Chapter VIII: Part 8

But the Sauk have been tenacious of their older religion and its fetishes,[67] though peyotism is now strong among them; indeed, about 1923, attempted affiliation with the Native American Church failed because five rival chiefs ran different meetings.[68]

The Seminole have started the religion only recently, about the same time as the Cherokee; they have learned it through the Yuchi, Caddo and Kiowa. George Anderson (Delaware) brought the Wilson moon to the Seneca in 1907, when eighteen men and women became members. One of the Seneca had a Quapaw wife, who gave him the idea of obtaining the moon; they were too poor to pay Anderson’s usual fee, and merely gave him carfare home.[69]

The Shawnee Jim Clark received peyote from the Comanche in the late 1890’s. Informants say the Shawnee have had peyote as a plant for a long time, using it to keep from getting tired on the march, for moistening the mouth when dry-camping and to relieve hunger. The first Absentee Shawnee meeting was held by the Scotts in 1900, under the tutelage of the Kickapoo. John Wilson was among the Shawnee about 1894, and George Fourleaf (Delaware) brought peyote to White Oak from Mexico about 1898. Ernest Spybuck got his moon from the Delaware near Dewey, while the Panthers are said to use the Yuchi manner. The majority of the Shawnee, however, use the standard Kiowa-Arapaho moon. Some Shawnee liken the leader’s staff to the staff in the Green Corn Dance, and there is a legend of getting power from peyote which some say was not peyote but another plant which preceded it.[70]

A Sioux introduced peyote to the Uintah and Ouray Agency.[71] The Ute around Fort Duchesne have used peyote “on the sly” since before 1916; the cult was vigorous around Randlette, Utah, by the spring of 1916. Mrs. Cooke attended a Ute meeting in 1937 about ten miles from Whiterocks; an informant told her that

sometimes they have a half moon instead of a crescent—depending
on the size of the moon in the sky at that time.... They had
twice had a moon which had eyes and a mouth made in it—this is
“God peeping.”

This last suggests a Caddoan “Big Moon” influence, but the motif of the changing moon must be Ute, as it is not encountered elsewhere. The Gosiute near the Salt Lake Desert began about 1921, as did the Paiute west of Salt Lake City. Little is known of these groups, but possibly Cheyenne teaching is responsible; Southern Ute visited Oklahoma peyote groups as early as 1910 according to information of Dr. Parsons.[72]

The Wichita, like the Shawnee, claim to have had peyote long before they learned to eat it in meetings. In one of their rain ceremonies they used a medicine bundle containing four objects: feathers, a little buckskin doll, a piece of flint and peyote. The ceremony was called hä·ctiaš, “fire-people-around,” and they sang all night for four nights to bring rain. The coming of the peyote ritual, therefore, aroused no hostility:

No Wichita was ever against it [Sly Picard says]; they couldn’t
be, as all our medicine men and women had peyote in their
medicine—the whole tribe.

Yellow Bird (Wichita-Kichai) may have eaten peyote as early as 1889, before the Washita bridge between Anadarko and Gracemont was built, and Sly’s father used it in 1892, learning it from the Caddo. But they were dissatisfied with the Caddo moon, and invited Frank Moitah (Comanche) and Salo (Kiowa) to teach them. Old Man Horse (Kiowa) is usually credited, however, with bringing peyote to the Wichita about 1902.

In 1893 and 1894 the Winnebago John Rave visited peyote eaters in Oklahoma (though he had eaten it as early as 1889,) and again in 1901. On the return from his second trip he tried to introduce the religion, but without success save among a few of his own relatives. In 1903 or 1904 Rave went to South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin to preach the new religion; he had been visiting the Kiowa and Comanche, as well as the Oto. Somewhat later Jesse Clay was taught the rite at Winnebago by a visitor called Arapaho Bull, and Dick Griffin learned another version from the Osage at Pawhuska, at a time when John Wilson was there. Yellowbank said that the Winnebago of Nebraska got peyote from the Arapaho, and thence it came to the Winnebago of Wisconsin. Thunder Cloud was among those opposing it, but by 1914 nearly half the tribe were adherents.[73]

The Yankton of South Dakota by 1916 had a peyote cult strong enough to warrant the sending to Congress of a petition to pass an anti-peyote bill signed with ninety-two names. The Yuchi affiliated with the Creek around Sapulpa and Kellyville, received peyote from the Cheyenne. Shonle cites three additional groups we have not yet included. These are the Shoshoni, who received peyote in 1919, the Sioux (1909-10) and the Crow (1912). Comparisons of the present list with Shonle’s gives on the whole earlier dates, yet this need not be considered in any sense a discrepancy. Shonle’s data were based on government sources, and should stand as indicating the dates when the various cults became virile enough to attract official notice. Our own data, based on native sources, give on the other hand what are probably the earliest contacts and introductions of the rite, without reference to the number or percentage of adherents in any tribe. It is evident from them too that tentative starts and multiple origins are the rule rather than the exception, and Shonle’s information and our own should be regarded as supplementary rather than contradictory.[74]

Although peyotism is gone or decadent among the Tarahumari and the Mescalero, it is still vigorously spreading in the United States and southern Canada. Conceivably it could spread until it embraced all Plains, Basin and Woodlands groups whose earlier culture is sufficiently consonant with its concepts, and it may have some slender chance of spreading in the southern and eastern Pueblos and Plateau, but scarcely elsewhere, for both geographical and cultural reasons. The cult may be expected to spread for some time in the future, but when its inevitable decadence and probable ultimate disappearance will have been accomplished, we may have witnessed in it the last of the great intertribal religious movements of the American Indian.

The present section sums up the external history of the diffusion of peyotism so far as it can be known from our Mexican sources, and in the Plains, where it appears that the pre-peyote mescal bean cult prepared the way somewhat for the use of the narcotic cactus.

The Plains rites are basically derived from the Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo peyote ceremonies, which in turn derive from the Mescalero Apache (whence the diffusion traces back to the Lipan and Tonkawa through the Carrizo perhaps to Tamaulipecan groups). The Kiowa and the Comanche led in the diffusion of the standard aboriginal ceremony, but the Caddo variant was powerfully influenced by the individual, John Wilson, and diffused to the Osage, Quapaw, Delaware and others in a somewhat modified form. This is the subject of a special appendix.

