Part 8

[75] The Lipan wash themselves with yucca or soapweed and perfume themselves with mint, and use the same kind of sage in meetings as they wear in their hats against lightning. The Tonkawa wore G-string, leggings and blanket, and preferably long hair and face paint; native perfumes were proper but white men’s were forbidden. The Carrizo entered barefoot, wearing only a G-string. Some Lipan fasted the day before.

[76] The Lipan leader “is supposed to stop all arguments in there; he has to watch all the men.” Unlike the Mescalero, the Lipan staff and gourd were passed around clockwise (both preceding the drum); the retention of these by the leader is probably an aspect of his special authority among the Mescalero, since the Lipan lacked the rasp, retained by the leader, which might have been transmitted from Mexico. The Tonkawa sometimes used a lard-can drum covered with buckskin, and passed the rattle (aberrantly) after it; the leader never drummed.

[77] Some shamans trace a cross of pollen on the chief peyote. The Tonkawa use the largest one they can find, put some red paint on the top, and surround it with smaller buttons on a fine buckskin; they claimed to be able to see far off with the aid of peyote and to detect witchcraft. Some Lipan like the Mescalero put peyote buttons in a circle around the fire pit and the chief peyote (cf. the Comanche placing of them in a sage horseshoe west of the altar).

[78] The Lipan fire-tender, like the Carrizo and some Mexican groups, made simply a fire-pit, with no crescent altar; this form originated with the Mescalero or in northwestern Mexico, not around the lower Rio Grande. The Carrizo, like the Tamaulipecan, held the ceremony in the open.

[79] The Lipan used peyote green or dry or pounded up in a wooden bowl, which was passed like the drum from the southeast. The Carrizo made a peyote “tea” (compare the neighboring Karankawa “black drink”). The Tonkawa used a flat basket. Among the Mescalero (also Lipan and Kiowa), “Care was taken to keep the ‘fuzz’ from the top of the peyote button from coming in contact with the eye, for it was thought to cause blindness.”

[80] Not all Mescalero leaders do this; oak-leaf cigarettes are usually used but one leader has a red stone Sioux pipe, which is passed clockwise. The Lipan smoke oak-leaf or corn husk cigarettes at the beginning and at the end. Their eagle wing-bone whistle in peyote is recent, and not all Mescalero leaders use it.

[81] The Carrizo on each side of the door had a woman wearing a red blanket; the one at the south had hers fastened with a red flicker feather, the other with a woodpecker. This non-exclusion of women is Mexican. But the Lipan allow no women around; they may not even erect the peyote-tipi. The Tonkawa originally allowed no women in peyote meetings; but doctoring gradually broke down this restriction.

[82] “The virulence of these rivalries and attempts to harm others at peyote meetings led to the development of a number of protective measures and safeguards.” For these see Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_.

[83] In the old shamanistic curing, the shaman was the performer and the others merely onlookers, but in peyotism the inevitable physiological effects of the drug made all present potential receivers of power, and shamanistic display and rivalry was correspondingly increased. This had not wholly disappeared even in early Plains peyote-using groups: the Tonkawa, Lipan, and Kiowa had shamanistic displays of power in peyote meetings, and we have recorded considerable witchcraft anxiety in early Kiowa, Comanche, Caddo, and Tonkawa meetings.

[84] The reasons for this are several: a nomadic people presents few opportunities for the establishing of missions; the Apache were one of the American Indian groups last subjugated; they are notoriously suspicious and unfriendly toward innovation, and recognized the alien origin even of peyotism; and further, the rite they received from Mexico had few or no Christian elements in it. It might be suggested that the “baptism” ceremonies in the morning or the ritual breakfast are Christian in origin; but this is thoroughly doubtful, since it occurs in pre-White peyotism (e.g., Lipan).

[85] In the Plains, peyotism largely followed the Ghost Dance frustration of anti-White sentiment and preached conciliation instead; such Christian elements as were added had a largely propagandist function in this direction.

[86] Wagner, _Entwicklung und Verbreitung_, 74; Shonle, _Peyote: Giver of Visions_, 55.

[87] As told, this seemed to have reference to the miraculous proliferation of the Biblical loaves and fishes, but it is sufficiently similar to aboriginal hunting beliefs.

[88] The Comanche and others usually had a meeting on the spot, eating green peyote.

[89] The Kiowa now have five Easter meetings, six on New Year’s Day, four to six on Thanksgiving, and two or three on Armistice Day (by World War soldiers and sailors). Bert Crow-lance vowed to eat a hundred if all the Kiowa boys returned safely from the War (but this is an enormous quantity actually to have eaten). The Kiowa differ from other groups in having no funeral meetings; mourners commonly abstain for several months from meetings. Meetings have been held for heyoka-like display. The Comanche formerly held meetings before a war journey to invoke peyote’s protection from the enemy, and to prophesy the outcome of the battle.

[90] “A sweatbath was always undergone by warriors preparing for war ... and perhaps generally, before any serious or hazardous undertaking.... Sweating was important in medical practice for the cure of disease.... Sometimes the friends and relatives of the sick person ... assembled in the sweathouse, sang and prayed for the patient’s recovery” (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:661b). The peyote meeting and sweating present many such analogies.

[91] Painting is commonly dictated in visions: a Kiowa saw a red-bird after a meeting once as a red-blanketed man who told him to use red paint thereafter. Comanche formerly went in wearing only breech-clout and “blanket,” being painted white or yellow all over the body. One Comanche had an all-over body yellow with blue zigzags up the arm and down the side and leg, with a red zigzag paralleling this (on the outside of the arm and therefore on the inside of the leg); on each cheek a small blue-bordered red spot, and a large three-inch red spot on the breast under the throat. The Tonkawa painted the top of the fetish-plant red also. Leaders often wear otter skin braid-coverings, and at certain points in the ritual fur headdresses. Mescal beans as necklaces or on moccasin- and gourd-fringes are common (the Kiowa wear them on their moccasins as protection against stepping on menstrual blood). The “blanket,” or sheet (in the summer), is invariable.

[92] Mooney (_A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 64-65) describes a Kiowa gourd with the Peyote Woman, peyote, moon, ash crescent, and Morning-Star under her feet heralding her morning approach with water.

[93] The basic rite is practically free from Christian symbolism. Some call the sage under the fetish a “cross”; some leaders make a cross under the water-bucket or in the water with feathers at midnight. Mooney wrote that “many of the mescal eaters wear crucifixes ... the cross representing the cross of scented leaves ... while Christ is the mescal goddess.” But all crosses are not necessarily Christian. See Appendix 8.

[94] Older men carry real “feathers,” but younger ones often bring small, ribbed, commercial, folding ladies’ fans—an interesting compromise. The Comanche nácihita “resting-stick, to walk,” was formerly a bow, according to Hoebel, on war-party meetings, while the drum was formerly of wood. The Lipan formerly used a bow, hit with a stick.

[95] Following a suggestion of Dr. Wissler, I made a special note of this and found that the ubiquitous satchel is as much a “trait” of the peyote leader’s paraphernalia as his staff or gourd or feathers.

[96] The Kiowa moon is crescent-shaped, the Comanche horseshoe-shaped—a significant point in tracing provenience of altars in other tribes. Some Comanche garland the entire west side of the altar with sage, in which the fetish rests. In war the Comanche used a shield as an altar. A cement moon made by a Choctaw adopted by the Kiowa was an innovation much in disfavor, as was a Seminole altar made among the Caddo; the symbolical interior of the latter was removed to make a simple crescent. Indeed, many Caddo are moving away from the John Wilson symbolic cement moon.

[97] Cf. the Huichol “pillow” for Grandfather Fire.

[98] Belo Kozad’s (Kiowa) father peyote had been Quanah Parker’s (Comanche) and was handed around after the meeting almost as an heirloom. Mumsika (Comanche) still preserves a famous peyote button of Kutubi’s (Hoebel). Howard White Wolf (Comanche) has a peyote he addresses as “older brother” since it had cured him as a baby. Clyde Koko (Kiowa) quit peyote one Christmas night and gave Charley two father peyotes to take back to Laredo and plant with smoke and prayer; uncertain, the latter brought them back to find Koko had completely changed his mind: “I never made such a mistake in my life. If you’d done that it sure would have ruined me. I’ve learned a lesson!”

[99] “The neophyte is constantly exhorted not to allow his eyes to wander, but to keep them fixed upon the sacred mescal in the center of the circle.” (Mooney, _The Mescal Plant_, 11). Changing the cross-legged position too often, leaning backward on one elbow or the like to rest is considered frivolous, indicating lack of seriousness. One may leave the meeting at any time with permission, but it is best to try to wait till after midnight, unless there is the emergency of nausea from peyote. In leaving and entering the leader is always consulted to see if the path to one’s seat is “clear,” i.e., that no one is eating peyote or smoking; as smoking or eating peyote is conceptually praying, it is extremely bad manners to pass between a person doing either and the altar fire, hence the need for instruction from the leader. This is old Plains etiquette (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:442b). Thus, to avoid his having to pass before smokers, the brand might be passed backwards to the fireman; his movements in tending the fire never entail passing before anyone, and the feather given him by the leader symbolizes delegation of power to enter or leave as necessary for wood. But no one may pass between him and his seat while tending the fire.

[100] Corn shucks are standard, but Comanche and Shawnee sometimes use black-jack oak-leaves (just so the materials are native). Interestingly, the elbow pipe is never used in the Plains, but at Mescalero a pipe was used instead of the usual Southwestern cigarette—a case of reverse or reciprocal borrowing.

[101] There are many individualized modes of eating peyote. Hoebel describes a Comanche way: chew into a ball, spit into palm of hand, rub in clockwise circle, swallow bolus. On the war-path one spits in his hands again and rubs his head and ears, the better to hear. Belo said he once ate a button when each person sang. Kiowa often make several clockwise motions of buttons toward the fire before eating, to prevent nausea, or hold the palms out toward it and rub themselves. One may request another to chew peyote for him if he has bad teeth or is sick, and swallow the bolus so prepared. The number of buttons eaten ranges from four to about thirty.

[102] Mooney (_Miscellaneous Notes_) mentions an odorous root from New Mexico, but is unclear about its use; cedar incense was universal in the writer’s experience. The sage may be passed around also; some chew, eat it.

[103] Cf. the whisk of sage used in sweat-bathing; in view of other parallels, this otherwise functionless item in the peyote meeting should not be overlooked.

[104] This is the first of four sets of four songs each, sung at stated times in the ritual; the others are: Yáhiyano (midnight water song), Wakahó (daylight song for morning water) and Gayatina (Closing Song). All are Esikwita (Mescalero); all end with a fast unrhythmical shaking of the gourd. The two Kiowa groups sęįhoṇ (Peyote Road) and Goihoṇ (Kiowa Road) differ in that in the former only the initial song of each group is set, in the latter all songs of all four groups are set.

[105] There are specific and detailed rules about passing the paraphernalia. Ordinarily, save in the case of the leader and his assistant at the opening song, etc., the paraphernalia (here the staff) never move counter-clockwise. The drum always passes inside the staff, i.e., proximally, the staff at arm’s length in the left hand, the drum being passed under it with the right, when for any reason this occurs. The symbolism of this is perhaps obvious. A man may not be the singer more than once in a round, but he may be successively drummer, singer and drummer. (Though the staff may not go backward, the drum may, and in this case A receiving the staff, passes the drum with his right hand under his outstretched left, from the man on his right to the man on his left, B. A then sings to B’s drumming; the staff is then passed forward from A to B, and the drum exchanged or passed backward from B to A, this time A drumming and B singing. Still going clockwise, the staff may be passed from B to C, and the drum from A to B, C singing this time and B drumming a second time.)

[106] At the east door the drum may be passed as stated to the second man so that the first man south of the door gets a chance to sing (because the fireman is too far away to drum for him) then an exchange and normal passing again, staff first. If a person right of the singer is old, sick, a woman or a visitor, he may request a friend to drum for him of the leader; the friend moves clockwise and sits by him temporarily. Women neither drum nor rattle nor sing (but like other participants they tend to sing softly favorite songs or the universally known set songs). Men try to make their four songs different from those previously sung, but favorites may be repeated.

[107] Kutubi (Comanche) in a war-party peyote meeting once visioned that they would be killed, and wept and upbraided peyote for doing this. H. H. (Wichita) during a meeting wept with total unrestraint for his brother and nephew, who had been hurt in an auto accident.

