make no more offerings of tobacco. I will not use any more
tobacco. I will not smoke, nor will I chew tobacco. I have no
further interest in these things.

The non-use of tobacco in peyote meetings appears to be Pawnee[101] as well. Nowadays, as though in compensation for his earlier defection from the pure native rite, Koshiway uses extraordinarily long six-inch corn shucks.

_Sage._ Sagebrush is used in several ways in peyote meetings: around the periphery of the tipi as a seat, in a cross or rosette under the father peyote on the altar, and in the perfuming ceremony before eating peyote, when it is rubbed between the palms, smelled and rubbed over the head and arms, body and legs.[102] Sometimes a bunch of sage tied together is passed around with the singing-staff also.[103] Dr. Parsons says that at Taos[104] the perfuming is done “to keep the smell of it [on us] so we won’t feel weak or dizzy”; and as a similar protective function of sage is reported by Opler for the Lipan and the “Sun Dance weed” by Mrs. Cooke for the Ute, it is evidently widespread. The Ute sometimes place a willow rope around the tipi, about four feet in from its circumference.

_Passing of Objects._ The standard clockwise circuit of tobacco, sage, peyote, paraphernalia, water, food and persons has already been described. This trivial ritual has nevertheless been made the vehicle of expression of the leader’s authority to change it. Sometimes the circuit begins at the door (Lipan), sometimes at the leader or cedar chief (Iowa), and elsewhere smokes may begin at the leader but food and water at the southeast.[105] In the morning after the untying of the drum the ritual paraphernalia and the father peyote are commonly passed around for participants to handle (Kickapoo, Kiowa, Ponca, etc.) The Ponca make a point of passing the water between the fire and the paraphernalia at the altar-cloth in the midnight ceremony.

The obsessive, involutional quality of ritualism is nowhere better illustrated than in the minutiae of these rules for passing. We have particularized for the Kiowa the standard modes of passing paraphernalia,[106] but even experienced “peyote boys” are in need of instruction concerning the “way” of an unfamiliar leader when they visit other tribes. The Northern Cheyenne, for example, may not pass the drum in his clockwise circuit to leave the tipi, save in grave emergencies when permission is asked of the leader through the fireman. One may not pass a person praying or smoking or eating peyote, and must again consult the leader to see if the way out is clear; there is still another obstacle in the fireman, for no one may exit between him and his seat while he is fixing the fire (the smoker may temporarily put his smoke on the ground before him, or the fireman temporarily take his seat in these cases).

The Clay rite of the Winnebago has a unique method of passing objects: clockwise along the north from the leader to the fireman at the east, then counter-clockwise back to the leader and around along the south to the door, and again clockwise to the leader. The Caddo meticulously observe another rule in entering and leaving the tipi, as though the interior were divided into north and south sides: those on the south enter clockwise and exit counter-clockwise, while those on the north enter counter-clockwise and exit clockwise.

These sometimes complicated “rules” are not the least part of “learning about peyote,” and the ordering of them by the leader reflects similarly complex psychological transactions among individuals. For instance, the simple matter of leaving the tipi at recesses is involved in schism among the Caddo. Translating the terms, they cite the full-blood Caddo, Enoch Hoag’s, as the “systematic way,” or “pure tribal way,” to which they are currently returning (because the leader must be consulted before leaving); the half-Caddo, John Wilson’s, is “any kind of way” (because he is said to have abrogated some of these rules). The Seminole, Stamp, attempted a compromise, allowing persons to exit without permission if they observed the rules about not passing in front of a smoker or eater of peyote; “I’m right in the middle,” he said. But Elijah Reynolds says, “The older men were skeptical. He just made it up to gain influence among others. It’s a kind of racial feeling there.”