The Oto are probably the crucial group in the diffusion of the later Christianized version of peyotism among such Siouan groups as the Winnebago and Omaha. Here again an individual gave a new turn to the ceremony by summing up in himself two streams of culture, the aboriginal and the Christian. Jonathan Koshiway is discussed in an appendix on the Native American Church, and a special appendix is devoted to the matter of Christian elements in the cult. The diagram on the opposite page sums up the external history of peyotism succinctly.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “These beans are often confused with those of a certain species of _Erythrina_, which are sometimes sold in their place in the markets of Mexico, but which are not at all narcotic” (Safford, _Narcotic Plants_, 397).

[2] Not to be confused with the “mountain laurel” _Kalmia latifolia_.

[3] Henry, _The Plant Alkaloids_, 395, 398.

[4] Henry, _op. cit._, 397; cf. Safford, _Narcotic Plants_, 397.

[5] Bellanger, in Havard (Bulletin 519:6); Opler, _The Autobiography_; Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:256; Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 358. The use of frijolillo in maguey liquor (which equates with mescal) probably accounts for the usage “mescal bean.” Since the text was written further Apache material has appeared (Castetter and Opler, _Ethnobiology of the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache_, 54-55).

[6] Mooney, _Miscellaneous Notes_, 6. Schultes figures a Kiowa necklace of true mescal beans (_Sophora secundiflora_ Ortega, Lag. ex DC.) strung on buckskin, with a piece of red ribbon, beaver fur and a child’s ring enclosing a bundle of dried beaver-testis “medicine” in a lace handkerchief, as trinkets or amulets.

[7] Skinner, _Ethnology of the Ioway_, 261; Gilmore, _Uses of Plants_, 99.

[8] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 718-19.

[9] Cf. the origin of peyote in deer’s foot-prints or hooves.

[10] “The maⁿkácutzi beans were supposed to be alive. Those I have seen in the possession of various Iowa were kept in a buckskin wrapper which was carefully perforated that they might see out.” Cf. the ability of the father peyote to see.

[11] Cf. the preparation of peyote by grinding on metates like corn.

[12] Cf. the black drink ceremony to the east, and the Plains Sun Dance.

[13] Early peyotism was likewise an agricultural “first-fruits” rite.

[14] The Wichita used mescal beans in horse-racing too. Cf. the use of peyote in racing and deer-hunting, and the use of datura in deer-hunting.

[15] Cf. the fetishistic use of the father peyote in war.

[16] Cedar and sage are likewise involved in peyotism.

[17] Harrington, quoted by Skinner, _Ethnology of the Ioway_, 245-47.

[18] Compare note 13.

[19] The Delaware, Osage, Quapaw and Oto call the leader’s peyote staff an “arrow,” the Ponca a “bow.”

[20] Cf. peyotism’s four ritual songs, and the whistling outside at midnight at the four points of the compass.

[21] But _Erythrina flabelliformis_ contains no toxic alkaloids; see Appendix 2.

[22] Did that truculent and little-known group, the Caddo, have the mescal cult?

[23] Has this taboo any reference to the boneless meat of the peyote ritual breakfast?

[24] Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_.

[25] The Huichol, for whatever such evidence is worth, in the mythological songs of their shamans, recite how the world began and how they were taught to hunt deer, to seek hikuli and to raise corn (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:8). The route they take in gathering peyote is from beginning to end full of religious and mythological associations, and they meet their deities on the way in the shape of mountains, stones, springs, etc. (_idem_, 2:132). According to their traditions, they originated in the south, but got lost under the earth as they wandered northward, reappearing in the country of the hikuli (_idem_, 2:23). Such deep-rooted symbolisms as theirs argues age.

[26] Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 360, 366-67, 379, 383, 386; Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:357-358, 444 (but see 1:378).

[27] Velasco, _Dictamen Fiscal_, 194; Opler, _The Autobiography_; _Lipan Field Notes_; _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; Wagner, _Entwicklung und Verbreitung_. Opler says that peyote was introduced within the memory of the oldest living Mescalero; after 1910 it was in decided decline.

[28] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 62-63. The origin legend is Kiowa. Mooney received a letter dated July 18, 1921 from the Taos Indian, Star Road, relative to trials of “peyote boys.”

[29] Cozio, _Proceso_.

[30] In 1921 on the orders of the Governor, Manuel Cordova, a peyote meeting was raided and the blankets and shawls of all participants somewhat highhandedly confiscated. Prominent medicine-men refused to doctor “peyote boys” because the new religion was prejudicial to their vested interests. In 1923 two adherents of the cult were whipped, one twenty-five lashes, by the Lieutenant-Governor. Three men were fined $700, $800 and $1000, and the case ultimately reached the American court; the judge decided that the Governor had no right to impose such heavy fines, reversed the judgment and ordered the return of the property. This done, the officers resigned from office, and for a time there were no secular officers at Taos because no one wanted to take up the controversy. In 1931 the confiscated property taken ten years before had still not been returned, the Council refusing even to consider a $10 fine in compensation; $25 was demanded for the return of each shawl and blanket.

[31] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 80, note 64; 99, note 166; 118; John Collier, in _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_.

[32] This widespread origin legend of the Plains is also Mescalero and Lipan, and from certain indications I suspect that it is Tamaulipecan also.

[33] Mooney, in _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:701, “Kiowa Apache.”

[34] Mooney, _Peyote Notebook_, 14.

[35] Shonle, Peyote; _The Giver of Visions_, 54. Jack Sankadote, for example, was carried into a meeting as a baby by his father, and he is in his fifties.

[36] Several older Kiowa patterns parallel peyote usages (e.g. the smoking ceremony of the Old Women’s Society: leader west of central fire, lieutenants on either side of the door, five dishes of food from the fire eastward; the Buffalo Medicine Men’s Society bundle-repair meeting with a sage “stage,” etc.), and the Kiowa-Comanche had the all night singing and beating on a rolled-up hide on the eve of departure on the war-path. But such parallels from the tribes one knows best lead to often naïve particularistic explanations and should be guarded against. As a matter of fact it is the wide distribution of sweat bath doctoring and society meetings which accounts for the ease with which peyotism made its way in the Plains. The following two paragraphs are partly based on data gathered by Donald Collier, a colleague of the Laboratory of Anthropology Kiowa trip.

[37] In judging the relative importance of the Kiowa and the Comanche in the diffusion of peyotism, one should recall that Comanche was historically the lingua Franca of the southern Plains. Quanah took peyote to the Caddo and Wichita it is said, though he was not the first to do so; he led meetings among the Cheyenne and the Arapaho in 1884. Petrullo (_The Diabolic Root_, 129) says he learned peyote about 1868 in Arizona, New Mexico and Old Mexico.

