Part 14

[134] The prophecies and predictions of C. W. (Kickapoo president of the Native American Church) on the basis of his visions have an old-time flavor, though colored by Christianity and proselytizing for peyote: he prophesied the “Judgment Day” and the “new world” to come; “it will be too late to go in [the peyote tipi] when the time comes—you’ve got to start now,” Kishkaton reports him as saying.

[135] _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:65a, 309-10, 401-402, 650; 2:371a, 587a, 885-86. Cf. the elaborate Quichua and Aztec Messiah legends.

[136] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 403-404; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_.

[137] Mooney (_The Mescal Plant_, 8) errs, we believe, in citing a Kiowa midnight baptism.

[138] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 404.

[139] Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 93; Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 190; Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 727; Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_; Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_. “Baptism” is Lipan also.

[140] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637; Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 3, 5; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 389; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_. It is said that “the peyote-eaters wanted to get baptized and unite with the church in Winnebago, but the clergyman in charge would not permit them, so they went and did their own baptizing through their leader John Rave.”

[141] Some add cookies and candy. The use of sweet foods and the sweetening of others recalls the eating of teo-nanacatl with honey, and the eating of sweet-meats while smoking “grifos” or marihuana. See Maillefert, _La Marihuana_, 6-7.

[142] Mopope (Kiowa) painted a special set of white enamel-ware vessels for Kozad’s meetings: water-bucket (tipi and “water-bird”), parched-corn pan (ear of corn and four-direction feathers), fruit-pan (thunderbird, fruit within a crescent design) and meat-dish (cooking fire, buffalo horns and sun design).

[143] A recurrence of an old custom ascribed to Sweet Medicine appears in the Northern Cheyenne peyote breakfast, when an individual takes five pieces of meat across the lodge to a visitor (Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_).

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTISM

A descriptive account of a ritual pattern, however meticulously detailed it be, must always fall short of reality unless supplemented by further information regarding its functioning in terms of individuals. The older descriptive ethnography and the newer interest in the dynamics of culture are as necessary to each other as anatomy and physiology, of which, indeed, they are the anthropological parallels. We accordingly embark upon the somewhat anecdotal filling in of the pattern sketched in the preceding section.

Every student of peyote has been met with a sometimes odd mixture of suspiciousness and candor, an ambivalence in attitude derived primarily from the native attitudes toward peyotism itself. Most of the younger adherents of the cult have had White schooling of a sort, but though the express intent of this schooling has been the deculturation of the Indian, on returning to their tribes old loyalties are characteristically reestablished and old ways of thinking fallen into; the total effect of Christian teaching on peyotism, therefore, has not been particularly profound.

But all peyote adherents are aware of the efforts, both religious and secular, to suppress the movement, and most of them are familiar with the arguments advanced against peyote as an allegedly harmful drug. They have commonly met this with the counter-propaganda that peyote is a specific cure for alcoholism, but nevertheless this attitude on the part of bearers of the powerful and prestige-full White culture has not left them unimpressed, and there is a consequent lack of psychological security in their belief and practice of peyotism. Though the cult is a compromise solution between Christianity and older native religions, there is still a large number of persons whose attitude toward peyote is thoroughly precarious—as evidenced by the vacillations, defections and rationalizations we are about to list.

Save for the Caddo (and there are perhaps historical reasons for this) ordinary sincerity and interest are met by the Plains practitioners with corresponding candor and friendliness toward the ethnographer. There is no very great difficulty in a sympathetic White man’s attending a peyote meeting nowadays. Indeed, some groups, out of naïve faith in the plant’s power, seem even to invite attendance in the hope of producing a propagandist for the cult to counteract the unfriendliness which they feel, and not unrightly, has arisen from ignorance and prejudice. An instance of this good faith and even naïveté occurs in an Osage petition to Congress that in the event of a law being passed to regulate the use of peyote, an exception be made for the “Indian lodges using it as a sacrament,” and they promised to use it only under the supervision of reservation superintendents![1] And a sincerity not open to doubt was evidenced by a Cheyenne, one time president of the Native American Church, who sent 200 peyote buttons on his own initiative through his agency-superintendent to a chemist at Stanford University, requesting a thorough and disinterested scientific analysis, and offering his further services if necessary.[2]

Another factor making for insecurity of belief and practice has been the intense opposition on the part of some leaders of older cults in the tribe itself. We will recur to this subject in discussing the history of peyote in specific groups, but cite here the rather accentuated example of hostility at Taos.[3] Dr. Parsons tells of a lawsuit between a “peyote boy” and one of the Mexican Penitentes which was resolved by both paying the costs, to prevent the betrayal of native customs. Thereafter the chiefs said:

[Peyote] does not belong to us. It is not the work given to us. It will stop the rain. Something will happen.