_Praying._ Minor variations occur in this procedure too. The Cheyenne are said to pray at great length—“an hour or more sometimes,” a Comanche told me. The Oto use cedar incense instead of tobacco when they pray. The Ponca pray in unison and audibly before the meeting, seated. The Winnebago stand up together to pray, and the leader stands up to pray with a confessant west of the altar. The Shawnee pray on getting the dirt for the “moon,” getting the sage, making the moon, putting a cross on it, cutting the corn shucks, when the food is brought in, etc. The door-man in Pawnee meetings makes a special prayer of dismissal. Often, as with the Kiowa and Oto, the “tribal priest” or curator of the tribal palladium is asked to make an official prayer at some time in the meeting. At Taos the chief prays before the line of worshippers enters inside, and all pray inside. Murie says all the Pawnee pray after the closing song, when the sun’s first rays strike the altar through the opened door.[107]

Mrs. Voegelin gives a typical Shawnee prayer:

My prayer is that of a pitiful man. And also these people here,
visitors, I wish my creator to answer my prayer to take pity
on those visitors. They came to my daughter’s meeting for some
good reason to learn something about my daughter’s meeting. So
each of us give blessing, and bless the water that was brought
in this morning. So let our friendship purify it, that we might
drink this water, to give us long life, and a better life; and
I ask our father to bless all my children, and my wife, and all
of us who are in this meeting tonight. I am glad my friends
came here to help me with my prayer tonight, my daughter’s
birthday meeting, and we thank thee for this food she brought
in, that our friends who are going to eat this food, that they
might feel better from now on in everyday life. We ask in the
name of Jesus, Amen. (He then cried ceremonially at the finish
of the prayer; a few tears ran down his cheeks.)

Praying in peyote meetings appears to have much of the psychological flavor of the old vision quest. The speaker’s voice becomes louder as he proceeds, earnest and quavering as he sways with the fullness of his emotion and stretches out his hands toward the peyote and the fire. Sometimes his speech is wholly interrupted by uninhibited broken sobbing as he cries out for the pity of the supernaturals. John Rave, the Winnebago teacher, said that “only if you weep and repent will you be able to attain knowledge.” Several of the Delaware face-paintings collected by Dr. Speck represent “crying for repentance.”

_Incense._ Cedar incense is invariably placed on the fire at the beginning of the ceremony to purify the paraphernalia and to “bless” the participants before they eat peyote. A patient or one sick from eating peyote is incensed and fanned with an eagle wing, and incense is burnt for the fireman at midnight when he returns with the water, for the leader on returning from the whistling ceremony outside, and for the water woman in the morning. Others extend the incensing and fanning to every person who re-enters the tipi after a recess, and the Wilson rite[108] has special officials to perform this duty. Many leaders about midnight provide for the cedar smoking of personally-owned feathers, drum sticks, gourds, etc., and permit individuals to use their own after midnight until morning in place of the equipment provided by the leader.

_Method of Eating._ Peyote is most commonly eaten in the raw dried state as “buttons,” but when obtainable, in the green form also, which is said to be more potent in action. Sometimes both are provided in the same ceremony, as well as peyote “tea,” a dark-brown infusion made of soaked and boiled buttons. For the old and sick the buttons may be soaked and softened in water, or pounded dry in mortars and molded into small moist balls; the latter form is reported for the Arapaho, Caddo, Delaware, Lipan, Osage and Winnebago. In chewing the dry buttons the Kiowa, Mescalero and others take care to pick off the fuzz on the top lest it cause sore eyes and blindness.[109]

_Singing._ The leader always sings the four sets of Esikwita or Mescalero Apache songs as his assistant drums: Hayätinayo (Opening Song), Yáhiyano (Midnight Song), Wakahó (Daylight Song) and Gayatina (Closing Song). All the other songs, sung by the participants during the rounds of the drum, are entirely optional. But the standard set songs are not everywhere used: those of the Ponca are said to be Comanche. The ritual songs of the Pawnee are in the Pawnee language, and those of the John Rave rite are in Winnebago (though the followers of Jesse Clay still use the Apache songs.) The circumstances of the origin of some famous songs by Quanah Parker, John Wilson (e.g., Heyowiniho) and Enoch Hoag (e.g., Yanahiano) are widely known.[110]

Many show Christian influence. The Iowa, for example, sing the following songs with Indian vocables, but in a high-pitched style which makes the English words nearly unrecognizable:

i. Jesus’ way is the only way.
ii. Saviour Jesus is the only Saviour.
iii. Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord! It is not everyone who says that who
shall be saved.
iv. I know Jesus now.
v. You must be born again.

The closing song of the Winnebago varies; Yellowbank gave this one:

This is the road that Jesus showed us to walk in.

