Part 1
Transcriber’s Note: The author’s citations of works published in languages other than English are sometimes inaccurately spelt. In addition, he uses a mixture of standard and nonstandard IPA symbols to transcribe words in the Kiowa and other Native American languages; these are preserved as originally printed.
THE PEYOTE CULT
BY WESTON LA BARRE _Professor of Anthropology Duke University_
REPRINTED BY THE SHOE STRING PRESS, INC. Hamden, Connecticut 1959
© 1959, THE SHOE STRING PRESS, INC.
Originally published as Yale University Publications in Anthropology NUMBER 19 Reprinted by permission of the Department of Anthropology, Yale University
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
The field work which is a partial basis of this study was begun in the summer of 1935, when the writer was a member of the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fé ethnological group which worked with the Kiowa under Dr. Alexander Lesser of Columbia University. The field work was continued alone in the summer of 1936 with funds granted by Yale University and the American Museum of Natural History. Field data were gathered with varying completeness from fifteen tribes: Kiowa, Comanche, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Osage, Quapaw, Seminole, Delaware, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Caddo, Oto, Ponca, Kiowa Apache and Wichita; in the case of the Kiowa, Oto, and Wichita two peyote meetings each were attended.
The debt to my almost constant field companion, Charles Apekaum (Kiowa), game warden, ex-Navy man, graduate of Chilocco, Haskell, and Carlisle, and my chief interpreter, is such that I may say my work could not have been carried out with such comparative facility and speed without his aid. His knowledge of people and places was invaluable to me. Special appreciation is expressed to Mr. Alfred Wilson (Cheyenne) of Thomas, Oklahoma, several times state president of the Native American Church, for lending me numerous letters and other documents from the official files of the organization, and to Jim Waldo (Kiowa) and Kiowa Charley for similar documents, including the articles of incorporation and state charter. To Jim Pettit (Oto) of Red Rock, local president of the Native American Church, and Charles Tyner (Quapaw) of Miami, the added debt of personal hospitality was incurred. The following informants were of particular help in gathering data: Cecil and Henry Murdock (Kickapoo); Sly Picard, George May and Henry Hunt (Wichita); Jim Aton, Belo Kozad and Homer Buffalo (Kiowa); Howard White Wolf (Comanche); Carl Pettit, Murray Little-crow, and Mrs. George Pipestem (Oto); Albert Stamp (Seminole); Tom and Collins Panther (Shawnee); Tennyson Berry (Kiowa Apache); Robert Little-dance and Louis MacDonald (Ponca); Mack Haag (Cheyenne); Elijah Reynolds (Delaware); and Sun Chief and James Sun-eagle (Pawnee). To Jonathan Koshiway (Oto), founder of the Church of the First-born, I wish to express appreciation for his painstaking efforts at completeness of information made on my behalf.
In a study of this scope one necessarily incurs considerable debts to colleagues for aid generously given and gratefully received. The notes of James Mooney on Kiowa, Comanche, and Tarahumari peyote, deposited in the Bureau of American Ethnology, as well as manuscripts by Frances Densmore on Winnebago, and Dr. Truman Michelson on Sauk and Fox peyote, were made available through the generosity of Dr. Matthew Stirling, to whom I express particular thanks. Mrs. Elna Smith very kindly lent further Bureau of American Ethnology material which had been in her care. Mr. D. F. Murphy of the Indian Office amplified my Osage notes, and Mr. John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, has been generous with information of legal and administrative nature. To Donald Collier, student at the University of Chicago, and Ing. Luis Híjar y Haro of Mexico City, I express appreciation for bibliographic items, as well as to Dr. Ralph Beals of the University of California at Los Angeles. Richard Schultes, student at Harvard University, who was with me for an ethnobotanical study during several weeks of my second summer of work, has also been generous in giving help on bibliographic as well as botanical and pharmaceutical matters. Dr. E. A. Hoebel of New York University made available his notes on Northern Cheyenne and Comanche peyote. Dr. Ruth Benedict of Columbia University and Dr. M. E. Opler of the University of Chicago have aided with Mescalero Apache notes, and the latter has very generously lent valuable manuscript notes on Tonkawa, Carrizo and Lipan peyotism. Dr. Frank Speck of the University of Pennsylvania was fertile with suggestions during the second period of field work, and since its completion has contributed important Delaware material. Mrs. Erminie Voegelin, student at Yale University, kindly lent her voluminous notes on Shawnee peyote, as did Mrs. Anne Cooke for the Ute, and John Noon, student at the University of Pennsylvania, for the Kickapoo. Dr. A. H. Gayton kindly lent an interesting paper on datura. While the present paper was still in proof form, Dr. Leslie A. White of the University of Michigan and Dr. Fred Eggan of the University of Chicago generously lent material on Taos and Northern Cheyenne peyotism respectively.