But as desire for rain is the typical anxiety reflected in native ritual in the agricultural Southwest, the peyote boys retorted in the same vein. In the drought of 1922 they said:

“Now it is so dry this summer because the peyote boys can’t have their meetings; they used to bring so much rain.” [Indeed, nowadays,] the townspeople are given to referring all their inclination to feud to the peyote situation.

But there is ample evidence that this tendency existed before peyote ever came to Taos. On the other hand, the wife of one peyote-user asserted that there was no more “witch sickness” in the town because of the peyote people, who were able to exorcize witches; nevertheless, one man attributed his trachoma to witching by “foreigners” in peyote meetings.

Such intense seriousness is in marked contrast to the situation in some Plains tribes, where peyote jokes are told at times in the forenoons after meetings, when sufficient rapport has been established. A Comanche story tells of a leader who took his expensive watch into a meeting and laid it on the altar cloth near the father peyote to “show off.” A man shaking the gourd vigorously on the north side was making motions toward the father peyote, and miraculously the watch became broken up; “it was just a mess of works there loose, and the hands dropped off.” The informant was highly amused at this story. An Oto told the tale of a man whose jaw became stiff as he was singing, a contretemps which upset the whole meeting. Though this effect was apparently due to peyote, the story was greeted with much laughter. People laugh at the incorrect singing of peyote songs too. We have already mentioned the one involving the alarming proximity of the Messiah just across the river in Missouri. Another story is told of a visiting Kiowa who attempted to sing a Comanche song in meeting. He mispronounced the words and sang, “_Mentula exposita est! Mentula exposita est!_” All the auditors of this story laughed at this further proof that the Comanche have “no shame.”

The attitudes surrounding the plant itself are interesting. Perhaps the Tarahumari[4] attitudes are most accentuated:

Those who have never eaten peyote fear it most. Should they touch the plant, they believe they would go crazy or die. Those who have once eaten it at a fiesta need have no fear of it, providing they treat it properly.

At Tarahumari feasts of the dead peyote protects the living from the ghost of the deceased, quite as eating it prevents bears from attacking the hunter or deer from running away from him; it confers invulnerability from the Apaches and warns of their approach, and likewise foils the machinations of sorcerers and robbers. In short, “hikuli is a powerful protector of its people under all circumstances.”

The Lipan well represent the attitude of early users in the United States:

If a fellow is not scared, is not afraid of it, he will surely have a good time. A fellow who is afraid of it just gets dizzy and frightened. He sees things that frighten him. What he sees is not true, but is just playing a joke on him.... When a fellow is honest and good natured it is easy for him. But when a fellow is rough and ill tempered he will have a hard time learning from peyote. It will scare him and make it hard for him.... The chief peyote is pretty tough. It watches what is going on. It keeps everything straight. It is a plant, but it can see and understand better than a man. If someone has wrong thoughts, he had better look out or he will go crazy....

When they first start eating peyote they put their thoughts on something good, something they want, for they say that whatever you are thinking about when you start is what you will see all during the night in your vision.... Sometimes a man sees a vision and it scares him and he goes out running. But he is all right the next day. The thing that frightened him won’t happen unless he thinks about it all the time and it frightens him continually. Then he begins to be afraid of it and thinks it will happen. But if he holds it off—holds off the bad thoughts that frighten him—nothing will occur.... Sometimes it makes you dream something pleasant, sometimes it makes you dream something dangerous.... In the morning, just after the meeting is over, you can tell others what you saw.

Hoebel writes that

the trickiness of peyote is emphasized by the Cheyenne. They constantly reiterate that a man must keep hold of himself and also that he must live straight or peyote will shame him.

A Delaware rationalized the unpredictable effect of peyote somewhat differently:[5]

I had the feeling once that it was going to make me foolish, but that happens to everybody, and is a test of one’s faith in peyote.

Vomiting of peyote is a punishment for one’s sins, but it cleanses the body of its impurities in the process and purifies the blood. Part of the symbolism in the bead-work on an Arapaho fetish-pouch is the “vomitings” deposited in a ring around the inside of the tipi.[6]

It would be naïve to suppose that peyote tastes any less unpleasant to natives than it does to Whites. But we should remember that peyote is eaten by Indians influenced by strong motives and deep belief, and the consequent physiological state is easily and adequately rationalized. It is not surprising that a man addicted to alcohol and shamed by it before both Indians and Whites believes that “whiskey and peyote fight in a man, and usually peyote wins and brings it out.” No doubt such a cure _ad nauseam_ is as good as any, and more effective than some. The depressing effect of peyote is also well recognized and measures are taken to overcome it. The Arapaho have feathers at four corners of the tipi to brush persons who tire during the meeting, and the “smoke” at Taos is made to overcome the depression of the early stages of eating, as sage is similarly used in the Plains.[7]

