Part 3

[9] The best histological account is in Rouhier, _Monographie_, 34-42; the work of Dr. Helia Bravo, _Nota acerca de la Histología_, is more recent. Richard Schultes at Harvard has also pursued histological studies. It is noteworthy that the Indians ordinarily take only the upper portion of the plant, which contains a larger proportion of the alkaloids according to Rouhier.

[10] Rouhier, _op. cit._, 25. I am persuaded that many such insights would be afforded us in ethnography if we had a less cavalier attitude toward native science and history: for after all even our own science grows from criticism of traditional notions.

[11] From the middle of the last century there has raged an acrimonious debate as to whether there are two varieties of peyote corresponding to _Anhalonium williamsii_ and _A. lewinii_. The former, it was contended, had seven or eight straight ribs and lacked most of the alkaloids of the latter, which had more numerous (twelve or more) sinuous ribs. This long, somewhat nationalistic debate may be regarded as ended since Rouhier (_Monographie_, 67) in 1926 figured a bicephalous plant on the same root, one head being a true _williamsii_, the other a perfect _lewinii_. It is apparent that the _lewinii_ “variety” is merely an older plant, which often takes the _williamsii_ aspect in its younger stages of growth; the more numerous alkaloids of the former more mature plant is likewise purely a growth-phenomenon, as are the rib-configurations and mammillations, though environmental and seasonal conditions may be involved as well.

[12] Hernandez, _De Historia Plantarum_, 204, “Se dice que hay macho y hembra.” Inaccurately translated by Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 295, and Rouhier, _Monographie_, 43. The simplest and most obvious translation is the most satisfactory. According to the Lipan (Opler, _Use of Peyote_, 279) male peyotes bloom red, female peyotes white.

[13] Diguet, _Le Peyote_, 25; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 133.

[14] _Handbook of the American Indians._ 1:604b. Spier informs me this is also Navaho and perhaps Pueblo as well. As indicated elsewhere, peyote, teo-nanacatl and associated plants have repeatedly been thought to be aphrodisiacs. The supposed sex of the plants may have some reference to this belief; cf. the Huichol belief that “Maize is a little girl whom one sometimes can hear weeping in the fields; she is afraid of the wild beasts, the coyote and others that eat corn” (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:279). Different colors of corn belong to different deities also; it is interesting to note that the Huichol attribute different colors symbolically to peyote which have no effective reality (Rouhier, _op. cit._, 133). In 1935, in a non-peyote context, Apekaum told me that cotton plants in a field we were passing were male and female; some trees were male, too, and others female, he thought. No botanical realities were involved in any of these cases. The Jivaro also attribute sex to plants (Karsten, _Civilization_, 301, 304-06, 314-15, 323) as do the Aymará and others.

[15] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:362.

[16] Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 295.

[17] Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_; Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:365; Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 293.

[18] This auditory hallucination of hearing voices in peyote intoxication is most striking. Several explanations may be offered: the cultural (the belief is common in Mexico and the Plains that peyote talks and sings), the physiological (white observers, many in obvious ignorance of the ethnographic facts, have reported aural hallucinations), or the physical (the peculiarly resonant vibrations of the water-drum echoing from the taut, cone-shaped canvas of the tipi). A physiological constant for Indians and whites (culturally modified) seems indicated. See Mooney, _A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 65; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 63.

[19] Statements without references are understood to be made from my own field work.

[20] The Cora peyote goddess appears to be “Mother Hūrimoa” (Preuss, _Die Nayarit-Expedition_, 103). Tarahumari dancers sometimes imitate hikuli’s talk with a sound which reminded Lumholtz of the crow of a cock (_Tarahumari Dances_, 455). The Lipan information is from Opler (_The Use of Peyote_).

[21] Diguet, _Le peyote et son usage_, 21, 25; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 4; Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 297; Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:357, 2: _passim_; Preuss, _Die Nayarit-Expedition_, 103; Bennett and Zingg, _Tarahumara_, 135; Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_.