The followers of Rave close with the Lord’s prayer and a song about wings:

There are many wings [repeated five times]
It is God’s will that there should be many wings.

The first of these is said to have come from the Arapaho, the second from Isaiah 6.2, although a New Testament explanation is offered.[111] The last song of the Pawnee meeting refers to Christ.[112]

Other Winnebago songs (with repetitions omitted) are as follows:

God, I thank you for all you have done for me through Jesus’ name.

(This is an opening song, according to Yellowbank. Another opening song:)

God’s Son says, “Get up and follow Me.” Jesus said, “You shall
enter into the kingdom of God.”

The following are two morning songs:

Jesus said, “Whoever asks Me for water, I will give him the water of
life.
If I give him water he will never thirst again.”

The sun is coming up now. God made that light for us.
We are living now. God made us. To God is the glory.

Other peyote songs are not sung at ritually-set times:

Jesus, how do we know, Jesus, how do we know [him]?
We think about Jesus wherever we are.

How did I know, How did I know Jesus?

When I die I will be at the door of heaven and Jesus will take me in.

God said in the beginning, “Let there be light,”
He meant it for you.

Son of God, have pity on us [repeat]
Son of God, when you come again,
Where your people (the angels) are, let us be.

This is God’s way [repeat]

Whosoever believeth in Him will have everlasting life.
This is God’s way.

We are living humbly on this earth [five times]
Our Heavenly Father, we want everlasting life through Jesus Christ.
We are living humbly on this earth.

He is the only way, Christ is the Way of Life,
He is the only way.[113]

Radin[114] adds the following Winnebago songs:

Ask God for life and he will give it to us.

God created us, so pray to him.

To the home of Jesus we are going, pray to him.

Come ye to the road of the son of God; come ye to the road.

_Midnight Ceremonies._ The whistling outside the tipi at the four quarters is variously rationalized. The Kickapoo say the leader’s circuit follows that of the singing inside, the Shawnee that he whistles at the cardinal points “on account of the four different winds.” The Northern Cheyenne, according to Hoebel, say they are following the instructions of their culture-hero Sweet Medicine in this, while the Comanche say the whistling is to “notify all things in all directions that we are having a meeting here in the center of the cross, and calling the great power to be with us while we drink so that it could hear our prayers.” The Winnebago “flute” blown at this time is to “announce the birth of Christ to all the world”; it also represents the trumpet of the Day of Judgment, and the leader’s otter skin hat symbolizes Christ’s crown of glory. Other Winnebago[115] say the whistling symbolizes the song of praise of the birds in heaven whom God created. The Arapaho say the whistling is an eagle’s cry when it is searching for water, and imitates its coming from a great distance until it dips its beak into the water.[116]

The midnight songs of the Pawnee are said to be for the protection of the man who fetches the water. Old-time Comanche used a paunch for the water, but a bucket is everywhere now used; Comanche and Iowa drinking begin at the cedar chief, rather than south of the door as is usual. The Ponca leader dips a feather in the water and sprinkles patients and those nearby with it; and Shawnee sacrifice a cupful to the earth before drinking. The Kickapoo and others drink directly from the bucket when the fireman brings the midnight water, but use a cup when the woman brings the morning water, in graceful symbolism. Some say the woman represents “Peyote Woman”; others, like the Wichita, identify her with older native powers.[117]

The Lipan have no midnight water ceremony. The Hoag (Caddo) rite has no water ceremonies until the drum has made four rounds of the tipi, but water is brought in for visitors who might call for it or provided outside to be drunk at recesses.[118] In Moonhead’s meeting the fireman gets a feather from the leader on leaving and touches the peyote on his return as he is fanned and incensed with cedar.

_Recess._ After the midnight water ceremony anyone can leave on permission of the leader when he has returned from the whistling ritual outside and been incensed with cedar smoke. People usually leave in twos and threes, as the meeting continues, but they return promptly since others may wish to go out. The Pawnee are apparently unique in their midnight recess: after the water ceremony all leave for a ten to twenty-five minute period, the paraphernalia meanwhile resting on the altar cloth.