To Dr. Edward Sapir of Yale University, to the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fé, and to Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History, I wish to express my thanks for making available the funds on which field work was undertaken. To Dr. Sapir and to Dr. John Dollard of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University I owe the warm personal debt of founding a knowledge and an interest in matters of psychological import herein treated. And to Dr. Leslie Spier, my dissertation adviser, I express gratitude for his constant stimulating interest, valuable bibliographic help, and leads of considerable ethnographic significance.
WESTON LA BARRE
_Note to the Reprint Edition_
In the twenty years since the original publication of this book, studies of peyotism have continued to appear, until there are at present over one thousand bibliographic items on the ethnography of peyotism and related subjects. The author has summarized recent studies in an extended review of “Twenty Years of Peyote Studies,” which is in press for appearance in an early issue of _Current Anthropology_. Readers interested in following two decades of developments in peyotism may wish to be referred to this publication.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 3
INTRODUCTION 7
BOTANICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTE 10 Botany 10 Ethnobotany 11 Names for peyote 14 Etymology of “peyotl” 16 Identification of peyote 17 Physiology of Peyote Intoxication 17
THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM 23 Non-ritual Uses of Peyote 23 Ritual Uses of Peyotl 29 Huichol 30 Tarahumari 33 Comparison of Mexican peyote rituals 35 Mescalero Apache and transitional forms of ritual 40 Kiowa-Comanche type rite 43 Comparison of Mexican, transitional, and Plains peyotism 54
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM 57
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTISM 93
HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS 105 The Pre-peyote Mescal Bean Cult 105 History of the Diffusion of Peyotism 109
APPENDIX 1: Peyote in Mexico 124
APPENDIX 2: Peyote and the Mescal Bean 126
APPENDIX 3: Peyote and Teo-nanacatl 128
APPENDIX 4: “Plant Worship” in Mexico and the United States 131
APPENDIX 5: Chemistry of Peyote 138
APPENDIX 6: Physiology of Peyote 139
APPENDIX 7: John Wilson, the Revealer of Peyote 151
APPENDIX 8: Christian Elements in the Peyote Cult 162
APPENDIX 9: The Native American Church and Other Peyote Churches 167
BIBLIOGRAPHY 175
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
Explanation of plates AT END
1. Peyote leaders 2. Altar and ash birds
TEXT FIGURES PAGE
1. Arrangement of tipi for peyote meeting (Kiowa) 44 2. Peyote paraphernalia 47 3. Peyote drum 49 4. Peyote altars or moons 75 5. The diffusion of peyotism 122 6. Cement altar of the Big Moon rite (Osage) 154 7. Altar in West Moon Church (Osage) 155
THE PEYOTE CULT
INTRODUCTION
Peyote (Nahuatl, peyotl) or _Lophophora williamsii_ Lemaire, is a small, spineless, carrot-shaped cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and southward. It contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the isoquiniline series, some of them strychnine-like in physiological action, the rest morphine-like. In pre-Columbian times the Aztec, Huichol, and other Mexican Indians ate the plant ceremonially either in the dried or green state. This produces profound sensory and psychic derangements lasting twenty-four hours, a property which led the natives to value and use it religiously. Peyote is not, however, the same as teo-nanacatl, as Safford believed; the latter is a narcotic mushroom which likewise had a Mexican distribution. The term “peyotl” is also used in Mexico to designate other cacti and non-cacti, some of which, like peyote, are reputed to have aphrodisiac and other properties.
Physiologically, the salient characteristic of peyote is its production of visual hallucinations or color visions, as well as kinaesthetic, olfactory and auditory derangements. Psychiatrists have used it (experimentally) with unsatisfactory results in producing temporary psychosis, and therapeutically its use has been similarly disappointing because of the uncertainty of action of the antagonistic alkaloids of pan-peyotl. First, exhilaration is produced by the strychnine-like alkaloids, followed by profound depression, nausea and wakefulness, and finally, under the influence of the morphine-like alkaloids, brilliant color visions are produced, which last for several hours. There are no ill after-effects, and peyote is not known to be habit-forming. These properties have led to a number of non-ritual uses by natives for prophesying, clairvoyance, finding lost objects and the like, as well as empirically for the cure of all manner of illnesses.
In Mexico peyote was used seasonally in an agricultural-hunting religious festival, preceded by a ritual pilgrimage for the plant. Participants danced all night around a fire to the rasp-music of the shaman, as they ate the drug in this tribal celebration. Since about 1870 the cult has spread to the United States, particularly in the Plains, where nearly all groups use it. In the Southwest transitional region peyote became deeply involved in shamanistic rivalries and witchcraft, and in the Plains with war. A pre-peyote narcotic, the “mescal bean” (_Sophora secundiflora_) had there prepared the way for its introduction. The Plains cult is like the warriors’ societies of earlier times in some respects. The Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo were the chief agents of the spread of the cult throughout the entire Plains region to southern Canada and parts of the Great Basin. The standard ritual is an all-night meeting in a tipi around a crescent-shaped earthen mound and a ceremonially-built fire; here a special drum, gourd rattle and carved staff are passed around after smoking and purifying ceremonies, as each person sings four “peyote songs.” Various water-bringing ceremonies occur at midnight and dawn, when there is a “baptism” or curing rite, followed by a special ritual breakfast of parched com, fruit, and boneless meat.
The Caddo-Delaware John Wilson had peyote visions that led him to modify the altar and ceremony; this new form has spread to the Caddo, Delaware, Quapaw, Osage and others. Wilson was one of a long line of Indian prophet-messiahs, and his “moon” has been somewhat exploited economically. The Oto teacher, Jonathan Koshiway, founded a Christianized version of peyotism which spread to the Omaha, Winnebago and others. An organization of confederated tribes known as “The Native American Church” grew out of Koshiway’s “Church of the First-born” (which latter spread to Negro groups also). The cult has had considerable legal difficulties.
Praying and doctoring in meetings, and occasionally public confession of sins, are the major means for the liquidation of life-anxieties of this profoundly functional cult’s many present-day communicants. In the following pages we shall attempt to delineate the history of the study of the cult, the various botanical questions surrounding peyote, its physiological action and the various ethnological, psychological and historical questions involved in its diffusion.
First of modern students to describe the peyote rite was James Mooney, who visited the Kiowa, Comanche, Tarahumari, and “a number of other tribes, among them the Mexican tribes of the Sierra Madre, and as far south as the City of Mexico.”[1] But at his death he had published no further study of peyote; ethnographers of the period were in general concerned with preserving complete records of older native cultures, and ignored or paid scant attention to the modern cult of peyote. Mooney himself gave little notice to the rite in his monographs on the Cheyenne and the Kiowa,[2] although at the time he was undoubtedly the authority on the subject.
