Part 2

Bennett and Zingg[16] mention the Tarahumari belief that the singing one hears as the bakánawa moves about in the night near the sleeper may be made clearer by chewing a bit of the plant. Indeed, Mooney[17] says the Tarahumari find the peyote by hearing its song, Híkurówa, which it sings day and night. Peyote speaks to the Tarahumari shaman during the night of dancing and curing, and encourages him with words and by singing to him. The fetish-plant in the ceremony proper is placed on the altar under a half-gourd resonator; the rasping of the shaman, thus amplified, is very pleasing to peyote, who manifests his strength by the amount of noise produced with his aid.

In the Plains, however, when pleased with the singing, the peyote goddess actually joins in with it.[18] The Kiowa call her sęⁱmąyi, literally, “Peyote Woman.” Mooney describes a Kiowa peyote rattle on which she is represented, and at her feet the Morning Star, which heralds her approach. A Taos origin legend for peyote tells of a warrior abandoned by his companions, who heard a singing and rattling near where he lay, and finally discovered it coming from the blossom in the center of the top of the plant.

The Shawnee[19] say that if you listen carefully you can “catch songs” from Peyote Woman. The Kickapoo likewise have the concept of the peyote “goddess” who sometimes sings in meetings when pleased; one informant further said that “the spirit of a woman who had been faithful to peyote sings after she has passed away. Sometimes we put pieces of food near the fire for spirits of a dead man or woman or child. Sometimes you hear a man’s voice too.” The Lipan say they hear “Changing Woman’s” voice in peyote meetings. The Wichita believe it is kicu·ídie, “the woman who stays in the water,” and her little son, wi·ḱιdiwιdá, “the boy who rolls along the banks of the water,” who are mentioned in prayer, and who give power in meetings. The “peyote-woman” belief is attenuated elsewhere in the Plains.[20]

NAMES FOR PEYOTE

Native terms for peyote differ somewhat in denotation and connotation. For clarity sake we shall list only those terms referring specifically to _Lophophora williamsii_. Native classifications of cacti, as well as extensions of the term “peyotl,” will be discussed in an appendix, as involving special problems.

The Huichol of Jalisco call peyote hícuri, hicori, xicori or hicouri (in the notation of speakers of different European languages); sometimes they refer to it metaphorically as foutouri, “flower.” The Cora of the Tepic mountains term peyote huatari, houtari or watara; the Tepehuane of Durango, kamaba. The Tarahumari of Chihuahua call it hikuli or hikori, sometimes adding, according to Lumholtz, the epithet wanamé (or houanamé), “superior,” to designate the peyote par excellence; the same meaning appears to be indicated in the reduplication híkurí-íkuríwa.[21]

The Opata[22] call it pejori, the Otomi beyo. The Pima of the Gila River region use the name peyori. The Comecrudo or Carrizo of Tamaulipas call peyote kóp, and Gatschet recorded the term kúampamát for “bailar el peyote” (“many are dancing [the peyote dance]”). The Lipan name is xʷucdjiyahi, “pricker one eats.” The Tonkawa of southern Texas call peyote nonč-gáⁱɛn; the Taos name is walena, the generic term for “medicine.” Mescalero Apache call it ho or hos; the Wichita nesac’. The Comanche wokwi or wokowi is said by Mooney to be the generic name for cacti.[23] The Arapaho call peyote hahaayāⁿx. Most of the Oklahoma tribes have their own version of the term peyotl, such as the Kickapoo pi·yot, or, like them, they may use some older native term for “medicine” such as natáⁱnoni. John Wilson (Caddo-Delaware), curiously, called peyote “sugar” or “bee-sugar”; and some Anadarko Delaware call peyote-eating “ear-eating.”