_Doctoring._ Doctoring in peyote meetings (save those of the Kickapoo, Caddo and possibly the Osage)[119] is of prime importance, and in a majority of cases is the expressed purpose of calling a meeting. The supposed therapeutic virtues of peyote, or in the less technological view, its “power,” have been important in the history of the cult. Quanah Parker, the great Comanche proselytizer of peyote, at first opposed to it, was cured of a stomach ailment in 1884 and became one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the herb. Peyote doctoring has been the occasion many times of the spread of peyotism from tribe to tribe (e.g., the Kiowa bringing it to the Creek). Kiowa doctoring was also probably influential in modifying the Church of the First-born on Koshiway’s visit in their country, and in bringing it into the fold of the Native American Church.

The motives for the spread of peyotism in the Plains could perhaps be equally divided between doctoring and power-seeking, but the dichotomy is somewhat artificial in terms of native ideologies: indeed, the chief “power” one gets in meetings is for doctoring.[120] Winnebago attitudes recorded by Radin[121] find parallels elsewhere:

The first and foremost virtue predicated by Rave for the peyote
was its curative power. He gives a number of instances in which
hopeless venereal diseases and consumption were cured by its
use; and this to the present day is the first thing one hears
about it. In the early days of the peyote cult it appears that
Rave relied principally for new converts upon the knowledge
of this great curative virtue of the peyote.... Along this
line lay unquestionably its appeal for the first converts. Its
spread was due to a large number of interacting factors. One
informant claims that there was little religion connected with
it at first, and that people drank the peyote on account of its
peculiar effects.

Densmore[122] says that prayer during Winnebago peyote doctoring “are petitions to God for the recovery of the sick person, not affirmations of his recovery.”

Opler quotes a Lipan informant on doctoring:[123]

In the early days they just had a good time for one night.
It was not used as a curing ceremony then.... At first they
wanted to have good visions, that’s what they were after. But
then, recently, they began to use it as a medicine for sick
people.... If a sick person comes in the tipi, they see what
is the matter with him. Perhaps a witch has shot something
into him, a bone or something like that. It is seen. Then the
sick one rolls a cigarette and gives it to someone there who
he thinks can cure him. Perhaps some man says, “I think I can
take that out with the help of peyote and these other men.”
So he does his ceremonial work in there and extracts what is
bothering the patient.... He sucks it out usually with his own
lips, not with a tube. It is nasty work right there. It might
be dirty and full of pus. But the medicine man doesn’t think of
it in that way. To them it is just as if they were sucking nice
juice out of something. Yet it will look terrible to others....
All the bad things have to go into the fire and burn down to
ashes.... Sometimes they suck out things like insects which
have been shot into people and these things pop. Sometimes when
they throw the evil object in the fire it blazes up blue but
does not pop.

Northern Cheyenne and Shawnee patients sit in special places in the peyote tipi, as in the sweat lodge, suggesting that older patterns of doctoring are involved; as we have seen, the sweat lodge is an integral part of the Osage peyote round-house plan. That associations of curing by peyote and curing in the sweat lodge lie close to the surface finds affirmation in an interesting Arapaho case:[124]

One of the recent modifications of the peyote ceremonial
was devised by a firm devotee, to cure a sick person. The
originator of this new form of the worship believes himself
to have been cured by the drug. In this ceremonial, which was
repeated four times, the tent seems to have represented a sweat
house, and a path led from the entrance to a fire outside, as
before a sweat lodge. The ritual, while remaining a peyote
ceremony, conformed more or less to the ordinary processes of
doctoring a sick person.

One could easily over-emphasize the novelty of such a procedure, considering the widespread use of peyote in doctoring, yet even the Caddo, who do not doctor with peyote, often have four meetings to pray for the recovery of the sick person; certainly cures by peyote do not rest entirely on the “technological” procedure of the patient’s eating and drinking peyote, but others present “help” by eating in the name of the sufferer and praying. This is not at all unlike the presence of relatives and others in the sweat bath praying for the patient’s recovery; the various uses of sage, the fire pits in some altars, and the ritual necessity for a fire even on the hottest summer nights further suggest sweat bath parallels.[125]

Peyote is a panacea in doctoring. A Cheyenne woman was cured of a cancer of the liver which had been pronounced hopeless at a White hospital. Such invidious distinctions between White and peyote doctoring are common; for the former represents merely human skill, and is not the unmodified herb the direct creation of God? Belo Kozad, himself a well-known Kiowa peyote doctor, spoke as follows:

When my sick wife was in there I chewed peyote for her. Her
skin got like wood bark—the hair come out. The doctors couldn’t
make it. We give it up, can’t do anything. [It was] diabetes,
and we shoot him every time she eats. That spoils the people;
they lose the mind and the skin gets bad. That morphine for
Howard [Sankadote, who was ill the night of the meeting and
could not be present] make him talk funny. It just ruin the
people in the mind. _Come_ to peyote! God knows more than any
people!

Perhaps Belo had every “pragmatic” right to talk thus: had he not himself cured a boy’s hemorrhage by eating one hundred green peyotes for him? Peyote indeed is a famous cure for tuberculosis and respiratory diseases.

John Bearskin (Winnebago) knew of two cures by “Sister Etta” in meetings: one a woman with goitre, the other a boy who had previously been dumb.[126] Pneumonia also readily yields to peyote, producing beneficial perspiration when thirty buttons are drunk over a period of hours in two quarts of water. The writer has seen doctoring with peyote for a crushed thigh, tuberculosis, and malnutrition (?) in a two-year-old child; this last cried fretfully in the early part of the meeting, but was fed “tea” until it was blue and quiet in strychnine tetanus by morning. The wife of our Quapaw host had also been “operated on in church.”

A Sioux doctor, who had gotten his power from a vision in which peyote turned into a man, doctored at Taos; but an acquaintance of Dr. Parsons imputed his trachoma to witchcraft on the part of “foreigners” who came to large meetings. He found that peyote water prevented the inflammation of his eyes. Another boy’s leg was “all gone, rotten,” and the boy himself emaciated. Peyote men prayed over him for a month, whereupon he became well and fat, though his leg remained drawn up because he had taken too much White man’s medicine. The wife of a peyote man, herself cured of neck sores by the plant, asserted that witch sickness is lacking nowadays in Taos because of the power of peyote in exorcizing witchcraft; a peyote chief, however, holding a button in his hand, had had to remove a porcupine quill which some witch had shot into her nose. At Taos even anti-peyotists consider it good for cures, and Dr. Parsons, no doubt with some reason, makes the query: “Will peyote find its character of witch prophylaxis an introduction to the southern pueblos?”[127]

Peyote is equally successful in treating mental cases. An Oto informant told of four successive meetings held for a man who had “gone crazy” when his wife left him. Formerly under observation at Norman, he was afraid people were coming for him during the meeting; he could hardly talk, wanted to run out and people had to wrestle with him. Old Man White Horn gave him a peyote and told him it would protect him; finally, in the third successive meeting the man “came to” and asked what had been happening. Another Oto patient chopped wood incessantly, rolled and unrolled strings, etc., and used to have “meetings” by himself, drumming, singing and eating peyote all alone. An Oto told me of a Taos boy who had “gone crazy”; some said it was peyote that was doing this. But a doctor from west of Albuquerque came and pulled a snake and a dead water dog out of him; these had been his medicines, taught him by his father, and it was decided that he had clearly broken some taboo surrounding his father’s medicine.

“_Preaching._” An interesting feature of peyotism, probably deriving from earlier patterns, is the moral lecture in the morning. In one Caddo “moon” the leader “talks to the boys, teaches them, just like a preacher, telling them to do the right thing through life, and the consequences if they didn’t do the right things.” White Wolf (Comanche) says Quanah Parker lectured younger people in the morning; so too did Kickapoo, Carrizo, Shawnee and Wichita leaders.

After passing peyote, the Delaware leader “addresses the peyote and the fire, prays, and often delivers a regular sermon or moral lecture.” In the Iowa meeting:[128]

The peyote chief ... leads in the preaching and Bible
reading.... The leader (or, as the writer understands it)
perhaps some visiting preacher of the faith, gets up and
delivers a sermon, while the cedar chief casts some more
incense on the fire. [He commonly exhorts them to confession.]
The leader then calls on other preachers to talk, and then
asks the fire chief [to pass the peyote again].... Meanwhile
he continues to read the Bible and exhort all sinners to
repent. He points out that all the old ways have been given
up, and with them their “idols,” such as the great drum of the
religious dance.