But suffering is counted even a positive virtue among people who had the “vision quest” in the old days. A crippled Indian at Miami told me that “to get power from peyote a man must suffer to it.” The four rounds of the drum without water among the Caddo suggests an intention of making the meeting an ordeal, and Mrs. Voegelin’s Shawnee informant emphasized that the Spybuck moon modelled on the Caddo was “hard.” Most informants would consider the Osage, who have “beds” in their meeting-houses sometimes, not merely ostentatious but also “soft”; one old man said that sage under the blankets of the seat as a cushion indicated a decadent generation, for did not they sit on the bare ground in the old days? A Kickapoo informant said Quanah Parker used to warn them that the taste of peyote wasn’t good, though “it would keep you on the right path.” About 2:10 in the morning a Comanche informant of Simmons said:

If there is suffering, this is the time. That’s the reason I took a good rest: so I could stand it. Many a time I have fallen over at this time. It’s getting on to what they call the dark hour, the hour of the Crucifixion. Everyone here is suffering now.

The Winnebago[8] elaborated into a dogma the physiological effect of peyote in producing occasional vomiting:

If a person who is truly repentant eats peyote for the first time, he does not suffer at all from its effects. But if an individual is bull-headed, does not believe in its virtue, he is likely to suffer a great deal.... If a person eats peyote and does not repent openly, he has a guilty conscience, which leaves him as soon as the public repentance has been made.... If a peyote-user relapses into his old way of living, then the peyote causes him great suffering.... The disagreeable effects of the peyote varied directly with a man’s disbelief in it. This explanation [Rave] persistently drummed into the ears of beginners, who otherwise become terrified and give up too soon.

We have already noted the Huichol-Tarahumari belief that peyote sees and punishes evil deeds. Similarly, when as an old man Kutubi (Comanche) became sick he gave his father peyote to Mumsika, reasoning that he had “probably eaten something peyote didn’t allow”; this is probably the same father peyote which years before had predicted a bad fate for a war party. The leader had wept and strenuously upbraided peyote for this and may later have felt some guilt for his presumptuousness. In any case he held peyote responsible both times for his bad fortune.

But if peyote is blamed for bad fortune, it is also accredited with the liquidation of manifold anxieties. Fear of death is perhaps the most conspicuous anxiety in Plains culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that doctoring plays a major part in the cult. But the power and authority of peyote are relied upon in other ways too. In a number of tribes peyote or peyote tea is used whenever the individual finds himself confronted with any important personal problem. To be sure, it is the individual’s _total wishes_ which ultimately find expression in the course of action followed, but the consultation with peyote composes conflicts and gives an authority to the decision which the “unaided” individual might not have been able to summon.[9]

The protective function of the father peyote is most highly patterned, perhaps, among the Mescalero Apache.[10] In this culture the aggressions arising from the particular socio-economic system of marriage find expression in intense witchcraft activity. But for the typical aggressions which a culture engenders, a culture often has a patterned solution to offer. For though the means used were magical, the aggressions and counter-aggressions were _real_ in the psychological sense, and peyote had a real function in witch-prophylaxis. Shamanistic rivalry was most virulent and witchcraft-anxiety was correspondingly as intense as the projected hatreds. One never knew what dangerous and powerful supernatural possessions a hated rival possessed, hence a number of protective devices were developed in Mescalero peyotism.[11] Yet characteristically in this uncomfortable culture, the power of peyote was itself dangerous, and elaborate care had to be exercised in removing the fuzz from the top of the buttons before eating. Should it touch the eyes, it would cause blindness!

In the Plains the fear is often expressed, not without justification, that the white man is ever about to take away the peyote religion from the Indian, as he has taken almost everything else material and immaterial. But the frequency of this asserveration, sometimes in contexts which the writer thought were unrealistic, indicates that Indians view peyote in a sense as a protector from the Whites. Peyote is rather confidently thought to be able to take care of itself—which accounts for the comparative ease with which a white man can obtain entrance to a meeting, where he will be exposed to “proof” of peyote’s power. We need not emphasize this function of peyote beyond its true proportions, but it may be recalled that peyote enabled a native to escape from a white man’s jail; that it aided peyote pilgrims to bring plants undeterred through the white man’s customs; that it is the sovereign remedy for the evil of the white man’s whiskey; that peyote has so far protected itself against the white man’s attempted sumptuary legislation; that it miraculously escaped detection and confiscation in a white man’s war, through which it protected its bearer; and, not least in psychological importance, that peyote characteristically succeeds (because it is of God, not man) in cures which the white doctor has long since given up as hopeless.