[22] Rudo Ensayo (1760) in Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_. A note by F. W. H[odge] indicates a purely medicinal use of peyote for the Opata. Otomi: León, _fide_ Mooney; Mooney doubts this, somewhat unwarrantedly I think. Pima: Alegre, in Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_. Comecrudo: _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:209a; Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_, whose source is probably Gatschet. Lipan: Opler, _The Use of Peyote_. Tonkawa: Mooney, _op. cit._ Taos: Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 114, note 115. Mescalero Apache: Rouhier, _Monographie_, 4 (Opler records this as xuc); Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 297; Mooney, _op. cit._ Comanche: Mooney, _Miscellaneous Notes_; the present writer recorded wↄ´kweᵖⁱ and pua´kιt (= “medicine”).

[23] Mooney (_Peyote Notebook_, 21) likewise says the Kiowa term for peyote sęⁱ means “prickly” or “prickly fruit” and is generic for all cacti. But peyote, it will be remembered, is conspicuous for its lack of spines; perhaps this was an older term for the prickly pear, _Opuntia opuntia_, transferred to the more recently known plant. In any case it occurs nowadays in many compounds: sęⁱmąyi, “peyote woman,” sęⁱpiⁱ, “peyote meeting,” etc., and in the phrase behábe sęⁱᴅɔki, “smoke, peyote power.” (Compare the Comanche hos mäbä´mho’i.) See also Mooney, _Calendar History_, 239; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 4; Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 399; Speck, _Notes on the Life of John Wilson_, 552.

[24] See _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:845, 846 (the Yuma, Mohave, Ute, Apache, etc., use it). The Mescalero Apache do not derive their name from the use of the peyote, “mescal,” as Mooney stated, being so designated long before they knew or used peyote. In the second etymology see Siméon, _Dictionnaire_, 436; also Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_, 293. See also La Barre, _Native American Beers_, 225.

[25] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:358. For “dry whiskey” see the _New Century Dictionary_, Supplement: “Mescal Buttons.” For the other names see Rouhier, _op. cit._, 4; Britton and Rose, _The Cactaceae_, 3:84 (the spelling pellote of Velasco, from Mooney, is a Castillianization of the Nahuatl); _Peyotes, datos para su estudia_, 209. The spelling pezote in Alarcón, _Tratato de las Supersticiones_, 131, is obviously a copyist’s error.

[26] de Molina, _Vocabulario_, 80, “Peyutl—capullo de feda, o de gufano.” The Spanish o and u constitute a single phoneme in Nahuatl, according to Mr. Benjamin Whorf, so the vowel is purely a matter of recording. On the other hand, Reko’s etymology in _Was bedeutet das Wort Teo-Nanacatl?_ (lent through the courtesy of R. E. Schultes) is inadmissable. He writes: “Pe-yotl, Old-Aztec Pi-yautli, is quite clear in its etymology: Pi is the significative (or affix) for ‘little.’ ... Yau-tli is always something narcotic or strong narcotic-smelling substance. Yau- is the root, -tli the post-positive article (substantive significative).... A pi-yautli (pe-yotl) is therefore the mildly intoxicating poison, in contrast with Hua-yautli (today Guayule, sap of the Gum-tree, which smells very strong) which means extremely intoxicating.” This is an ad hoc forcing of an etymology on a word, according to Whorf: in the first instance “old Aztec” pi-yautli appears to be an assumed rather than a quoted form; but even so, -yautli should not give -yotl or -iotl of Sahagún’s recording, but an unchanged -yautli. If the rules for Nahuatl sound-change are to be observed, peyotl must come from an uncontracted stem of two syllables, plus the absolutive suffix, this stem being pe-yo; -yautli, on the other hand, must come from a contracted stem, originally of two syllables, ya-wi (the -i standing for a variable or unknown vowel), plus the absolutive suffix, having the form -tl when preceded by a vowel, -tli when preceded by a consonant, i.e., a contracted stem. As for the first syllable, pi- and pe- are absolutely distinct phonemically in Aztec. The etymology, therefore, is neither phonetically nor phonemically correct, and assumes random and unexplained sound changes. The writer is grateful to Mr. Whorf for the preceding information. P. Augustin Hunt y Cortes (in Rouhier, 7) derives peyotl from the active verb pepeyoni, pepeyon, “to move, to stir, to set into motion, to excite, to activate.” Other offerings are “child” and a derivation from peyonanic, “stimulate, goad, prick, incite.” These are untenable for the same reasons that Reko’s is.