Whites have used numerous confusing and erroneous non-botanical terms for _Lophophora williamsii_. Of these usages the commonest, “mescal,” “mescal beans” or “mescal buttons” are the most confusing. Mescal (from the Nahuatl mexcalli, “metl [maguey] liquor”) in northern Mexico, properly refers to the _Agave americana_ or _Agave_ spp. baked in earth ovens and widely eaten in the Southwest, and from which the Mescalero Apache take their name. By extension the term is applied to the intoxicant distilled from the native beer, pulque, also made from _Agave_ spp. A more precise designation of this native brandy (as opposed to the native beer) is tesvino and its variants, from the Nahuatl tehuinti or teyuinti, “intoxicating.”[24]

“Mescal bean” as used to designate _Lophophora williamsii_ is quite indefensible, being wrong on two counts: the “mescal” bean proper is _Sophora secundiflora_ (= _Broussonetia secundiflora_) or, incorrectly, _Erythrina flabelliformis_. The former is a red bean which was used in a pre-peyote narcotic cult of the southern Plains, to be discussed later. The adjectival use of “mescal” in the designations “mescal beans” or “mescal buttons” no doubt comes from the known intoxicating properties of the distilled liquor mescal, as extended in meaning to other unfamiliar new intoxicants, _Sophora secundiflora_ (bean), and _Lophophora williamsii_ (cactus); the term “dry whisky” bears this out. Lumholtz,[25] indeed, wrote that the Texas Rangers, during the Civil War, when taken prisoner and deprived of all other stimulating drinks, soaked peyote (which they called “white mule”) in water and became intoxicated on the liquid. Further confusion of peyote with mescal has arisen from the north Mexican habit of mixing the two in a drink. Dealers call peyote the “turnip cactus” or “dumpling cactus” from its shape, to which also refers the local Mexican term biznagas, “carrot.” A local name in Starr County, Texas, where the plant grows abundantly, is challote, but the usual dealers’ name is “peyote buttons,” from their flat shape when dried.

ETYMOLOGY OF PEYOTE

A precise understanding of the meaning of this term is essential, for it gives a linguistic clue of primary importance in botanical identification. Molina[26] in 1571 recorded the Nahuatl term peyutl, whose elastic and imprecise sense designates something white, shining, silky or woolly, and which applies to the moth-cocoon, a spider-web, a fine tissue, or, indeed, from its appearance (familiar enough to the Aztecs) even to the pericardium or covering of the heart. Rémi Siméon, in his Nahuatl dictionary of 1885, lists “Peyotl or Peyutl—A plant whose root served to make a drink that took the place of wine (Sahagún); silkworm cocoon; pericardium, envelope of the heart.”[27]

This etymology, the oldest as well as the most authoritative, is accepted by Rouhier.[28] The present writer, having been informed of its linguistic impeccability, further finds it explanatory of otherwise curious extensions of the term “peyotl” in Hernandez,[29] as well as later Mexican usages. Various plants in Mexico besides _Lophophora williamsii_, some of them not even belonging to the Cactus Family, have been called “peyote.” In each case, however, there has been some part of the plant to which the meanings of flocculence or cocoon-like woolly pubescence descriptively can legitimately apply. An appendix is devoted to the clearing up of this terminological confusion.

IDENTIFICATION OF PEYOTE

We have now touched upon the etymological connotation of “peyotl,” and its extended denotation in Mexican usage. But one further matter remains to be pointed out, _viz._, incorrect identification and misusages involving peyote. Safford[30] in 1915 adequately indicated the identity of the modern peyote of the Plains with the peiotl of Sahagún and other earlier Spanish writers. Not content, however, with proving this somewhat obvious point, he went beyond and even contrary to his evidence and attempted to prove the identity of peyote with a further narcotic mentioned in Spanish sources, a yellow thin-stemmed mushroom, called teo-nanacatl by the Aztec. This confusing and wholly erroneous identification is discussed at length in an appendix, inasmuch as it has unfortunately won wide acceptance.

A more widespread error is the application of the terms “mescal,” “mescal bean” or “mescal button” to the cactus _Lophophora williamsii_ or peyote. These misusages are common in the literature on peyote, and arise from confusion with a pre-peyote narcotic of the southern Plains and Texas, the red bean of _Sophora secundiflora_, a true member of the Bean Family. The word “mescal” as applied either to the cactus or the bean is erroneous and misleading, and should properly be applied only to the “Indian cabbage” (_Agave_ spp.) of the Southwest, or the brandy distilled from Agave-beer or pulque.[31] The true “mescal bean” is discussed elsewhere.

