Part 10
_Peyote Paraphernalia in General._ Typical Plains peyote paraphernalia includes minimally the leader’s satchel, gourd rattle, water drum, drum stick, staff, feathers, eagle wing-bone whistle, corn shucks and loose tobacco, bags for peyote and cedar incense, altar cloth, sage, water bucket and ritual-breakfast containers. The rasp is not used by the Lipan or Mescalero or in the Plains, and the whistle is recent for the two former. The Lipan previously used a bow struck with a stick in place of the later one-sided tambourine drum; the kettle drum, from Mexico, is still more recent.[53] Mescalero shamans sometimes added the use of pollen, which they used to trace a cross on the father peyote, and like the Tonkawa, occasionally served the peyote on woven trays instead of in bags. Taos paraphernalia is standard Plains in type. A common color for Arapaho peyote objects is yellow; Skinner thought the bead-work on Iowa gourds and magpie feather fans indicated a Kiowa or Kiowa-Apache provenience. Among the Delaware and others each devotee has his own gourd rattle, but this (like personal drum sticks and feathers) may not be used until after midnight.[54]
_Staff._ From ancient times, and possibly before Columbus, the cane or staff was a symbol of authority in Mexico,[55] and for this reason we should hesitate before labeling this feature of peyote an Hispanicism. Again, Opler equates the staff of the Mescalero shaman (which he holds throughout the ceremony, not passing it around with the drum) with the “old age stick” held by the singer in the aboriginal girl’s puberty rite.
Similar syncretism with older patterns seems to have occurred also in the Plains. The Comanche used a bow for a staff when holding peyote meetings on the war path, but the term naci-hιta means literally “resting stick-to walk,” according to White Wolf. In the Iowa Red Bean war bundle ceremony, the rattle was held in the left hand [sic] while the bow and arrow were waved in the right as the person sang. The Delaware call the leader’s staff “arrow,” and so also do the Osage, Quapaw and Oto; the Ponca, on the other hand, call it a “bow.” The Kiowa suggest that a bow was formerly used, but the term ᴅo’ᴅęⁱä means “brace-to hold-stick”; it must be of bois d’arc (_Maclura pomifera_ C. K. Schneider), however, and some are nocked at the top and bottom like a bow. The Lipan “cane” was called ilkibenatsi´e or “ram-rod.”[56]
The Shawnee, according to Mrs. Voegelin, called the peyote staff the walking stick of the old, but the red tassel at the top symbolized the headdress worn with a single feather at the war dance. The t’owayennemö of Taos was held in the left hand “for the strength of life,” and the red and white horse-hair tufts encircling the top (so Dr. White was told) were there “because the White man is above the Indian.” A Delaware staff which Dr. Speck saw contained designs representing a tipi, water, the door of the lodge, the blue sky and fire, symbolized by the colors of the bead-work.
Reinterpretations of the meaning of the staff are common. A Wichita called it the “staff of life.” The Iowa staff represents the staff of the Saviour, while the Winnebago variously interpret it as a shepherd’s crook and the rod with which Moses smote the rock (in obvious reference to the leader’s calling for water in the ceremony). Differences in the staff have even come to symbolize a schism in the Winnebago church: that used by Rave was decorated, as elsewhere in the Plains, but Clay used a simple undecorated staff, lacking even feathers, calling attention to the fact that Moses staff was undecorated.[57]
_Gourd Rattles_. Rattles made of gourds (_Lagenaria_ spp.) have become universal in the Plains since the spread of peyotism; but the Iowa had a small gourd rattle with beaded handle in their Red Bean war bundle dance, and the peripheral-Plains distribution of this trait in pre-peyote times has been traced elsewhere. Some groups (Delaware, Osage, Ute, etc.) have individual rattles for each participant.[58] A large one seen at Apache, Oklahoma, made by Spotted Crow (Cheyenne) had drawn on it a moon with a fire and a Morning Star in negative, together with the following “Jesus talk:”[59]
Help me O Lord My God O save me According to thy Mercy O God my heart is fixed. I will sing And give praise Even with my glory.
