Part 17

has driven out of existence almost all the other societies and ancient customs of the tribe; almost all of the Iowa in Oklahoma are ardent peyote disciples, and only ... a few ... still follow the older customs.

Peyotism has relaxed the rules of secrecy about the older medicine ceremonies also, and may perhaps be ultimately responsible for the final deculturation of the Iowa.

Kansa[51] peyotism came from the Ponca about 1907. It was very strong among them by 1915, “having apparently superseded all of the old Kansa beliefs.”

Henry Murdock (Kickapoo) brought the new religion from Quanah Parker and the Comanche in 1906; but he had personally known of peyote before, having gone to Mexico in 1864. Quanah had known Murdock before the peyote religion began spreading and invited his friend by letter to visit him. He put on a meeting in his honor, taught him the ceremony and presented him with peyote paraphernalia. The set songs in the Kickapoo rite are Comanche, and the custom of making the ashes into a bird likewise indicates a Comanche provenience for the ceremony. The Kickapoo were originally much against peyote.[52]

Peyote began to have a limited adherence among the Menomini a little before 1914, owing largely to marital ties with Winnebago and Potawatomi users.[53] The ritual has the Christian character of the Winnebagos’ and membership in the peyote society not only precludes any in all the other societies, but also demands the abandonment of all ancient practices and destruction of their paraphernalia. Skinner believed that

its success will mean the death-blow to all the ancient customs of the tribe, already decadent, without the compensation of any advantageous or progressive substitute.

The spread of the cult has been met with determined opposition among the Menomini, and some peyote users later sought and received reinstatement in the older tribal rites.

One Modoc in Oklahoma, Sam Ball, married a Quapaw woman and took up peyote as a result. At present he is the only one,[54] but such marital ties have often before been the source of the spread of peyote.

Peyote was introduced to the Omaha[55]

in the winter of 1906-07 by an Omaha returning from the Oto in Oklahoma. He had been much addicted to alcoholics, and was told by an Oto that the plant and the religious cult practiced therewith would be a cure. On his return he sought the advice and help of the leader of the Mescal Society of the Winnebago, next door neighbors tribe of the Omaha. He and a few other Omaha, who also suffered from alcoholism, formed a society which has since increased in numbers and influence against much opposition, till it includes about half the tribe.

The medicine-men were particularly opposed to the use of peyote; one native Omaha, Thomas L. Sloan, prepared a bill against peyote and presented it to the Nebraska State Legislature, but later suffered a change of heart.

The Osage are a typical example of the multiple origins for peyotism in one tribe. Chief Lookout testified[56] that the Osage had peyote about 1896, and in a petition to Congress signed by him and Eves Tailchief, Edgar McCarthy and Arthur Bonnecastle, it was stated that Chief Black Dog and Chief Clermont established lodges among them in 1898. The source was Caddo, and nearly all the 800 full-bloods were ultimately peyote users; the Quapaw ceremony may also have had an influence upon them. The Caddo-Delaware messiah, John Wilson, came to the Osage in 1902, after most of them around Hominy and elsewhere had known of it.[57] The younger Osage who embraced the new religion could be distinguished from the conservatives in their wearing of braids decorated with ribbons and colored yarn, in place of the older reached style of headdress. In the last year or so an Osage named Morell has invited the Caddos Alfred Taylor and Ben Carter to bring the “Enoch” (Caddo) moon to his home; he already had a Wilson moon on his place, but his sons wanted to have the more basic Caddoan moon.[58]

The Tonkawa first brought peyote to the Oto very long ago; Koshiway places this as far back as 1876 (which is not implausible in view of the earliest Kiowa and Comanche contacts with the plant). This must not be regarded, however, as the date of the vigorous functioning of the cult, but it is well to recall here the Oto mescal bean cult which may have facilitated the borrowing of the later narcotic.[59]

We have elaborated in an appendix the origin of the Christian elements in Oto peyotism, which spread to other Siouan groups (Omaha and Winnebago). The Church of the First-born embodied Russellite doctrines familiar to the Oto teacher Koshiway.[60] It was incorporated in 1914, though its roots may have gone back as far as 1896, apparently with some consultation with the Shawnee,[61] and the consent of White Horn (Oto) leader of the older and already established native peyote ceremony. Its influence on the Native American Church and the Negro Church of the First-born is elsewhere discussed, as are also the specific Christian elements in peyotism as a whole. The famous meeting 14 miles east of Red Rock at which the Kiowa leaders Belo Kozad and Jack Sankadote and an Apache named Star visited the Oto, was responsible for the amalgamation of the Church of the First-born and the Native American Church. Dugan Black, leader of the first Oto meeting attended, is stated to have gotten his “road” from Little Henry (Kiowa) and uses Kiowa songs; another Oto leader uses Conklin Hummingbird’s fireplace.

The Ponca are said by Shonle[62] to have gotten peyote from the Southern Cheyenne in 1902-04, but native information indicates that there were Comanche sources too (Ponca songs, e.g., are frequently Comanche). The Cheyenne, White Horse, brought them the cult in September, 1904, but when they heard that it was recent among this group, they went to Quanah Parker among the Comanche “to get to the bottom of it.” The late Robert Buffalo-head was the earliest leader of the Cheyenne rite. A suggestion of Caddo influence appears again in the rules surrounding the drum; the typical Ponca peyote drum has a handle made of the twisted rope-end of the lacing. “The old people are strict, and you’re not allowed to put your hand on the drum [head],” we were told.

Eagle Flying Above, who later became oil-wealthy, was the first Pawnee user of peyote, obtaining it from White Eyes, an Arapaho friend, about 1890 or a little later. Several months later Sun Chief, the writer’s informant, took it up. At the death of Eagle Flying Above, Sun Chief was the only Pawnee leader, and all the others learned the rite from him; he has eaten peyote since 1892-94, but only later became a leader. A still earlier source appears to be the Quapaw,[63] whom two Pawnee youths visited in 1890, but the cult became vigorous only after further instruction from the visiting Arapaho. There was some opposition to peyote among the Pawnee in the early days: “they didn’t understand it.” The leaders of the opposition were Sky Chief, head of the Kuγau or “Doctor Dancers,” and Good Buffalo, leader of the Buffalo Dance ceremonialists; later, however, both joined the peyote-users. The cult is found chiefly among the Pítahauírata, where the form originated, but found a later following among the Chauí, then the Kítkaháxki and a few Skidi.

It is interesting to note that, as with the Shawnee and others, Pawnee peyote was early involved in the Ghost Dance excitement. The leader claimed from peyote the same sort of revelations acquired in the Ghost Dance trance, and taught that while under the influence of peyote one could learn the rituals belonging to bundles and societies; in this manner he himself amassed considerable star lore. One unusual Pawnee feature was the use of a special Ghost Dance form of painted tipi for peyote meetings; minor changes were made in the type of drum and rattle also.[64]

The Potawatomi first had peyote sometime between 1908 and 1914, but little else is known about it there. Quapaw peyotism derives from the Caddo-Delaware. The Ree[65] [Arikara] were strongly against the cult, and it apparently died out among them by 1924. Ed Butler brought Sauk[66] peyote directly from the Tonkawa:

In the early days women were not allowed to be members, and the manitou who gave the man this medicine made it a rule that it should be used [only] in war-time.... It is only a war-bundle among other tribes.

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.