PHYSIOLOGY OF PEYOTE INTOXICATION

The present section of our study proposes to deal with the physiology of peyote intoxication only insofar as it may be supposed to have influenced the form of native culture-patterns and rites surrounding its use. The efficacy of native doctoring with peyote, however, must be decided on the basis of properly controlled medical experiments, of a sort discussed in Appendix 6, and is not at issue here.

So far as the brute effect of the drugs is concerned, the first stage is one of physical and mental exhilaration. To this physiological fact no doubt is due the Mexican use of peyote in foot-races, in war and for allaying hunger and thirst when on fasting pilgrimages for the plant. Expression of this exhilaration by dancing is common in Mexico, and is found likewise among the Tonkawa, the Lipan and sporadically in the Plains.[32]

Gross attitudinal behavior may be exhibited in extreme cases. Lumholtz[33] says of the Huichol that

in a few cases a man may consume so much that he is attacked with a fit of madness, rushing backward and forward, trying to kill people, and tearing his clothes to pieces. People then seize upon him, and tie him hand and foot, leaving him thus until he regains his senses. Such occasions are thought to be due to infringements of the law of abstinence imposed upon them before and during the feast.

This semi-psychotic state is no doubt as much conditioned culturally as the Malay “running amok”; in Mexico early Spanish writers repeatedly describe native visions as sometimes horribly frightening as well as sometimes laughable. Indeed, in Mexico, among the Mescalero, and the early Plains users, aggressions welling up under peyote intoxication commonly took the form of witchcraft fear and counter-witchcraft. Typically in the Plains, however, the attitude repeatedly emphasized is that of intertribal brotherhood and an individual feeling of friendliness and well-being. Nevertheless some fifty native visions collected indicate great variability in the psychic state. A Taos instance records euphoria to the point of laughter,[34] but Crashing Thunder (Winnebago)[35] experienced a state of deep depression and intense _fear_:

The next morning [he writes] I tried to sleep. I suffered a great deal. I lay down in a very comfortable position. After a while a fear arose in me. I could not remain in that place, so I went out into the prairie, but here again I was seized with this fear. Finally I returned to a lodge near the one in which the peyote meeting was being held, and there I lay down alone. I feared that I might do something foolish to myself if I remained there alone, and I hoped that someone would come and talk to me. Then someone did come and talk to me, but I did not feel any better. I went inside the lodge where the meeting was taking place. “I am going inside,” I told him. I went in and sat down. It was very hot and I felt as though I was going to die. I was very thirsty, but I feared to ask for water. I thought that I was surely going to die. I began to totter over. I died and my body was moved by another life. I began to move about and make signs. It was not myself doing it and I could not see it. At last it stood up. The eagle feathers and the gourds, these it said, were holy. They also had a large book there. What was contained in the book my body saw. It was the Bible.... Not I, but my body standing there, had done the talking [this schizoid quality of consciousness in peyote intoxication has been frequently noted by white observers]. After a while I returned to my normal condition. Some of the people present had been frightened thinking I had gone crazy. Others, on the other hand, liked it. It was discussed a great deal; they called it the “shaking state.”

The vision experiences of John Wilson (Caddo-Delaware) and Enoch Hoag (Caddo) are typical results of physiologically-induced hallucinations in individuals whose culture-background highly values vision-experiences.[36] The Enoch Hoag “moon” had its origin apparently in a (tetanic?) trance, wherein he saw himself as dead, with many people around him weeping and his arms composed on his chest as with a corpse. His companions tried to give him water with a spoon, but his jaws were stiff—a common symptom of strychnine poisoning.[37]

The stimulating effect of peyote may partly account for the holding of meetings at night, for there is no desire or ability to sleep for ten or twelve hours after eating peyote; however, all-night meetings for various purposes are not unknown in the Plains, and the older culture pattern merely exploits the physiological fact as a limiting condition probably. Some observers report that, although there is heightened reflex-activity (including those of the skin), peyote induces a partial skin anaesthesis. A Zacatecas ceremony reported by Arlegui,[38] on the occasion of the birth of the first male child, appears to utilize this virtue of the plant:

The relatives gather and invite other Indians to a horrible ceremony of which the father is the object. They give him to drink a brew concocted of a root called peyot and which not only has the property of intoxicating him who drinks it, but also renders him insensible and drugs the flesh and paralyzes the whole body. This drink is administered to the patient after twenty-four hours of fasting. Then he is seated on a staghorn in a place specially chosen for this. The Indians come with sharpened bones and teeth of different animals. Then with different ridiculous ceremonies, they approach the unfortunate victim one by one; each one makes a wound on him, without pity, making a great deal of blood flow out; and as those present are numerous, the wounds are many and the unfortunate person is so maltreated that, from head to foot, he offers a lamentable spectacle.... According to how the miserable victim has borne this, they augur the valor which the son of a father who has suffered so much will possess.