Wissler, for example, barely mentions the peyote cult.[3] Indeed, in its role of modern destroyer or supplanter of older native religions, peyote was even a matter of concern[4] and annoyance to some ethnographers. Lumholtz, with wonted thoroughness, published considerable data on Huichol and Tarahumari peyote in 1898 and later, and Kroeber in 1902 wrote a chapter on Arapaho peyote which has remained a model for later investigators.[5]
It remained for Paul Radin, however, in his studies of Winnebago peyote,[6] to point out to ethnographers an engrossingly interesting, but widely ignored, religious cult which was growing and spreading before their very eyes. Since the appearance of his papers in the years following 1914, the ethnographic literature on peyote has grown considerably, due importantly to the impetus Radin gave such studies. Lowie devoted a chapter partly to peyote in his book _Primitive Religion_; Rouhier paid some attention to ethnographic questions in his pharmacological monograph on peyote; and Wagner wrote a short comparative paper based largely on the Comanche and Huichol cults. Petrullo’s _Diabolic Root_ was devoted entirely to Delaware peyotism.[7]
No comparative treatment of the peyote cult of the order of Mooney’s on the Ghost Dance, Lowie’s on Plains societies, or Spier’s on the Sun Dance had ever been made when Dr. Maurice Smith of the University of Oklahoma began his studies. The unfortunate death of this investigator, however, prevented the finishing of his work, of which only a short paper[8] has seen publication. But studies of the peyote cult in individual tribes, both published and in manuscript, have multiplied to such an extent since the time of Kroeber’s and Radin’s studies that the time appears ripe to attempt an integrated comparative treatment of the religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mooney, _A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 64-65; _Mescal Plant and Ceremony_ (from which dates the medical and pharmaceutical interest in peyote); statement in _Peyote, as Used in Religious Worship_, 58.
[2] _The Cheyenne_, 418; _Calendar History_, 237-39.
[3] _The American Indian_, 376.
[4] Skinner, _Material Culture_, 42-43; _Societies of the Iowa_, 693-94, 724.
[5] Lumholtz, _Tarahumari Dances_; _Huichol Indians_; _Explorations en Mexique_; _Symbolism of the Huichol_; _Unknown Mexico_; Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 398-410.
[6] Radin, _Sketch of the Peyote Cult_; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 388-426; _Crashing Thunder_.
[7] Lowie, _Primitive Religion_, 200-204; Rouhier, _Monographie du Peyotl_; Wagner, _Entwicklung und Verbreitung_; Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_.
[8] Smith, Mrs. Maurice G., _A Negro Peyote Cult_.
BOTANICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTE
BOTANY
Numerous errors involved in the study of peyote, many of them still widely current, make it advisable to identify our subject-matter clearly at the very outset of our study. The plant peyote was first described by Sahagún in 1560 as a narcotic cactus used ritually by the Chichimeca, the root peiotl.[1] Jacinto de la Serna[2] in 1626 mentioned peyote, which he distinguished from other intoxicants. The first properly botanical description was made in 1638 by Hernandez,[3] the naturalist of Philip II of Spain, under the rubric De Peyotl Zacatensi, seu radice molli et lanuginosa. Ortega,[4] again, in 1754, mentioned peyote as used in a Cora dance.