[27] Siméon, _Dictionnaire_ 412, 436.

[28] Rouhier, _Monographie_ 7.

[29] _De Historia Plantarum_, 3:70 (Peyotl Xochimilcensi). Peyote, because of its abundance in certain localities, figures frequently in place names.

[30] Safford, _An Aztec Narcotic_; see also other items by this author in the bibliography.

[31] See the _New Century Dictionary_, “Pulque,” 4841, a word conjectured to be of Carib (Haiti or Cuba) or Spanish origin. Agave and maguey are the American aloe, sometimes called “century plant” (cf. “maguey,” 3578, “agave,” 108). “Mescal” proper, therefore, = Agave americana = maguey = American aloe = “century plant.”

[32] White Wolf (Comanche) tells of Kuaheta, at the time acting as fireman in Comanche Jack’s meeting, that he once failed to return after having asked to leave the tipi. Commissioned to investigate, White Wolf found him outside “jumping like a deer” from deep peyote intoxication. Hoebel relates a similar experience in a Northern Cheyenne meeting. Tonakat, the well-known Kiowa “witch,” once forced a man to get up and dance in a meeting (_Autobiography of a Kiowa Indian_, recorded by the writer, 1936). Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) laughingly told me of a meeting in Kansas where the singer’s jaw became locked; the whole meeting was upset while they shook and fanned him with cedar incense until his jaw “came back.” This may have been an effect of the strychnine-like alkaloids in peyote, as in the case of Tom Panther (Shawnee) who became unable to talk or sing once in George Fry’s meeting: “it took me four or five minutes to say the word ‘study’,” he said.

[33] Lumholtz, _Huichol Indians_, 9.

[34] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 63.

[35] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 198-99.

[36] Fernberger (_Further Observations_, 368), citing Petrullo, writes: “The best reporters of this group of Indians [Delaware] insist that visions may occur under peyote intoxication but that it has become socially admirable to suppress these visions and that, after some practice, this may be successfully accomplished.” But after establishing ordinarily friendly relations with informants I found no such reticence about visions; these, indeed, were publicly discussed in the Sunday forenoons after meetings (usually spent lounging under “shades” quietly exchanging peyote experiences). Many, like Spotted Horse (Kiowa), Tom Panther (Shawnee) and Sly Picard (Wichita) distinguished the ordinary effects of peyote from full-blown “visions”; and some corrective modesty is occasionally exhibited for the familiar Plains assertiveness and individualism, for, in fact, through peyote visions individuals push themselves to positions of leadership and influence. Fernberger continues: “The informants also state that they are able to control visions when they occur, that is, to change the vision to that of any particular known object or to hold a vision that occurs in consciousness for a considerable time. Both of these statements are totally at variance with the descriptions of all previous observers of the visual manifestations.” We disagree with this dictum; many informants would paraphrase the statement of Tom Panther (Shawnee) that in peyote intoxication, “I wasn’t boss of myself.” White observers too have remarked on the dualism of consciousness exhibited by Crashing Thunder. One might even go so far as to say that this is a reason natives think of peyote as an _external_ “power” working its influence on them.

[37] Is the peculiar mode of wearing a blanket in meetings due to the necessity of supporting the back in strychnine-opisthotonos (from lophophorine and anhalonine)?

[38] Arlegui, _Crónica_, 144; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 331.

[39] Mooney, in Rouhier, _op. cit._, 344.

[40] “We’re pulling for daylight now—that’s the time those boys sang a little faster” (Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_). “I wish you could see Quanah’s songs—they just like beautiful race horses—go fast” (Mooney, _Peyote Notebook_, 12).

[41] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 404-405. Maillefert (_La Marihuana_, 6) says that marihuana habitués in Mexico have special songs that they sing together; a marked feature of the Mexican use of drugs, of which this may be a case, is the pattern of group-narcosis.

[42] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 178.

[43] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:272.