[38] “It is desirable to eat with the Comanche or the Kiowa because they are reputed to have learned of Peyote many years before the others.” (Petrullo _op. cit._, 33.)

[39] _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:870b; cf. Mooney, in _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 13-14, 15; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 102.

[40] Jock Bullbear’s and Mooney’s testimonies in _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 40, 48, 57.

[41] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 410. The practice apparently is also Kiowa and Oto.

[42] Wissler, _Societies and Dance Associations_, 436; the statement was made in conversation.

[43] Newberne and Burke, _Peyote: An Abridged Compilation_, table.

[44] Wagner, _Entwicklung und Verbreitung_, 84, footnote.

[45] Newberne and Burke, _op. cit._, 33 ff.

[46] Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 71-72.

[47] Wilson said that one Smith had been in Oklahoma from a group on the Yukon River in southern Alaska; they were said to have used it for fifteen years. Jenness (letter to Schultes) reported a rumor that a little peyote had filtered into Salishan groups of British Columbia but Gunther (letter to Schultes) reported its absence among the Flathead and Kutenai.

[48] Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_.

[49] Letter from Fred Washington to Dr. F. G. Speck, April 21, 1932. Petrullo (_The Diabolic Root_, 165) says the Delaware got peyote from the Kiowa; there is obvious Caddo influence too, via John Wilson.

[50] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 693-94, 724; _Medicine Ceremony of the Menomini_; _Ethnology of the Ioway_, 190, 217, 248-49.

[51] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 758.

[52] “We the undersigned members of the Kickapoo Tribe of Indians in Kansas most earnestly petition you to help us keep out the pellote, or mescal, from our people. We realize that it is bad for us Indians to indulge in that stuff. It makes them indolent, keeps them from working on their farms, and taking care of their stock. It makes men and women neglect their families. We think it will be a great calamity for our people to begin to use the stuff.... We most urgently petition you that immediate action must be taken before the stuff gets hold of our people” (Seymour, _Peyote Worship_, 183).

[53] Skinner, _Medicine Ceremony of the Menomini_, 24, 42-43, 97.

[54] Speck, _Delaware Peyote Symbolism_.

[55] Gilmore, _The Mescal Society_, 163-67; _The Uses of Plants_, 104-106; Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_; Speck, _Delaware Peyote Symbolism_; testimony of Sloan in _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 35. Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637.

[56] _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 10-11, 30-31, 43, 44-45. This booklet was compiled after 1911, giving for “twenty years [ago]” a maximally early date of 1891; but other internal evidence indicates a publication date of 1916, giving the date 1896 as quoted.

[57] Speck, _Notes on the Ethnology_, 171.

[58] No doubt with the memory of the fate of Albert Stamp’s attempted “moon” among the Caddo, Taylor exhibited considerable modesty when this flattering offer was made. “I appreciate that offer,” he said, “but I’m just Alfred Taylor, that’s all I am, and I never did run a meeting, and I would rather you’d get somebody else from down home who runs meetings to do it for you.” Several weeks later my informant said he didn’t think Taylor would accept, though he might drum or build the fire “like a servant”—“He’s afraid the Caddos will think he is pushing himself ahead too much, but he has even drummed for Enoch Hoag; he just don’t like to jump ahead of everybody too much away from home.” This abnegation is all the greater when it is understood that the Osage are accustomed to make handsome money gifts on such occasions.

[59] Koshiway compared the smoke-meeting before the war path to peyote: “They have a meeting and smoke the pipe together and leave the next day. This clears up the enemies, and you can prophesy then. Peyote is similar to this—all night.” Another older pattern interestingly survives among the Oto: in the informal morning period in the tipi, joking relationship seems to function.

[60] One wonders if the Russellite eschatology was not made more acceptable historically among the Oto because of an approximation to certain Ghost Dance notions. In any case, the curious prohibition on smoking may have symbolized, on the one hand, the rejection of older patterns of religious smoking, reinforced by the prohibition of secular smoking too.

[61] Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_, 38.

[62] Shonle, _Peyote: The Giver of Visions_, 55.

[63] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 636-37. Wagner (_Entwicklung und Verbreitung_, 75) disputes Shonle’s statement that they got it from the Quapaw, on the ground of the greater complexity of the Quapaw rite. His argument is unimpressive and a priori: John Wilson was the source of that complexity. Cf. Opler, _The Autobiography_.

[64] There may be Doctor Dance parallels in peyotism (e.g., an earthen altar, a fire in a round hole in the center of the tipi, doctoring at night with coals, fan or sucking horn, presence of the relatives of the patient in the meeting, etc.); another older Pawnee pattern in peyote may be the special morning prayer-maker south of the door.

[65] “PEYOTE FAILS. It is a good thing that peyote is stopped for it was doing more harm than good. Our young men of the reservation were just beginning to start in eating the devil’s root.... Peyote fails because it has no mouth so can not speak to its followers of their origin and destiny, nor as to sin, repentance, forgiveness, salvation nor of anything else. It has no ears, so can not hear prayer; it has no eyes, so it can not see a person’s needs; no hands so can not help; no mind, so can not think. It is therefore unable to ask God for the thing which its worshipers need, and which they plead with it to implore God for. Our boys tried to make others believe that peyote is a God and a religion, but if one wants to believe in mysterious things it must be Christ or peyote.” (Sam Newman, Ree [Arikara], in _The Indian Leader_.)

[66] Michelson, _Sauk and Fox Myths_.

[67] Skinner, _Observations on the Ethnology_, 10, 85.

[68] Native American Church, President’s Report, 1925.

[69] Speck, _Delaware Peyote Symbolism_.

[70] Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_.

[71] _Peyote, An Insidious Evil_, 3-4; Office of Indian Affairs, _Discussion Concerning Peyote_, 13.

[72] Much of this information is from Alfred Wilson, a Southern Cheyenne. His presidential report for 1925 (Sixth Annual Convention of the Native American Church) cites “locals” for the Caddo, Wichita, Pawnee, Arapaho, Yuchi, Kiowa, Oto, Shawnee, Ponca, Sauk and Fox, Cheyenne, and Omaha. Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 62; Willard Park informed me in 1936 that the Paviotso lacked peyote.

[73] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 4-5, 7; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 394, 400, 415, 423; _Crashing Thunder_, 169-70, 179, 185; Lowie, _Notes Concerning New Collections_, 289; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult; Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_; Speck, _Delaware Peyote Symbolism_.

[74] Seymour, _Peyote Worship_, 184; Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 71-72; Shonle, _Peyote; The Giver of Visions_, 55.

APPENDIX 1: PEYOTE IN MEXICO

The connotative etymological implications of the term “peyotl” become valuable when an understanding of its wider denotative applications is sought. In Hernandez’ original description, _Lophophora williamsii_ is called “Peyotl Zacatensi, seu radice molli et lanuginosa”[1]—that is to say, the whitish flocculence which gains the plant both its Aztec and modern botanical names, is again pointed out in Hernandez’ Latin synonym, “soft and lanuginous root.”

But Hernandez distinguished two peyotes, “Peyotl Zacatensi” and “Peyotl Xochimilcensi,”[2] the latter not even one of the Cactaceae, and one wonders at the classification until the plant is botanically described:

This peyote, a rather excellent medicine, has a heavy round
root covered with woolly rootlets, in addition to other roots
which resemble acorns, because of their form and size, growing
out in every direction.... It has few stems ... with yellow
flowers at their extremities.

From even this brief characterization it is clear that the term “peyotl” was extended to this non-cactus (later identified as _Cacalia diversifolia_ or _C. cordifolia_)[3] because of its balanoid lanuginous roots. The latter species is sold in the drug markets around Guadalajara, Jalisco, as “peyote”; specimens from Alvarez, San Luis Potosí, locally known as “cachan,” are valued as an aphrodisiac and remedy for sterility, the rhizic-orchic pubescence of the plant being evidently viewed in terms of sympathetic magic.

Dr. Alfonso[4] applies the term peyote or piote further to _Cacalia sinuata_, La Llave, and _Etchevarria coespitosa_ Dec., the former Compositae, the latter one of the Crassulaceae. One of the Compositae, _Senecio_ spp., ranging from Cerro del Pino to the Valley of Mexico is thus described:

The tap-root is tuberous-ovoid, size of a small hen’s egg, a
little curved above, carrying almost all [its bulk] in the
heavy extremity.... All the surface is covered with a nap
formed of long matted hairs of the color of cannel, and a
number of long roots.

The “Peyote of Tepic”[5] (_Senecio hartwegii_) is smaller and more globular than the above, and contains no alkaloid, the gluey, sticky sap having no effect on the dove or the rat. The “Peyote of Querétaro” (_Echinocactus turbinatus_ Henning), said to be distinguished from _Anhalonium_ only by the spiral disposition of the hair-pencils, is a common form of _Lophophora williamsii_.

In the case of all these non-cacti to which the term peyote has been applied, the plants have exhibited descriptively either a lanuginous or pubescent surface-nap, or balanoid, orchitic, or nut-like root-nodules, and in some cases both; in one case there was a cocoon-shaped pod in addition. But Schultes[6] lists other “peyotes” which may not fit this explanation: Compositae: _Senecio calophyllus_ Hemsl., _S. Hartwegii_ Benth., _S. ovatiformis_ Sch. Bip., _S. Petasitus_ DC and _Cacalia_ spp. (e.g., _C. cordifolia_ HBK); Leguminosae: _Rhynchosia longeracemosa_ Mart. & Gal.; and even one of the Solanaceae, _Datura meteloides_ DC.

All the above are non-cacti, but many Cactaceae have also been called “peyote.” These include: _Anhalonium Englemannii_ Lem., _A. prismaticum_ Lem., _A. furfuraceum_ Wats., _A. pulvilligerum_ Lem., _A. areolosum_ Lem., _Lophophora williamsii_ Lem., _Ariocarpus fissuratus_ (Englm.) K. Schum., _Astrophytum myriostigma_ Lem., _A. asterias_ (Zucc.) Lem., _Pelecyphora aselliformis_ Ehrenb., and _Strombocactus disciformis_ DC. The diminutive “peyotillo” has been applied to _Dolichothele longimamma_ Britton and Rose, and _Solisia pectinata_ Britton and Rose.[7]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Hernandez, in Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 295; _Peyotes, Datos para Estudia_, 204.

[2] In simpler Mexican cultures, peyote was in the hands of shamans; this other peyote appears to derive its name from the priests of a certain class in the higher Aztec culture: “According to some authorities, the highest grade of these native hierophants bore among the Nahuas the symbolic name of ‘flower weavers,’ Xochimilca, probably from the skill they had to deceive the senses by strange and pleasant visions (Xochimilca, que asi llamavan á los mui sabios encantadores)” (Torquemada, in Brinton, _Nagualism_, 298).

[3] A specimen in Mooney, Peyote Notebook, 56, was so identified. Schultes viewed this and identified it as _C. cordifolia_ which in addition has cocoon-shaped pods. Cf. the use of _Lophophora_ as an aphrodisiac.

[4] Alfonso, in Rouhier, _Monographie_, 3; Santoscoy, _Nayarit_, 32. Schultes (_Peyote and Plants Used_, 135) lists _Cotyledon caespitosa_ Haw. as a Crassulaceous “peyote.”

[5] _Peyotes, Datos para Estudia_, 111, 206, 208. This non-cactus “peyote” of Tepic may have been the false clue leading Rouhier to believe an earlier range of peyote into Tepic.

[6] Schultes, _Peyotes and Plants Used_, 135. The Reko etymology preferred by Schultes (p. 136) so far as botanical evidence goes derives peyotl from Aztec pi- (small) and -yautli or -yolli (herb with narcotic odor or action), making “peyotillo” a double diminutive. Schultes has accepted, at the instance of the present writer, the thesis that _Cacalia_ spp. might well enough fit the “velvety, cocoon-like” etymology, but argues nevertheless that “this etymology does not seem to explain the application of the same name to the great array of plants which possess no soft or silky parts whatsoever.” Schultes is undoubtedly right on this point in terms of descriptive botany; yet may not some items be included in our lists illegitimately? _Anhalonium prismaticum_ Lem., for example, is called hikuli, not peyote, and is only partly its terminological equivalent. And does the “little narcotic” etymology explain all these instances?

[7] Urbina, in Harms, _Über das Narkotikum_, 31; Schultes, _op. cit._, 135.

APPENDIX 2: PEYOTE AND THE MESCAL BEAN

Far the commonest designation for peyote in the older literature is “mescal bean,” a curiously persistent misusage, since either in the dried or the green state _Lophophora williamsii_ resembles a bean even less than a mushroom, Safford’s teo-nanacatl. On probing more deeply into this confusion, a widespread pre-peyote narcotic cult of the southern Plains was discovered. The ethnographic results of this study are presented in the text, but a brief characterization of the “mescal bean” proper is essential as well.

Collected specimens of the old Plains “red bean” (= mescal bean proper) have been identified by authorities at the Harvard Botanical Museum as _Sophora secundiflora_ (Ortega) Lag. ex DC.[1] Variously known as “mescal bean” (southern Plains), “colorín” (Coahuila, Nuevo León, Texas), “frijolillo” (Nuevo León, Texas), “frijolito” (Texas), “evergreen coral-bean,” “coral-bean” and “mountain laurel” (southern New Mexico), this plant grows from Coahuila to San Luis Potosí, western Texas and southern New Mexico, being specially characteristic of the dry limestone hills. It is not, however, the “mountain laurel” _Kalmia latifolia_, being a true member of the Fabaceae or Bean Family; the term “coral-bean” is likewise applied to two other legumes of Texas, both, however, _Erythrina_ spp., not _Sophora_.[2]

_Sophora secundiflora_ contains the highly toxic narcotic alkaloid sophorine, C₁₁H₁₄ON₂, which is identical with cytisine (= ulexine, = baptitoxine). Resembling nicotine closely in physiological action, the contents of one bean are said to be able to produce nausea, convulsions and even death by asphyxiation in man.[3] _Sophora secundiflora_ (= _Broussonetia secundiflora_) itself is a handsome evergreen shrub or small tree, eight to thirty-five feet high, bearing thick, leathery, dark glossy green leaves. The violet-blue bunches of flowers appearing in the spring give off a strong rank fragrance, and from these develop, in the summer, woody pods, satiny outside, two to four inches long, and containing one to four hard-shelled bright red beans.[4]

Safford[5] states that “these beans are often confused with those of certain species of _Erythrina_, which are sometimes sold in their place in the markets of Mexico, but which are not at all narcotic.” It is therefore possible, and indeed probable, that the beans used as necklaces and bandoliers in the Plains were both _Sophora_ spp. and _Erythrina_ spp.; Mooney[6] for example had specimens of red bean necklaces identified as _S. secundiflora_ and _E. fruticisa_. The confusion of the two closely related groups is understandable when the beans alone are available for diagnosis; the bean of _Sophora secundiflora_ differs from that of _Erythrina flabelliformis_, for example, in little more than the shape of the hilum, or scar of attachment, that of the former being rounded and of the latter more linear, while the beans of _E. corraloides_ are more elongate than those of _Sophora_. Gilmore’s[7] identification of the Omaha “red-medicine” with _Erythrina_ spp. may possibly be wholly correct since he mentions only decorative and magic uses for the beans; but in view of the chemical composition of the two, any ritual narcotic use must _a fortiori_ refer to _Sophora secundiflora_, the “mescal bean” proper.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] There is no problem of identifying the old Plains “red bean” with the “mescal bean”; both Schultes and I obtained Kiowa specimens in the field. The problem is the correct botanical classification of the specimens, and the widespread misusage of their name for peyote.

[2] Standley, _Trees and Shrubs_, 435; Dayton, _Important Western Browse Plants_, 87; Boughton and Hardy, _Mescalbean_, 5; Opler, _Autobiography_. The Chiricahua “Mountain laurel” is _S. secundiflora_.

[3] Henry (T. A.), _The Plant Alkaloids_, 395; Dayton, op. cit., 89. Havard (_Report on the Flora_, 500) says the alkaloid sophoria [sic] was isolated by Dr. H. C. Wood in 1877 as a whitish, amorphous substance producing convulsions, temporary loss of voluntary movement, and distressing vomiting; again (_Drink Plants_, 39) he says sophorine [sic] is an irritant-narcotic. Another alkaloid, matrine, is found in _Sophora_ spp. (Nagai, Plugge, Kondo et al. in Henry (T. A.), _The Plant Alkaloids_, 398). Havard, citing one Bellanger, says the Indians near San Antonio formerly used the seed as an intoxicant, half of one producing a delirious exhilaration followed by a deep sleep lasting two or three days; a whole bean, according to Dr. Rothrock’s informant, would kill a man. Dayton, 89, says children have been known to die from the effects of eating seeds of _S. secundiflora_; in any case, a rupture of the hard, leathery coat of the bean would be required for the release of the alkaloid in the bean-flesh.

Cattle and sheep appear to be more affected by the leaves of the plant, which also contain the alkaloid, than by the beans. The effect on them is marked: sheep fed about one percent body weight of the leaves were paralyzed in the legs for days and calves fed as little as .25% of body weight of fresh leaves died in 45 hours; one fed 1.0% died in 1¾ hours. Recovery in sheep sometimes required 12 days, in calves up to 16 days (Boughton and Hardy).

[4] Condensed and synthesized from Boughton and Hardy; Havard, _Report on the Flora_, 458, 500; _Drink Plants_, 39-40; Standley, 435; Dayton, 87-89.

[5] Safford, _Narcotic Plants_, 398.

[6] Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_ (quoting Safford?).

[7] Gilmore, _Uses of Plants_, 99 writes: “The Omaha traveling into Oklahoma have found them [chinaberry] there, and have taken up their use. They already had employed for beads as well as for a good-luck charm the bright red seed of a species of _Erythrina_. They say it grows somewhere to the southwest, toward or in Mexico. They call it ‘red medicine,’ makaⁿ zhide (makaⁿ, medicine; zhide, red). When the seeds of Melia (azerdache L.) [chinaberry] were adopted for use as beads, they likened them to makaⁿ zhide, and so call them makaⁿ-zhide sabe, ‘black red-medicine’.”

APPENDIX 3: PEYOTE AND TEO-NANACATL

The already sufficiently intricate ethnobotanical problem of peyote has been further complicated by an erroneous identification of a narcotic mushroom used by the Aztecs with the cactus peyotl. Safford[1] identifies the two by a somewhat casual use of his evidence, and mystifies himself with the consistent contradiction offered by all the early Spanish writers to his assumption. He composes the contradiction by assuming that the Aztecs did not recognize the dried discoidal button as the same plant as the green cactus; despite overwhelming etymological evidence he supposes they called the former teo-nanacatl and the latter peyotl. Only a complete review of the evidence can clear up this misapprehension.