This function of peyote as protector is rooted in earlier history: it sees from afar the approach of the enemy, predicts the results of battle and protects one in battle from the hazards of war. Peyote would have prevented a gun accident, and an accident with a mechanical saw, in instances collected, if the persons involved had only been able to understand its warning. And in another case, when a serious automobile accident had already happened, peyote quelled the anxiety of worrying relatives in assuring an ultimate cure. Again, Mary Buffalo, White Wolfs mother and Belo Kozad’s wife had all lost many children, until they took their sons into peyote meetings and prayed to the power that they be spared; in each case the son grew to manhood. Peyote is the comforter in the event of death also; a funeral meeting is often held as the last rite of respect to the deceased, and some groups hold anniversary meetings for four years after the death.

But peyote punishes as well. An inconstant result of its physiological action is the production at times of an intense fear-state. Rave, for example, (Winnebago)[12] in a period of mental stress experienced his fear:

Suddenly I saw a big snake. I was very much frightened. Then another one came crawling over me. “My God! Where are these snakes coming from?” There at my back there seemed to be something also. So I looked around and saw a snake about ready to swallow me entirely. It had arms and legs and a long tail. The end of its tail was like a spear. “Oh God! I am surely going to die now,” I thought. Then I turned in another direction and I saw a man with horns and long claws and with a spear in his hand. He jumped for me and I threw myself on the ground. He missed me. Then I looked back. This time he started back but it seemed to me that he was directing his spear at me. Again I threw myself on the ground and he missed me. There seemed to be no escape for me.

A similar experience of Crashing Thunder (Winnebago) is noted elsewhere; and in a story told of Bear Track (Cheyenne) and his Osage wife on their visit to the Holy Land, the parents seem to have communicated some of their anxiety and fear surrounding mysterious experiences there to their small daughter, who awoke screaming one night at a presence she saw in the room.

The peyote meeting of many groups has incorporated in it a powerful mechanism for the liquidation of individual anxieties in the practice of public confession of sins. It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of this feature.[13] On the exhortation of the leader, many members rise and accuse themselves publicly of misdemeanors or offenses, asking pardon of persons who might have been injured by them. How large a part peyote has in the production of such states is an open question (for the pattern of public confession is widespread aboriginally in the New World); but that confession to the father-peyote and his authority, and repentance before the group is of profound significance cannot be doubted. More than ritual tears stream down the confessant’s cheeks as he acknowledges his faults and asks aid to keep his promise to mend his ways.

Peyote often figures in matters of personal adjustment. The story of John Rave is too well known to require more than mention here. The somewhat similar history of Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) is likewise interesting in showing how a compromise was struck between the older pagan culture and Christianity, to whose influence this individual had been exposed. The personal solution in Koshiway’s case seems to have been a perfectly satisfactory one: in the Church of the First-born he doctored and “hollered” like the source of his power in good old Indian fashion, and on the other hand baptized, conducted funerals and married couples just as in white churches. The statements of Crashing Thunder’s father[14] indicate a somewhat less happy and inclusive solution, which involved the sacrifice of the old customs:

The peyote people are rather foolish for they cry when they feel happy about anything. They throw away all the medicines that they possess and whose virtues they know. They give up all the blessings they received while fasting, give up all the spirits who blessed them. They stop giving feasts and making offering of tobacco. They burn up all their holy things, destroy the war-bundles. They stop smoking and chewing tobacco. They are bad people. They burn up their medicine pouches, give up the Medicine Dance and even cut up their otter-skin bags.

Crashing Thunder, as we have seen, was himself persuaded by peyote cultists that it was disgraceful to have his hair long, and he gave his shorn hair with his medicine bundles to his brother-in-law, as both wept and as he received the thanks of his relatives. Clothing and headdress are also symbols of conflict between the old and the new for Taos and Osage.

A dramatic solution of a life-long problem was offered Crashing Thunder in peyotism. He had lied about having gotten power from a vision-experience in connection with the the older native religion: so important for personal prestige was this experience that he was betrayed into fabrication to obtain it. But he never lied to himself. All his life he was aware of the deception, and being a man of marked fundamental honesty, he keenly felt the fraud. Finally at the age of forty-five he did achieve through peyote the experience which he had missed in his youth. His conversion to the peyote religion was consequently most profound: “It is the only holy thing that I have become aware of in all my life,” he said simply, after this experience.

Jack Thomas (Delaware) solved a problem of major importance to himself through peyote. He had been appointed a Government policeman, and found considerable conflict between his duty and his sympathies. Finally he became gravely ill, and a meeting was put on by his brother and another relative to pray for his recovery. In this meeting the answer came to him: