Part 19

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.

[2] Cf. the physiological action of peyote-alkaloids, discussed elsewhere (dilation of the pupil, increased reflex excitability). The use of narcotics in this area in connection with racing appears again with peyote in northern Mexico, and with the “mescal bean” (_Sophora secundiflora_) among the Wichita. The Acaxee used peyote in their ball play, much as the “black drink” (_Ilex cassine_) was used in the Southeast. Cf. Mooney’s (_Tarumari-Guayachic_) “Muräto,” apparently identical with Lumholtz’ Mulato, that “is used mostly in races, not ground up, but tied whole around waist, at back.”

[3] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:373. In this region narcotics in general are much employed in connection with war, and the magical “witching” of the enemy—whose power is not merely physical but magically malevolent too. “Mescal beans” were part of the war-bundle in some southern Plains tribes, and both peyote and datura were used clairvoyantly and prophetically in war connections. The attitude that the enemy is a witch, Dr. Spier informs me, is widespread among both the Yumans and Athapascans of the Southwest. Cf. also peyote and captured scalps (e.g., Maricopa) talking, and being danger-ridden.

[4] This is an instance where it is rewarding conscientiously to respect native categories and ethnobotanical statements for hordenine (= anhaline, one of the alkaloids of Lophophora) was discovered in _Anhalonium fissuratum_ in 1894 by Heffter (see Appendix 5, fn. 5).

[5] Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_, says sunami is very much respected, and is used only by doctors. Women doctors grind them on metates, placing the plant upright and crushing it with one blow (cf. the “killing” of mescal beans in the Plains). Doctors assemble for this feast, which requires the sacrifice of a beef. Special rites attend its gathering, and it must be gathered in a black blanket and bleeds red blood. It must be kept in a double basket in a cave, lest it hear quarreling in the house. It dislikes fire, and after ten or twenty years it loses its virtue and must be replanted with copal incensing where originally found. Doctors rub tizwin-and-sunami over the heart and rest of the body, for it makes one win races. _Anhalonium fissuratum_ has a striking resemblance to deer-hooves; it is likely the hikuli referred to in this and other Tarahumari-Huichol tales—but it should be recalled that peyotism in Mexico is also connected with deer-hunting.

[6] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:373-74; Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_, says this variety is as big as a man’s hat. The description probably refers to an occasional polycephalous specimen of _Lophophora williamsii_ (hikuli wanamé).

[7] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_ 1:374; _Tarahumari Dances_, 253, 452-54; cf. Mooney’s (_Tarumari-Guayachic_) kókoyómi. Mooney thought Lumholtz’ “walulasahane” was Tepecano, not Tarahumari.

[8] The resemblance of some _Mammillaria_ spp. to a head or scalp of hair is quite striking; Higgins, in fact, figures an “Old Man Cactus” with long flowing white “hair.”

[9] Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 290.

[10] Bennett and Zingg, _op. cit._, 137, 295. The users of bakánawa believe it to be even more powerful than peyote. One can more easily believe that the ataxic gait of a peyote-intoxicated person would “throw” him over a cliff or break a leg, than that it would result in any conspicuously superior racing ability.

[11] Dorman, in Bourke, _Scatalogical Rites_, 91, says mushrooms were “worshipped” in the Antilles, in Virginia, and possibly also in California. The Siberian use of _Amanita_ spp. is well-known, but no doubt these sporadic uses are all independent of each other.

[12] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:354; see also notes 41, 45, 48 in Appendix 6.

[13] The writer has published elsewhere on the subject of the numerous native American beers (see _Native American Beers_). So far as a cactus-source of these is concerned, the following groups make use of _Cereus giganteus_ Englm. and _C. Thurberi_ Englm. for their sahuaro drink: Huichol (?), Pima, Maricopa, Yuma, Papago, Halchidoma (?), and San Carlos Apache.