The Spanish writers consistently describe the two separately, with detailed circumstantial distinctions which leave no room for misunderstanding. Sahagún,[2] says

[The Chichimeca] had a great knowledge of herbs and roots
and knew their qualities and their virtues. They themselves
discovered and first used the root that they call peiotl and
those that used to gather and eat them used them in place of
wine, and they did the same with those that they call nanacatl,
which are toadstools [hongos malos] that also make one drunk
like wine.

Again, in a special chapter on intoxicating plants, Sahagún distinguishes the two:

There is another herb like tunas of the earth [the Spanish name
for the fruit of the prickly pear, _Opuntia opuntia_] which
is called peiotl. It is white. It grows in the northern part.
Those that eat it see frightening and laughable visions. This
intoxication lasts two or three days and then stops....[3]

There are some little mushrooms in their land that they call
teo-nanacatl. They grow under the grass of the fields or
pastures. They are round. They have a sort of high stem [pie],
thin and round. They are eaten with great relish, but they harm
the throat and make one drunk.[4]

Still further to emphasize the point, Sahagún in the next section of this chapter[5] goes on to speak of edible mushrooms:

The cone-shaped mushrooms (mushrooms or nanacatl) _genus campos
agrorum_ in the mountains are good to eat. They are cooked
because of this, and if they are raw or badly cooked, they
produce vomiting or diarrhea, and they kill one,

and he continues to list and describe a number of other edibles.

The naturalist Hernandez[6] is even more explicit. He describes teo-nanacatl under the heading “De nanacatl seu Fungorum genere”; and from the harmless white mushrooms, iztacnanacame, the red mushrooms, tlapalnanacame, and the yellow-orbicular mushrooms, chimalnanacame, he distinguishes teo-nanacatl as “teyhuinti,” that is, “intoxicating.” Siméon’s Nahuatl dictionary even uses nanacatl as an illustration:[7]

Teo-nanacatl, espece de petit champignon qui a mauvais gout,
enivre et cause des hallucinations; il est medicinal contre
les fievres et la goutte.... Teyuinti, qui enivre quelqu’un,
enivrant; teyhuinti nanacatl, champignon enivrant.

Safford quotes this evidence himself!

Padre Jacinto de la Serna[8] records for us another compound of the Nahuatl word for mushroom, and describes the fungus while likewise specifically distinguishing it from peyote and ololiuhqui:

To this meeting had come an Indian ... who had brought some of
the mushrooms that are gathered in the monte, and with these
he had performed a great idolatry. But before proceeding with
my story I wish to explain the nature of the said mushrooms,
which in the Mexican language are called Quahtlananacatl, “wild
mushrooms.” ... These mushrooms were small and yellow and ...
were collected by priests and old men, appointed as ministers
for these impostures, who would proceed to the place where
they grow and remain almost the whole night in prayer and in
superstitious conjuring; and at dawn, when a certain little
breeze known to them would begin to blow, then they would
gather the narcotic,[9] attributing to it deity, with the same
properties as ololiuhqui or peyote, since when eaten or drunk,
they intoxicate those who partake of them, depriving them of
their senses, and making them believe a thousand absurdities.

In Safford it appears that de la Serna distinguished these from Picietl, tobacco, also. There is an implied confusion, to be sure, in Alarcón, but he supplies confirmation of this last point, along with interesting ethnographic details:[10]

One should notice that in almost every case that they are moved
to offer a sacrifice to their imagined gods, there comes to
take charge of it and preside over it some quack, medicine-man,
seer or diviner from among other Indians, the majority of them
falling back on their crazy ceremonies, or on whatever whim
arises when they are deranged from the drinking of what they
call ololiuhqui or pezote [sic] or tobacco, whatever it might
be called in particular localities.

The Franciscan Fray Toribio de Benvento mentions teo-nanacatl, to which he gives an erroneous etymology:[11]

They had another kind of drunkenness ... which was with small
fungi or mushrooms [hongos ó setas pequeñas] ... which are
eaten raw, and, on account of being bitter, they drink after
them or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly after
that they see a thousand visions, especially snakes. They went
raving mad, running about the streets in a wild state [bestial
embriaguez]. They called these fungi “teo-na-m-catl,” a word
meaning “bread of the gods.”

Tezozomoc,[12] again, related that at the coronation of Montezuma the Mexicans gave wild mushrooms [hongos montesinos] to the strangers to eat; that the strangers became drunk, and thereupon began to dance. Diego Durán[13] gives further particulars of the coronation of Montezuma II; he says that after the usual human sacrifices had been offered, all went to eat raw mushrooms (hongos crudos), which caused them to lose their senses, more than if they had drunk much wine. In their ecstasy many of them killed themselves with their own hands, and by virtue of the mushrooms had visions and revelations of the future.

The conclusion from all this evidence is obvious: the peyote of the Plains, _Lophophora williamsii_, is identical with the peiotl, peyotl, pellote, peyote, pejori, peyori or bejo of the Aztec and other Mexican tribes, but this cactus is wholly distinct from the little yellow thin-stemmed fungus teo-nanacatl, and Safford’s identification of the two is erroneous.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_ 294; _Identification of Teo-nanacatl, Narcotic Plants; Peyote_, 1278-79.

[2] Sahagún, _Historia general_, Lib. 10, cap. xxix: “... ellos mismos discubrieron, y usaron primero la raíz que llaman peiotl, y los que comian y tomaban la usaban en lugar de vino, y lo mismo hacian de los que llaman nanacatl que son los bongos malos que emborrachan tambien como el vino.” The authoritative edition of Jourdanet and Siméon, 661-62 translates nanacatl as “champignon vénéneux.”

[3] Sahagún, _Historia general_, 3:241-42: “Hay otra yerba como tunas de tierra, se llama peiotl, es blanca, hacese ácia la parte del norte, los que la comen ó beben vén visiones espantosas ó irrisibles.” (Lib. 11, cap. vii, pt. i, “De ciertas yerbas que emborrachen.”) Jourdanet and Siméon, 737, unfortunately describe tunas as “une ... plante qui rapelle la truffe,” which is a mushroom. Sahagún’s work is virtual dictation from Aztec informants, later translated with painstaking care into Spanish. It is difficult to assume, as did Safford, that such able herbalists did not know the difference between a cactus and a fungus.

[4] “Hay unos honguillos en esta tierra que se llaman teo-nanacatl, críanse debajo del heno en los campos ó páramos; son redondos, tienen el pie altillo, delgado y redondo, comidos son de mal sabor, dañan la garganta y emborrachan.” (_Idem_, 3:241-42.) To be sure our own best scientific knowledge must always be the touchstone for the data of the various folk-sciences; yet one is not entitled to a lofty and comprehensive _á priori_ distrust of native knowledge, particularly when detailed with such clarity as this.