Since 1845 peyote has had numerous modern botanical classifications, being listed variously as _Echinocactus williamsii_ Lem., _Anhalonium williamsii_ Lem., _Mammillaria williamsii_ Coulter, _Echinocactus lewinii_ Hennings, _Mammillaria lewinii_ Karsten, _Lophophora lewinii_ Thompson, etc. The commonest designation in the older ethnological literature is _Anhalonium lewinii_ or _A. williamsii_. For a considerable period it was thought that these last were two species—a point argued both on botanical and ethnographic grounds—but the present classification of peyote is as a single species, the unique member of its genus, _Lophophora williamsii_.[5]
The peyote plant is a curious and unique little cactus. It has no spines whatsoever, and ranges from the carrot-like to the turnip-like in shape and size, without, however, any branches or leaves. The rounded top surface, which alone appears above the soil (and which, cut off and dried, becomes the peyote “button”), is divided radially by straight, or slightly spiral, or sinuous furrows that in some specimens become so complex as to lose the appearance of ribs altogether. These ribs bear little tufts or pencils of matted grayish-white hair, not unlike artists’ fine camel’s-hair brushes. It is from these that the cactus takes both its modern botanical designation, _Lophophora_ (“I bear crests”) and its Aztec name _peyotl_ (from the resemblance to cocoon-silk). In the center of the top there is a little spot of closely matted fuzz, from which the ribs derive and grow; the flower, borne on a stalk, grows from here too, the pinkish-whitish blossom growing into a rapidly maturing club-shaped pinkish-reddish fruit.[6]
ETHNOBOTANY
Several matters regarding the botany of peyote should be discussed, for their having given rise to legends about the plant. After discussing the nefarious uses to which the Chichimeca put peyote, Hernandez writes that
on this account the root scarcely issues forth, but conceals itself in the ground, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover and eat it.[7]
Dr. Parsons[8] recounts a Taos origin legend in which peyote acts even more spectacularly. A warrior on the war-path heard a singing, and when he approached,
the plant would go open and shut like this [the narrator moves his finger-tips close together and then opens them].... Then the plant told the Indian to come inside. But the opening was so small. Then it got bigger; it got to be a big hole in the ground, a square hole. The Indian went down the hole. There was a big hollow place down there in the ground, round like a kiva.
And the story continues, telling of how the Indian learned the peyote rite from the man in the kiva. On scrutiny this appears to be the Kiowa origin legend for peyote, modified by the addition of familiar Pueblo folk-tale motifs. The Kiowa themselves say,
you must look closely at peyote, because it is like a mole when it comes on top of the ground—if you don’t look closely it is gone again.
These curious legends, however, are not without some histological[9] and ecological reality. In this semi-desert region the subterranean funnel-formed tap-root of the plant is covered with woody scales which form a rigid shell. Rouhier writes:[10]
All this chlorophyll-region [the portion above the ground] is tumid, plump and fleshy, firm and elastic to the touch, when, after the season of heavy rains, the plant is replete and vigorous. During the hot season it droops and shrivels, becomes soft, and has a dull rumpled look. It retracts then into the rigid cylinder formed by the desiccated corky desquammated part of the stem; the plant literally gives the impression of pulling its head into its neck. (M. Diguet has told us that the plant, at this time, buries itself in the soil, as though drawn, by a powerful force of traction of its adventive radicles, at the base of the funnel which its tap-root has bored.)
Another matter of ethnobotanical interest concerns the supposed existence of two varieties of peyote.[11] In discussing Peyotl Zacatensis Hernandez[12] writes that “they say they are male and female.” The Huichol likewise distinguish two kinds of Peyote, one, the more active and bitter in taste and presenting smaller and more numerous mammillations on the surface, called Tzinouritehua-hicouri, “Peyotl of the Gods,” the other, whose physiological effect is less pronounced, called Rhaïtoumuanitarihua-hicouri, “Peyotl of the Goddesses.” In the opinion of Rouhier,[13] “The Peyotl of the Goddesses ... is the young form of _Echinocactus williamsii_ [= _Lophophora williamsii_], and the Peyotl of the Gods is its adult form.”
Nor is this the end of the matter. It is well known that sex is attributed to plants in the Plains, but there is also a well-defined pattern regarding the sex[14] specifically of peyote throughout Mexico and the Plains. The Huichol have a tutelary goddess for peyote called Hatzimouika; the peyote deity of the Tarahumari, on the other hand, is male, and great reverence is paid by them to the hikuli walúla sälíami, or “hikuli great authority,” literally, who is surrounded by smaller plants, his “servants,” and who, not satisfied with mere sheep and goats, demands the sacrifice of oxen.
Being persons, peyote plants naturally talk and sing on occasion. Lumholtz[15] writes of the Tarahumari belief that
in the fields in which it grows, it sings beautifully, that the Tarahumare may find it. It says, “I want to go to your country, that you may sing your songs to me.” ... It also sings in the bag while it is being carried home. One man, who wanted to use his bag as a pillow, could not sleep, he said, because the plants made so much noise.