The stages of peyote intoxication have been noted by natives. Writing of the Kiowa and Comanche, Mooney[39] maintained that “in the peyote ceremonies, the songs of those present are more vigorous after midnight,” and informants frequently indicate their awareness of this.[40] Kroeber says of this period late in the intoxication that[41]

the physiological discomforts have usually worn off, and the pleasurable effects are now at their height. It appears that new songs, inspired perhaps by the visions of the night, are often composed during this day.

Many well known songs composed by such leaders as Quanah Parker (Comanche), Enoch Hoag (Caddo) and John Wilson (Caddo-Delaware, called Nĭshkûntŭ or “Moonhead”) are said to have arisen from the auditory hallucinations of peyote intoxication. The popular song “Heyowiniho” came to John Wilson in a synaesthetic auditory hallucination in which he heard the sound of the sun’s rising. Crashing Thunder[42] said of the beating of a drum that “the sound almost raised me in the air so pleasurably loud did it sound to me.” Other kinaesthetic derangements have been reported in visions.

The dilation of the pupils of the eyes possibly explains the Huichol[43] belief that the squirrel- and skunk-fetishes of their ceremony can see better than ordinary people, guiding and guarding the hikuli-seekers on their way. Visual phenomena, indeed, are perhaps the most conspicuous effects of peyote eating. The colors red and yellow, usually with reference to birds and feathers, are common in both Mexican and Plains peyote symbolism.[44] The widespread Plains belief that peyote makes one see better may derive from pupil-dilation; white observers have reported acuter vision in peyote intoxication from this cause. Indians frequently manifest a marked “photophobia” even in the mild morning sunlight after meetings, and many younger men affect colored glasses at this time.

The peyote alkaloids cause increased salivation, and there is a constant noise in meetings of spitting as the users eat peyote; in some meetings attended individual tin-can spittoons were provided. The increased flow of saliva probably accounts for the thirst-allaying effect of the plant encountered in the origin legends and elsewhere, but this and the diuretic[45] action of the drugs cause thirst to reappear more strongly later. A regular feature, therefore, of the typical Plains ritual is the bringing in of water at midnight and in the morning, which is passed around clockwise.[46] The widespread taboo on the use of salt in connection with peyote may have some reference to this action of the plant.[47] On the other hand, the use of sweet[48] foods is a necessary part of the ritual; these are stereotyped both in the Plains and Mexico to include parched corn in sugar-water, sweet fruit, and sweetened meat either dried and powdered or cut into chunks, and candy is a regular feature in some meetings. Sugar may in effect relieve the stage of depression in peyote intoxication somewhat.[49]

The classification of plants into male and female on the basis of their physiological action has, as we have seen, a botanical basis. We are convinced on the other hand, however, that peyote has no effect whatsoever in the curbing of an appetite for liquor. Both native and white apologists[50] for peyote advance this argument in extenuation and defence. Natives are perfectly sincere in their belief that the antagonism of peyote and alcohol is physiological (even in the face of conspicuous contrary evidence),[51] and Plains Indians are annoyed and hurt at the widespread association of drinking and peyote-eating through the confusion of the term “mescal.” Yet the stubborn ethnographic fact remains that in Mexico peyote is commonly drunk _with_ tesvino or mescal.