[5] “Las setas (hongos ó nanacatl) hacen genus campos agrorum en los montes, son buenas de comer....” (Sahagún, _Historia general_, 3:243).

[6] Hernandez, in Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 293. The very word itself means “mushroom!” Reko’s etymology for teo-nanacatl, “divine nourishment,” is unsound according to Whorf; and indeed, there is nothing of the edible _par excellence_ about fungi (see Schultes, _Peyote and Plants Used_, 136-37).

[7] Siméon, in Safford, _Identification of Teo-nanacatl_, 400, 412.

[8] de la Serna, _Manual de Ministros_, 261.

[9] Cf. the Huichol peyote-gathering ritual and the wind which arises.

[10] Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 291. Indeed in this short sub-chapter, Sahagún distinguishes and describes coatlxoxouhqui = ololiuhqui [its seeds] peyotl, tlapatl, tzintzintlapatl, mixitl, teo-nanacatl, tochtetepo, atlepatli, aquiztli, tenxoxoli and quimichpatli! Alarcón, _Tratado_, 131; also in Urbina, _El Peyote y el Ololhiuqui_, 27.

[11] _Ritos Antiquos_; in Kingsborough, 9:17. Jourdenet and Siméon, translators of Sahagún, _Histoire général_, 738, have: “[Teo-nanacatl] c’est-à-dire: champignon dangereux. Le terme générique est nanacatl qui se met en composition avec d’autres mots pour désigner les diverses espèces de champignons.”

[12] _Crónica Mexicana_; in Kingsborough, 9:153. The fact that _raw_ mushrooms are mentioned disposes of Safford’s supposition that _dried_ peyote buttons are meant.

[13] Durán, _Historia de las Indias_, 564, quoted from Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_ by Bourke, _Scatological Rites_, 90.

APPENDIX 4: “PLANT WORSHIP” IN MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES

Peyote is only one of several narcotics in the southern United States and Mexico which because of their physiological action find ritual and other uses. Since, in many of these, uses are related, there arises the problem of their possible historical relationship. In any case, it is illuminating to study the general background of attitudes out of which peyotism grew.

CACTI

The Tarahumari of northwestern Mexico, though their hikuli cult is less elaborate than that of the Huichol, have a complex of “worship” and use of several varieties of cacti. Besides hikuli wanamé (_Lophophora williamsii_) Lumholtz[1] lists the following:

Mulato (a _Mammilaria_), believed to make the eyes large and
clear to see sorcerers, to prolong life, and to give speed to
runners who eat it.[2]

Rosapara (a more advanced vegetative form of the same, but
with many spines) which has very keen eyes for Tarahumari
wrong-doing; it punishes by driving the offender mad, or
throwing him down a precipice; “it is therefore very effective
in frightening off bad people, especially robbers and
Apaches.”[3]

Sunami (_Mammilaria fissurata_),[4] rare, but even more
powerful than wanamé, for it calls soldiers to its aid. The
drink produced from it is strongly intoxicating. Deer cannot
run away from you, nor bears harm you when carrying this
cactus.[5]

Hikuli walúla sälíami, “hikuli great authority,” is the
greatest of all; it is extremely rare, and Lumholtz never saw
a specimen, though it was described to him as “growing in
clusters of from eight to twelve inches in diameter, resembling
wanamé with many young ones around it.”[6]

Ocoyome, unlike the preceding hikuli which are good, is used
only for evil purposes. It has long white spines or “claws,”
and comes from the Devil. If accidentally touched with the
foot, it would break one’s leg; it also throws offenders
over precipices.[7] Lumholtz says it was very rarely used,
and Mooney says the Tarahumari used it not at all—though the
“Apaches” did—since it was “poison.” Mooney describes the plant
as having a reddish down, root and surface, which may account
for the Apaches’ tying it around their waists to make them
brave, in their battles.[8]

Bennett and Zingg are perhaps referring to the same plant under the name “peyote cimarrón,” which is “small, red, and ineffective; it is not used or even touched, since the abuser might die.” “Peyote christiano” (hikuli dewéame), a larger, green variety, apparently Lophophora, is considered the “most efficacious.”[9]

Bennett and Zingg give two other kinds of cactus used by the Tarahumari:[10]

Witculíki (Mex. _biznaga_, _Mammillaria hyderi_), a ball cactus
of the gorges, is roasted about four minutes in ashes, after
being split and divested of its spines; the soft center is
squeezed into the ear in case of earache or deafness. (This
curiously echoes of the talking peyote stories.)

Bakánawa or bakánori, a small ball cactus, is used by the
Indians of the barrancas. Shamans, not peyoteros, carry small
bits of the root in their bags; it can be kept only three
years, after which it must be sold or hidden, lest the owner
go crazy. The shaman chews and anoints the patient with it. So
powerful is it that runners use it three days before racing;
one man died of fear after having offended this plant.

NON-CACTI

Of the ritually used narcotics of this area we have already discussed the “mescal bean,” or _Sophora secundiflora_, and teo-nanacatl, the sacred mushroom of the Aztec and Chichimeca.[11] The use of marihuana (_Cannabis_ spp.) in counteracting sorcery, and other beliefs surrounding its employment are also elsewhere discussed.[12] The use of the mescal-bean of the southern Plains and the various alcoholic drinks[13] of Mexico and the Southwest are perhaps related to the “black drink” made of the leaves and twigs of the “beloved tree” (_Ilex cassine_), which is distributed continuously from the Carolinas to the Rio Grande, with a continuation of the trait across the Antilles into northeastern and central South America.[14]

But the narcotic exhibiting perhaps the most numerous parallels in usage with peyote is datura.[15] Gayton lists as datura-users in the Southwest[16] the Pima, Zuñi, Navaho, Hopi, Havasupai, Walapai, Mohave, Yuma and Cocopa, and in California the Akwa’ala, Southern Diegueño, Pass Cahuilla, Gabrielino, Luiseño, Serrano, Chumash, Salinan, Miwok, Eastern and Western Mono, and the Foothill and Southern Valley Yokuts. This distribution is continuous with that in northwestern Mexico among the Opata, Tepehuane, Cora, Tepecano and Aztec.[17]

The parallel uses of peyote, cohoba snuff and datura in prophecy and divination have been summarized elsewhere,[18] but there are further interesting uses of datura. The Aztec of Mexico[19] had special officials who took ololiuhqui (the seeds of datura) to discover cures for illnesses, to find lost or stolen property, to ascertain the origin of long sickness due to witchcraft, etc., receiving pay for their services. Sometimes they prescribed the drug for their patients; datura was also used empirically as an anodyne in setting fractures, and it may have been one of the drugs employed to stupefy sacrificial victims, though peyote is the only one identified. Ololiuhqui was also mixed with tobacco and the ashes of venomous insects to make the sacred ointment of the priesthood; set on altars it was called Divine Meat.[20] The Cora[21] refer to daturas in their songs and myths, but their use of it is not known.

In northern Mexico, the Tepehuane used toloache [datura] in place of peyote.[22] Tepecano prayers refer to datura as the husband of Corn Daughter and the son-in-law of Father Sun; having taken two mistresses, he was punished for this by being stuck head downward in the ground and commanded to give mortals whatever they begged of him. They believe him to have great riches, which they pray for and “borrow.” Datura is one of the five narcotics whose flowers decorate a love charm.[23]

In the Southwest, the Pima had a jimsonweed song which brought success in deer-hunting[24] and cured vomiting and dizziness. The White Mountain Apache[25] mixed the root of _D. meteloides_ with their corn beer to make it more intoxicating. The Apache of Bourke[26] credited datura with the power of making men crazy, but denied using it medicinally or ceremonially. The Havasupai[27] eat datura leaves occasionally apparently for purely secular pleasure, and also use the drug in their arrow poison. At Zuñi[28] datura was one of the medicines formerly belonging to the gods, and only the rain priests and directors of the Little Fire and Cimex fraternities could use it; the rain priests propitiated birds with the powdered root, or a man ate it to bring rain. They also administered it to clients who had been robbed, to discover the thief, and to patients with broken bones; the pulverized root and flower were also used with corn meal for all types of wounds. In myth the daturas were once brother and sister who walked the earth and saw who committed thefts, but the Divine Ones said they knew too much and caused them to disappear into the earth forever; perhaps for this reason it is also used to communicate with the dead. The Navaho[29] eat the root of _D. meteloides_, and sometimes “the Indians under its influence, like the Malays run amuck and try to kill everybody they meet.” There is a record of Hopi doctoring with datura.[30]

Nearly all the tribes of southern California used datura. The Akwa’ala, Yuma, Mohave and Eastern Mono took it to acquire gambling luck; the Central Miwok did not eat it, but considered that a dream about datura aided one’s gambling fortune.[31] Of the remaining tribes of the region who used it ceremonially, some features were held in common: (1) it was not taken before puberty,[32] (2) it was usually administered to a group,[33] and (3) a supernatural helper, sometimes an animal, was sought.[34]

In southwestern California the use of datura is strongly ritualized in the Chungichnich cult of the Luiseño, and Northern and Southern Diegueño. According to Kroeber the ritual is comparatively recent and overlies an older, simpler use of the plant over a wider area. In the Chungichnich ceremony datura is given to boys as a preliminary ritual in puberty observance; its use is not seasonal, nor do women ever partake of it.[35]

The Mountain Cahuilla[36] are typical of groups who had the simpler datura rite in puberty ceremonials before the addition of Chungichnich ritualism.

Manet (datura) was given to boys of 18-20 in a ceremony lasting
3 to 6 days in which other younger boys of 6-10 years were
taught clan and “enemy” songs by their fathers. The paha or
leader prepared strings of reed, eagle and flicker feathers
which were worn by the dancers, who practiced away from the
village. The drinking ceremony or kiksawel took place inside
the ceremonial dance house, and women and children were warned
away by the manet-dancer’s bull-roarer.[37] Each boy was
given a drink of a decoction of datura pounded in a mortar
by the clan chief. The men in the enclosure took each boy by
the waist, and they all danced around the fire, led by the
manet-dancer. The boys remained unconscious in the house all
night when the effect of the drug became manifest, and were
removed the following afternoon to a secluded cañon where for
a week they were taught songs and dances nightly. The last
afternoon a sand-painting was made and its symbolism explained.
After an ant-ordeal and a fire-dance they were regarded as men
and full-fledged members of the clan.

A second group of tribes in the San Joaquin basin and Sierra Nevada foothills had a datura-drinking ceremonial every spring for both sexes shortly after the age of puberty.[38]

The participant’s social status was not changed and the
rite alone constituted a ceremonial unit, the tananhibina
or tanabi-drinking of the Western Mono. Dancing to clappers
took place until the children fell unconscious, whereupon
they were carried away to special camps by relatives. If
a person appeared to be covered with blood or maggots and
vermin (the causes of sickness), they were brushed off with
an eagle-feather brush.[39] In discovering the sickness the
seer used an eagle-bone whistle which enabled him to “hear”
the sickness; if a man had poison, one could see where it was.
One could also see things at very great distances, as well as
discover what medicine-man had caused the death of people by
witchcraft. The seer could likewise find lost articles and
discover wealth by means of datura. The drinkers were guarded
during this time lest they harm themselves or be harmed.
Some men did not have any datura-visions; this was because
some medicine-man feared his bad deeds would be discovered,
and hence rendered the drink harmless by magic and “covered
up” those persons. If a medicine-man wanted to become very
powerful, he took tanabi on ten successive seasons. Datura
leaves were placed on the forehead of a dead person to drive
out the spirit,[40] and people boiled tanabi leaves so the
steam filled their house that the spirit of the dead man would
not return to them in dreams.

In view of these repeated parallels in the attitudes and usages surrounding both peyote and datura, it is certainly not without significance that their distribution, while contiguous, is mutually exclusive in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States: peyote is generally central and northeastern in Mexico, whence it spread northward and eastward into the Plains, while datura is northwestern in Mexico and extends through the Pueblo and nomadic Southwest to southern California. And if the “black drink,” native American beers in Mexico and the Southwest, and the mescal bean be all counted with peyote and datura as part of one general distribution, we have a large continuous area or “narcotic complex” across the whole southern United States and northern Mexico. Such large general distributions are not unknown (e.g., bear ceremonialism), and datura (via Central America), ilex drinks (via the Antilles) and aboriginal alcoholic liquors (continuous from the Southwest through Mexico and Central America to include the entire northern three-quarters of South America) are surely connected ultimately with the same traits in South America—more particularly since not alone are the plants involved the same, but also detailed “superorganic” attitudes and ritual manifestations.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:372-74. These short paragraphs are summaries, not direct quotations.