John Wilson ordinarily began his meetings with a talk by himself; the Oto are commonly addressed in meetings by their “tribal priest.” The estrangement of the lively J. S. (Kiowa) and his young wife was composed through moral homilies delivered by older relatives in a peyote meeting—a typical occurrence.

At the end of the Pawnee meeting[129]

the members ... sit in their places and talk over their
experiences.... The leader closes the meeting at noon with a
lecture, or sermon, on ethical matters, speaking especially
against the use of alcohol.

Possibly Osage “testimony” may have some relation to this.[130] The Winnebago[131]

ceremony is opened by a prayer by the founder and leader, this
being followed by an introductory speech.... During the early
hours ... speeches by people in the audience [are made], and
the reading and explanation of part of the Bible.

The midnight sermon, after the midnight water, also occurs:[132]

Then the leader asks anyone he desires to make a speech. This
may emphasize any point in regard to peyote.

The moral harangue is no doubt derived from earlier Plains patterns, though it is a Southwestern feature as well, among the Rio Grande Pueblos and elsewhere.[133]

_Prophecy._ The gift of prophecy has often been claimed by individuals in native America. The first well-known such was Popé of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, but his successors were many: Wabokieshiek, or “White Cloud,” the Winnebago-Sauk prophet of the Black Hawk War; the Delaware prophet of Pontiac’s Conspiracy (1762); Tenskwatawa, twin brother of Tecumseh, and the well-known “Shawnee Prophet” (1805); Kanakuk, the Kickapoo[134] reformer (1827); Smohalla, the Sokulk dreamer of the Columbia (1870-1885); Tavibo, the Paiute; Nakaidoklini, the Apache (1881); Wovoka, or Jack Wilson, the Paiute prophet of the Ghost Dance of 1889 and later; Skaniadariio, or “Handsome Lake,” the Seneca teacher, etc.[135]

Save for the revelations of the Caddo-Delaware John Wilson, and the teachings of John Rave and Jonathan Koshiway, this tradition has become much attenuated as regards peyotism. Large-scale prophecies can no longer be made to skeptical and disillusioned audiences, but prophecy in minor matters still occurs via peyote (e.g., the Delaware case in which a serious industrial accident might have been avoided if he had only been able to interpret correctly a warning peyote gave him). Old-time Comanche could hear the enemy while still away off when they ate peyote, and in making raids could discover the whereabouts of horses, etc. White Wolf, again, visioned Charley Seminole’s face all bloody at a peyote meeting, but was unable to interpret the prophecy; somewhat later, sure enough, the Seminole accidentally shot himself under the eye.

In the origin story of peyote, when the Kiowa or Comanche were on the war-path, the Apache leader knew of their leader’s approach to the tipi where they were having a meeting, and told his fireman to invite him in, whence the visitor brought peyote back to his tribe; this story is known all over the southern Plains. Around 1870 the only Kiowa who ate peyote was Pabo, or Big Horse. When he wished to find the whereabouts of an absent party he would go into a tipi and say “gʸäʰgūṇboṇta” (I am going to look for medicine), and would drum and rattle and eat peyote, and tell the results of his inquiry afterward. Pabo’s power was from the eagle, but Kiowa owl-doctors had clairvoyant powers in pre-peyote times. Another Kiowa user miraculously predicted the coming of telegraph lines and the railroad to Anadarko, having previously never seen either, and a Wichita predicted the World War.

_“Baptism” and Other Morning Ceremonies._ The “curing” ceremonies of Mexico and the Southwest still find a reflex in the Plains “baptism” in the morning ceremonies. The leader in the tipi whistles for the water as in the midnight ceremony, and a smoke is made for the bearer, the only difference being that this time it is a woman, often symbolically costumed,[136] who some say represents Peyote Woman of the legend. Many groups, however, have a ritual “baptism” in this morning ceremony, which is lacking at midnight.[137] The Arapaho,[138] for example, untie the drum and pass it around the circles; each man wrings out the wet drum head, makes a loop of the lacing-rope and throws it lasso-fashion over his foot to symbolize the roping of horses, presses the seven marbles of the drum to various parts of his body, and drinks a little of the drum water. The worshippers then wash the paint from their faces, and comb their hair, a towel, a mirror, a comb and water making the round of the tipi; then finally the drinking water is passed around.