[108] The Kiowa sometimes make a humming-bird of the ashes (a prominent Kiowa family is called Hummingbird); cf. the Comanche, Oto, Shawnee, Yuchi and (?) Ute ash-birds.

[109] Peyote Road cultists: one fixed song, three optional; Kiowa Road: four fixed songs. The words of the standard song are unintelligible. Many tribes use their own language for these set songs (e.g., one Winnebago group). The schism in the Kiowa, if such it may be called, is excessively minor and communicants of one are freely welcomed in the other; though it purports (probably wrongly) to be the original and more pure rite, the Kiowa Road (led by Atape) is felt to be an uncalled-for variant.

[110] Mooney (_The Mescal Plant_, 8) writes: “At midnight a vessel of water is passed around, and each takes a drink and sprinkles a few drops upon his head.” We believe Mooney has slipped into error here, for this “baptismal” ceremony comes in the morning when the contents of the drum, not the bucket, are used. Non-Kiowa data likewise agree on this point. According to Mooney, the leader drinks first among the Comanche. The Caddo drink no water at this time: “One must suffer to peyote.” Such abstemiousness with a thirst-producing substance like peyote suggests the psychological flavor of the vision quest. Note that Anhalonium means “without salt.” “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. The hour of the Crucifixion. Everyone is suffering now ... the dark hour” (Simmons, in _Peyote Road_).

[111] “The four whistles at midnight by the leader outside the tipi are to notify all things in all directions that they were having a meeting there at the center of the cross ... calling the great power to be with us while we were drinking so that it could hear our prayers and bless us” (Hoebel, _Comanche Field Notes_).

[112] Others may be incensed when they reënter too, and everyone holds out his fan for the blessing. If a communicant is smoking when another reënters, it is good manners to place the cigarette on the ground temporarily that he may pass in front of him.

[113] There is a suggestion that this woman, usually the wife of the sponsor, symbolizes sęįmąyi or “Peyote Woman”; the Morning Star heralds her approach (see Mooney, _A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_).

[114] Doctoring is second only to the vision for individual knowledge and power in the Plains. Kiowa peyote doctors have special prestige among other tribes. In 1936 I sponsored a Kiowa meeting near Stecker, Oklahoma, for Belo Kozad to doctor Ernest Kokome who was suffering from tuberculosis. (Ernest had given me his trade-blanket beaded peyote-necktie in 1935 on the morning after a meeting at which I had admired it.) After midnight, Belo chewed four peyote and gave them to Ernest, fanning him with feathers and cedar incense; then he made a cross in front of the patient with a glowing coal, and, putting it in his mouth, blew all over the face and chest of the sick young man, who unbuttoned his shirt for the purpose. Next Belo fanned or batted him with his feathers, the patient holding up his palms to absorb the medicine virtue. Finally he took a mouthful of water and blew it on Ernest’s head, praying and beseeching in the name of Jesus Christ for him to get well. Peyote gave Belo the power to doctor thus and not be burned by the coal.

Peyote was brought to the Creek, indeed, for doctoring by Jim Aton (a famous Kiowa peyote doctor). Much in demand, he has doctored in peyote meetings of the Yuchi, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Creek, Caddo, Osage, Comanche, Kiowa Apache, Kiowa, Mescalero Apache and Quapaw; also whites and Mexicans. His methods of doctoring have been described previously. The well-known Comanche peyote doctor, Jim Post-oak, “hollers like a bear in doctoring.” (People often imitate the animal-sources of their power in the morning, in the midst of others’ singing, either from peyote-“euphoria” or in praise of particularly good singing.) Peyote doctoring by Old Man Horse (Kiowa) influenced the Oto rite of the Church of the First-born too. Peyote can perform cures unassisted outside meetings also, as shown by the case of Tommy Cat who ate peyote over the protests of his nurse in a hospital and was cured.