Various other physiological effects noted by whites find native parallels. Many of the visions recorded for natives deal with synaesthesias of sight and hearing and smell, and there occur cases of taste- and smell-hallucinations as well as the more common auditory and visual ones. Kinaesthetic derangements are also not unknown.[52]

One final question is less of physiological than psychological and ethnographic import. Along with teo-nanacatl, marihuana (_Cannabis_ spp.) and the Peyotl Xochimilcensis (_Cacalia cordifolia_), peyote has been said to have an aphrodisiac action. This association suggests that a matter of Spanish-White or Mexican-Indian ethnography is involved.[53] But love-magic was not unknown either in Mexico or the Plains, and it is conceivable that this new medicine (particularly since it was used for “witching”) because of its other spectacular effects, might have been valued for this purpose also.

We have now discussed the bearing of physiological reactions on the peyote ritual and other native behavior: the _exhilarating_ first effect of the drug (in the allaying of hunger and thirst on the march, to give courage in war, and strength in dancing and racing) and the second stage of _depression_ and _visions_ (“running amok,” witchcraft-suspicion, psychic fear-states, euphoria and feeling of brotherhood, partial anaesthesia, the “suffering to learn something” characteristic of the Plains vision quest, synaesthesias, auditory hallucinations, and “catching songs,” visual hallucinations, and “learning” of painting- and bead-designs, symbolical birds and feathers, etc.).

We found, too, behavior definitely related to the pupil-dilating power of peyote as well as its sialogogue and diuretic action; the injunction against salt and the use of sweet foods, however, may involve culture-historical matters. We have been skeptical of the alleged anti-alcoholic virtue of peyote, and have likewise doubted that _physiologically_ peyote is either aphrodisiac or anaphrodisiac, despite heated claims on both sides. The efficacy of native doctoring with peyote is a special problem treated elsewhere along with the therapeutic and psychiatric experiments of Whites.

The following ethnographic part of our study deals first with the non-ritual uses of peyote, arising from its special properties, and secondly with the ritualization of its use.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “They [the Chichimeca] have a considerable knowledge of plants and roots, their qualities and their virtues. They were the first to discover and use the root called peiotl, which enters among their comestibles in the place of wine” (Sahagún, _Histoire générale_, 10:661-62). Again, “There is another herb, like tunas of the earth [tunas is the Spanish name for the fruit of the prickly pear, _Opuntia opuntia_]; it is called peiotl; it is white; it is produced in the north country; those who eat or drink it see visions either frightful or laughable; this intoxication lasts two or three days and then ceases” (Sahagún, _Historia general_, 3:241; in Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 294-95).

Translations from the Spanish have been made with the aid of Mr. H. W. Tessen of the Yale Graduate School.

[2] “Teo-nanacatl [has] ... the same properties as _ololiuhqui_ or _peyote_, since when eaten or drunk, they intoxicate those who partake of them, depriving them of their senses, and making them believe a thousand absurdities” (_Manual de Ministros_; in Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 309-10).

[3] “Peyote of Zacatecas, or soft and lanuginous root. The root is of nearly medium size, sending forth no branches nor leaves above ground, but with a certain wooliness adhering to it, on which account it could not be aptly figured by me” (_De Historia Plantarum_, 3:70; in Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 295. See also Rouhier, _Monographie du Peyotl_, 43-44).

[4] “Nearby [the leader] was placed a tray filled with peyote, which is a diabolical root [raiz diabolica] that is ground up and drunk by them so that they may not become weakened by the exhausting efforts of so long a function” (Ortega, _Historia del Nayarit_; in Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 295).

[5] Those interested in the taxonomic problem should consult the numerous botanical references in the bibliography. Britton and Rose, in their four volume work on the Cactaceae classify peyote as _Lophophora williamsii_, which will be followed in the present study.

[6] The most succinct and complete description of the plant is found in Britton and Rose, _The Cactaceae_, 83-84.

Peyote’s range is comprehended within an irregularly-shaped lozenge from Deming, New Mexico, to Corpus Christi, Texas, to Puebla, Sombrerete, Zacatecas, and back to Deming. That is, the valley of the Rio Grande (north), Tamaulipecan Mountains (east), the watershed of the affluents of the right bank of the Rio Grande de Santiago and Rio de Mezquital (south), and the foothills of the Sierra Madre, the Sierra de Durango and the Sierra del Nayarit (west). It prefers the calcareous and argillaceous soils of the Cretaceous formation in the north of this region.

[7] In Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 295; see also _Narcotic Plants_, 401.

[8] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 63.