A Wichita gourd was said by one informant to represent the world or sun; the beads are “people talking” and the bead-work in general is “things on the earth,” while the horse-hair tuft dyed red on the top represents the rays of the rising sun. A Delaware gourd of Dr. Speck’s has bead-work on its handle symbolizing morning (blue), fire (red) and a row of X X X’s (the songs sun).[60]
_Drum._ The standard peyote drum, already described for the Kiowa, made of a small iron kettle with seven bosses in the lacing, is found also among the Arapaho, Comanche, Iowa, Cheyenne, Lipan, Pawnee, Ute, Shawnee, Kickapoo, etc.[61] The Kickapoo say the seven marbles represent the days of the week, just as the twelve eagle feathers of the fan symbolize the twelve months of the year; the four coals which are dropped into the water of the drum are lightning, the water rain and the drumming itself thunder.[62]
In drumming, the vessel is given an occasional shake to wet the head with the contained water, and the left thumb is used to test the tone and tighten the head: sometimes too the head is sucked or blown upon, so that the water is forced to ooze through the skin. The Ponca, however, do not permit the drum head to be touched—“peyote makes the sound, not the hand,”[63] they say—and hence make a handle of the lacing-rope twisted upon itself. Old Man Sack (Caddo) also forbade blowing on the drum, “even when it cups up and sounds like a tin can,” a Kiowa peyote-boy said; in the stricter Caddo moons no water is drunk until the drum has made four rounds, with the result that some of their meetings consequently last well into the forenoon of the next day—a genuine ordeal according to informants. Among the Iowa, and possibly also in some Caddo Delaware “Big Moons” the drum chief accompanies the drum around the circle, drumming for each singer. The Jesse Clay style of drumming among the Winnebago, described by Densmore, is common among the southern tribes: a rapid unaccented beating before the beginning of the singing, gradually slackening to match the speed of the voice. Another mannerism may be noted at the end of each song, when the rattle is shaken unrhythmically as fast as possible during the last few bars of the song, then suddenly stopped with the last drum beat.[64] The water drum is typically Southeastern in distribution, but its presence in the Plains peyote cult must be accounted another Southwestern feature, inasmuch as it was standardized and diffused over the Plains before Southeastern groups in Oklahoma received peyote and hence could have introduced the trait into it.[65]
_Feathers._ Feathers are important in peyote symbolism. In the original Comanche rite only the leader brought in a medicine fan with him; “now many young men bring them who have no special business to.” Skinner wrote that eagle feathers were “badges of the society” among peyote-using Iowa; women were never allowed to use eagle feathers in meetings, however. Younger Oto men carry modern ribbed folding-fans, older ones commonly an entire wing. The individual fans of the Northern Cheyenne, as elsewhere, are not produced until the full effects of the peyote come on, some time after midnight. The eagle feather fans of the Winnebago represent the wings of birds mentioned in Revelations, while the Kickapoo state that the twelve feathers of the eagle fan symbolize the twelve months of the year; twelve is a common Delaware ritual number also.[66]
The Arapaho hang bunches of feathers on the northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest tipi poles to brush off the bodies of tired worshippers. The Mescalero use eagle feathers as a spoon to feed their first peyote to neophytes. The Winnebago, like other tribes, pass a feather around with the staff in its circuit. The Kiowa, Ponca and others use feathers in the water rites: the former make a cross in the midnight water with the feathers of all present, held in a bunch, while the latter place a single feather across the top of the bucket and whistle along the feather. The use of feathers among the Ponca, where cedar incensing is not a strong trait, is especially conspicuous: a feather is passed to the fireman as a symbol of authority, allowing him to leave the tipi without express permission each time from the “road-man,” and there is a “baptism” with feathers in the water ceremonies too. The vanes of Ponca feathers are often notched. The red blankets of the two Carrizo women helpers were fastened with a woodpecker and a flicker feather respectively.[67]
Feathers are common in visions too. A Kiowa envisaged his barred hawk-feathers as a ladder rising through the smoke hole of the tipi to heaven, like a Jacob’s Ladder, and another time as rippling water. Feathers are commonly arranged and cut, colored and tufted, etc., in accordance with visions seen during meetings.[68] Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) had assembled a favorite fan from individual gift feathers, each of which had a different history—one from an old Osage woman who wished for him her long life, two from Hunting-horse (Kiowa), and the like. An interesting development in the Big Moon ceremony is the ritual necessity for each person to be fanned at the fire by the fireman or others every time he re-enters the tipi. This trait is Delaware, Caddo, Osage and Quapaw[69] in distribution, the latter having two special “guards” at the north and south arms of the altar cross who are charged with fanning each entrant; ordinary incensing with cedar has been reported even among the Ute and is probably universal in peyotism. Perhaps with the same purpose in mind, protection from dangerous influences, the Mescalero takes an eagle feather from either side of the door as he makes his exit, returning as soon as possible.[70]
_Birds._ We have already noted the importance of birds in Huichol and Tarahumari peyote symbolism, and are to discover that they are equally significant in the Plains. Here the “water-bird” somewhat ambiguously suggests a bird that lives in the water or the bird involved with the whistling for the midnight water. Arapaho songs refer to peyote and the birds which are its messengers, and sparrow hawk, yellow hammer and other woodpecker feathers are common in their meetings. When the fireman goes to get the water he carries an eagle wing, and the whistling which he makes is said to imitate the cry of a bird in search of water (the end of the eagle wing-bone whistle is finally dipped into the water bucket, as though it were the bird drinking).[71]
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.