[115] Polonian obviousness is usually the note in these harangues (sit up straight and keep awake in meetings, wear clean clothes and bathe before coming, wear a blanket, keep your mind on good things in the ceremony, don’t look around the tipi, don’t drink whiskey, don’t lie to your wife or show off, but pray for your wife and children, respect old people, humble yourself, go home again if you come to a crowded meeting)—but occasionally specific admonitions are made. A Kiowa jokester, J. S., had had trouble with his wife, and was plainly talked to in meeting. Quanah Parker used to lecture young people in the morning. Long prayers are another means of making psychological transactions. Some tribes make individual public confessions at this time.

[116] Mooney, _The Mescal Plant_, 8.

[117] Some rattle the marbles of the drum, put them in the mouth and spit them into the palm. Members commonly “baptize” themselves with the drum-water, using the drumstick to moisten the palm and rubbing the hair, face, chest, arms and thighs as in blessing with cedar incense; some paint themselves with the charcoal in the drum. The remaining water in the drum is poured along the moon. The sage under the peyote may be passed to the patient, if there is one, or it may be requested for absent ailing relatives.

[118] Sometimes the stories have a moral point; the following was told by O. W. (Comanche) to E. R. (Delaware): the leader of a Wichita Easter meeting had a fine watch, costing from $150 to $200. At daylight, before water time, wanting to display it, he put it down by the feathers. A man to the north was singing and making vigorous punches toward the peyote. When he looked at his watch later, “it was just a mess of works in there loose, and the hands dropped off,” though nobody had touched it. “It don’t pay to go in there and then try to show off.”

[119] “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Hoebel says the Comanche fire-chief takes one step outside, turns completely around once, and continues his way, the others exiting in a straight fashion. Cf. the Huichol turns.

[120] A Comanche told me a Kiowa ate a lot of peyote once and tried to sing a Comanche song. He sang the wrong words, which meant “Mentula exposita est, Mentula exposita est!” (Cf. the Oto jokes about songs.) A typical experience of Belo Kozad involves the hearing of a new peyote song, psychological anxiety, a moral, and an explanation about power-getting: A peyote song, without words, once came to him in a vision. He seemed to be in the south, in soft grass. In the distance he saw a man, whom he followed. He did not know it, but this man represented Temptation. Belo followed the man, who was leading him off somewhere. Suddenly the man kicked backwards with his foot [a familiar folkloristic element] and went on. When Belo approached he found apples there; he refused to take one. Further on the man kicked back with his other foot. This time Belo found dollar bills and playing cards; these he refused too. A third time he found pictures of beautiful girls in various poses, but he withstood temptation. Finally he came to the top of a hill, over the brow of which the man had disappeared ahead of him. Then he heard the man talk to him from behind: “The apples, the cards, and the pictures all meant temptation. You have withstood them all. Upon the top of this hill you will find good fortune if you take this peyote.” Belo went up and saw there a terrible chasm, crossed by a bridge of a single tipi pole. The man said that the pole had to be crossed with four steps; if he did this he would have great curing power. The man danced forward and backward across the pole to show Belo, singing this song the while. But Belo was afraid to cross the chasm and turned back thus not acquiring the curing power.

[121] Indeed, among some groups like the Caddo, doctoring is expressly absent.

[122] In Mescalero, too, “prophecy and advice were no small part of the performance. It was rarely that his power did not vouchsafe the shaman some reassuring information concerning the longevity of his patient, the number of grandchildren with which he would be blessed, and the future state of his fortunes.” They also controlled the weather thus, found lost objects, located the enemy, etc., but doctoring was the main feature of Mescalero peyote meetings.

[123] Shonle (_Peyote: Giver of Visions_, 57) notes that peyote was latterly a reservation phenomenon, when tribal enmities were gone. The Ghost Dance had been anti-White; peyotism was a compromise, and the friendly intertribal contacts growing out of the Ghost Dance could now be exploited.

[124] Cf. Tamaulipecan rites and the black-drink ball-game of the Southeast. (The black drink was as nearby as the Karankawa.) The Southwest-Southeast connections are more than superficial; Beals (_Comparative Ethnology_, 142) believes there is a probable connection of Southwest-Mexican alcoholic drinks with the Southeastern black drink.

[125] Curiously the cigarette of the region farther west is universal in the intrusive Plains peyote rite, while at Mescalero the stone elbow pipe is passed around in the calumet fashion of the Plains in one leader’s ceremony.