[44] This is obviously heavily culture-conditioned, but Klüver (_Mescal_, 41) records the predominance of red and green early in peyote intoxication, and yellow and blue in later stages, with possible reference to the Ladd-Franklin phylogenetic theory of color vision.

[45] Maillefert (_loc. cit._) says marihuana habitués believe water decreases the effect of the drug, and therefore they do not use it when smoking. Although the peyote leader must otherwise be present all through the meeting (to prevent rival witching among the Apache), a fixed part of the Plains ritual is his exit alone at midnight to whistle at the four points of the compass, an opportunity which is no doubt exploited. Again, spitholes are a part of Tarahumari altars (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:365).

[46] The Caddo, however, make a point of not drinking water at night, as though looking upon the meeting as a vision-ordeal; this aberrance is given point by the fact that they do no doctoring in peyote meetings either, and must make four rounds of the drum before quitting, no matter if it takes until noon of the next day.

[47] The Comanche exclude the eating of pork also, but whether this is because pork is commonly a salt meat or because it is oily like the flesh of another tabooed food animal, the bear, I do not know.

[48] Maillefert (_op. cit._, 6-7) says marihuana smokers believe that sugar augments the effect of the “grifos” (“reefers” in Harlem parlance), so they eat sweets while smoking them. Compare the consuming of honey with teo-nanacatl in Mexico.

[49] The Arapaho (Kroeber, 407) use a more magical means to this end: they tie four bunches of yellow-hammer or other feathers at the northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest poles of the tipi to brush the bodies of worshippers who become tired.

[50] E.g., Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 694.

[51] For mescal (the agave-drink distilled from pulque) and peyote are mixed and _used together_ in northern Mexico. Yet Mooney often and at length produced this argument with regard to alcohol; Skinner said it destroyed the desire of tobacco as well (see appendix on the Native American Church). But peyote, physiologically and culturally, is only one more means of achieving the culturally valued state of psychic derangement, and such fundamentally deep-rooted patterns as this one is in native America do not change over-night. Even so, is the cure any better than the disease? The writer was a little startled when a Kiowa friend, an ardent peyote user, suggested that we go to a neighboring town one mid-week to drink. When I sought to discover his attitude on this he soon made it clear that it was no matter of moral sentimentality but purely one of physiology: there wasn’t another peyote meeting until Saturday, so what was the harm? One can eat lobsters one day and ice-cream the next, but one ought not eat them the same day. This informant conceived of the antagonism as a fight between liquor- and peyote-power, a matter-of-fact attitude probably not universal, and by no means as cynical as it seems.

[52] Rouhier (_Monographie_, 320) however suggests that the illusions of phonation (the distance, strangeness and hollowness of the voice) may not be entirely sensory, i.e. auditory, but may also be a matter of voice-production; he cites Ellis, Putt, and Eshner.

[53] Note the ritual necessity that a woman bring the morning water into a meeting formerly restricted to men, and the mythological significance of the “Peyote Woman.” Opler (_The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_) says that Mescalero saw women in visions and wanted them, believing that if one began with visions of women they would stay with him. Crashing Thunder (Radin, 177) confessed that at one time he attended meetings chiefly to find “a woman whom I cared to marry permanently. Before long,” he says, “that was the only thing that I would think of when I attended the meetings.” We have on the other hand, however, the healthy skepticism of an Oto who said, “You can see dead people in meetings, but peyote won’t get you a woman you desire though. She makes up her mind.” But may not other explanations than the physiologically-aphrodisiac be involved? Might there not be an association with promiscuity of the ritual mingling of the sexes (for in the older Sun Dance just this was implied when the main lodge-pole was brought in) in a region where sexual segregation ritually was usual? Compare the injunction of one Ghost Dance prophet to the people not to think of women, but to join hands with them on either side and dance the Ghost Dance. Would he have made the explicit statement if it had not been implicitly considered reasonable to expect natural sexual arousement or preoccupation in a rite in which men and women are not separated? Indeed, there is evidence among the Shawnee at least that sexual opportunities afforded through the Ghost Dance were not left unexploited.

THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM

NON-RITUAL USES OF PEYOTE

An Oto in all seriousness informed the writer that “peyote doesn’t work outside meetings, because I have tried it”—a belief understandable in a group whose sole acquaintance with the plant is through a recent ritual.[1] Nevertheless, owing to its marked physiological properties peyote is widely used both in Mexico and the Plains non-ritually, a fact which forms an interesting ethnological background to the rite proper.

One of the most important and striking of these uses is in prophecy and divination. We find the Spanish missionaries in Mexico early protesting against this abomination. The confessional of Padre Nicolás de León[2] contains the following questions for the priest to ask the penitent:

Art thou a sooth-sayer? Dost thou foretell events by reading omens, interpreting dreams, or by tracing circles and figures on water? Dost thou garnish with flower garlands the places where idols are kept? Dost thou suck the blood of others? Dost thou wander about at night, calling upon demons to help thee? Hast thou drunk peyotl, or given it to others to drink, in order to discover secrets, or to discover where stolen or lost articles were?

This last was no idle matter, as appears from other evidence; Hernandez[3] says that

[the Peyotl Zacatensis] causes those [Chichimeca] devouring it to be able to foresee and to predict things; such, for instance, as whether on the following day the enemy will make an attack upon them; or whether the weather will continue favorable; or to discern who has stolen from them some utensil or anything else; and other things of like nature which the Chichimeca really believe they have found out.

Padre Arlegui,[4] after mentioning the therapeutic uses to which the Zacatecans put peyote, complains that

this would not be so bad if they did not abuse its virtues, for, in order to have a knowledge of the future and find out how their battles will turn out, they drink it brewed in water, and, as it is very strong, it intoxicates them with a paroxysm of madness, and all the fantastic hallucinations that come over them with this horrible drink they seize upon as omens of the future, imagining that the root has revealed to them their future.

Prieto[5] says of a Tamaulipecan group that

often in these orgies was wont to impose silence, at the height of their drunkenness, the voice of some ancient, who, assuming a magisterial tone, prognosticated to them future events, usually depicting them as sad and unhappy, and in spite of the lugubriousness of his predictions, he usually ended his harangue by exhorting them to enjoy in the dance the interval between the present and the next unhappiness.

Alarcón[6] adds other functions and relates of other drinks similarly used:[7]

If the consultation is about a lost or stolen article or concerning a woman who has absented herself from her husband, or some similar thing, here enters the gift of false prophecy, and the divining that has been pointed out in the preceding treatises; the divination is made in one of two ways, either by means of a trance or by drinking peyote or ololiuhqui or tobacco to attain this end, or commanding that another drink it, and ordering him to remain under its spell; and in all this goes implicitly hand in hand the pact with the devil who by means of said drinks appears to them and speaks to them, giving them to understand that he who speaks to them is the ololiuhqui or the peyote or whatever beverage that they had drunk for the said end; and the sorry part of it is that many put faith in [the drink] as in the very lying cheats themselves, [indeed] even more than in the evangelical predicators.

As we move farther north in Mexico the use of peyote in prophesying becomes valuable in warning of the approach of the enemy.[8] For the Tarahumari Lumholtz[9] says that the various kinds of hikori were particularly good “to drive off wizards, robbers, and Apaches, and to ward off disease.” Of _Anhalonium fissuratum_ he says “robbers are powerless against it, for Sunami calls soldiers to its aid,” while the variety Rosapara “is particularly effective in frightening off Apaches and robbers.”

In the Comanche version of the usual Plains origin tale of peyote, the leader of a group on the war-path goes up alone to an Apache camp where a peyote ceremony is in progress. Though an enemy, he is invited in, the leader telling him that peyote had predicted his coming in a vision.[10] One Comanche informant said eating peyote enables one to _hear_ an enemy coming, though still far away; peyote likewise predicted the success of one of the last Comanche horse-raids, and aided in its prosecution.

From these uses of peyote in war it is no jump to its fetishistic use as a protector in war[11] and in ordinary witchcraft. Sahagún[12] writes that peyote

is a common food of the Chichimecas, for it stimulates them and gives them sufficient spirit to fight and have neither fear, thirst, nor hunger, and they say it guards them from all danger.