The Delaware file out behind the fireman to greet the rising sun with prayer, and, standing in the same relative positions they occupied in the tipi, wash their faces with the water which the fireman pours on their hands; those who fall down at this time are said to be visiting heaven. The rest re-enter for the ritual breakfast. The Caddo similarly file out to wash and comb their hair, and preserve the same order even at the secular meal at noon. The Iowa wash with soap and water as they sit in the tipi; “the peyote chief himself carries the water to show his humility, because of Biblical references to the washing of feet.” The Shawnee are marshalled outside in two lines at sun-up to wash their faces and “do arm exercises.” The Kickapoo, Wichita, Oto, Northern Cheyenne and others pass the drum and sometimes all the ritual paraphernalia around to be handled; some lick the drum stick dipped in the water and touch it to various parts of their bodies. The Ponca leader, using a feather, shakes water on participants both at midnight and in the morning, and as in some other groups, waters the drum also.[139]

The ritual “quitting songs” are sung by the Pawnee just at dawn, as the first rays of the sun strike the altar through the opened door; the last song is sung five times, and each member then prays in turn to God. The “baptism” ceremony of the Winnebago John Rave cultists (derived from the Oto) is more Christian in tone than that of the Jesse Clay rite (of Arapaho origin). Rave dipped his fingers in a peyote infusion, and passed them over the forehead of a new member saying, “God, His holiness,” (or, as some say, “God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”).[140] A little water is also poured on the ground as a sacrifice. The well-nigh universal mode of disposing of the remaining water in the drum is to pour it along the earthen “moon.”

_Peyote Breakfast._ The foods in the ritual breakfast in the tipi are so standardized as scarcely to allow comparative treatment. They are merely minor variations on the theme: water, parched corn in sweetened water, fruit and dried sweetened meat.[141] From the Lipan (roasted corn, yucca fruit, wild fruit and meat, according to Opler) to the Ute (canned corn, canned peaches and corned beef, as reported by Mrs. Cooke) the uniformity is striking. These foods are eaten from a common set of four vessels,[142] which are passed around with a single spoon in each. Sometimes ground hominy or parched corn mush is substituted, and Hoebel reports the Northern Cheyenne use of Cracker Jack for the parched corn. Beef is the usual meat, in boneless chunks or dried, pounded and sweetened, but pork (tabooed for the Comanche) is reported for the Ponca and Northern Cheyenne.[143] Wild fruits are somewhat preferred to canned varieties, but are not always obtainable. Although the original meanings and connections with agricultural, gathering and hunting ceremonies have long since been lost sight of, the feeling for the proper foods in a peyote breakfast is still quite strong in the Plains, a remarkable instance of culture continuity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For convenience of reference I have followed with all possible care the sequence of the development and appearance of elements laid down in the Kiowa-Comanche type-rite (above), of which the following paragraphs are largely comparative discussions.

[2] Mooney, _Miscellaneous Notes_, 40.

[3] Opler, _Lipan Apache Field Notes_.

[4] Erminie Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_.

[5] Ritual gathering of plants is not unknown elsewhere; see Mooney, _The Sacred Formulas_.

[6] See G. A. Dorsey in _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:650a (Sun Dance), as well as Spier’s _The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians_.

[7] Hoebel says the Comanche formerly did not have all night meetings because of the danger of attack while under the influence of the drug.

[8] Opler’s data suggest that even the vision-seeking motive is recent among the Lipan.

[9] The Lipan prayed for protection from their enemies as well as for health and long life.

[10] Petrullo, 48. The mourning council meeting was not unfamiliar in pre-peyote times. One such council was held for Tarhe, chief priest of the Wyandot, at Upper Sandusky, in the old days, attended by all the tribes of Ohio, the Indiana Delaware and the Seneca of New York (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:294).

[11] Four older men pray and the child is passed clockwise around the tipi as every one present calls out its name.

[12] Meetings are held _for_ the corpse, which is present “facing east” (head west) in the meeting; at the funeral next day he faces west. The writer omitted to attend an Osage meeting at Hominy because it was a funeral meeting.

[13] Cf. the uses of datura.

[14] La Flesche, _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 21.

[15] A favorite Indian holiday in Oklahoma is Memorial Day, when graves are lavishly decorated.

[16] Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_.

[17] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 12 ff.