Part 9
[126] Is this a culture-environmental problem?—for the same substance which was spectacularly aphrodisiac in Lame Deer, Montana, was stubbornly anaphrodisiac in Philadelphia. Unfortunately for the accusing school of thought, Bennett and Zingg’s trait-distribution tables indicate a negative association of sexual promiscuity and the ritual use of peyote in Mexico.
[127] Opler says that “in no other Mescalero ceremony is a mound of earth in the shape of a crescent found. On the other hand, crude earth tracings did grace a Mescalero rite occasionally, and the moon was much in evidence in ritual song and design. The staff of the peyote shaman seems an innovation at first thought; yet it has a counterpart in the ‘old age stick’ held by the singer in the girl’s puberty rite.” The gourd in Mescalero has exclusively peyote associations. On the whole, the standard Plains ceremony appears to have taken shape among the Lipan-Mescalero. But Curtis (_North American Indian_ 19:199-200) says that the White Mountain Apache were the first United States users and that “the ritual [in the United States] is obviously copied from the Wichita ceremonial form.”
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM
We have now compared the basic Plains rite with that of Mexico and the transitional Lipan-Mescalero. Yet an independent development of this basic rite in the Plains and a multiform flowering of the cult there, influenced by older cultural concepts of a different nature, necessitates a discussion of more minute variants within the region. In other words, we have determined in the previous section the major variations of the peyote ceremony as aboriginally constituted, and now trace the fate of the cult as it invaded a different cultural terrain and came under the influence of other culture patterns, including the Christian.[1]
_Trip for Peyote._ A typical nine-day trip was made by the Cheyenne in 1914 from Watonga, Oklahoma, to Laredo, Texas. Ten “peyote boys” contributed the total cost of $61.85, and several suitcases full of buttons were brought back (about 1,400 each); these were bought from a White dealer in Laredo.[2] Another time a Southern Cheyenne, then President of the Native American Church, brought back a special trailer full of peyote from Romer, Texas. The northern Plains tribes make infrequent pilgrimages for the plant, depending largely upon supplies shipped from Texas or bought from Indians nearer the source. One Wichita leader sold 40 acres of land to buy a car in which to make a trip to Mousquis, his fourth or fifth such trip in about ten years. An early Comanche party going for peyote in the Apache region had much the character of a war journey; as described by Hoebel it involved a clairvoyant discovery of the enemy, prophecy of the outcome, and a horse-raid. Typically, however, the Kickapoo “chip in” money for peyote pilgrimages, and precede this with prayers for the safe-keeping of the travellers.
_Rite at Site._ The Lipan[3] say that
peyote is pretty hard to find when you are looking for it ... a person who is not used to it doesn’t recognize it though he is in the middle of a whole clump of peyote. Once he sees one, another appears and so on until they all come out just like stars. If you are having a hard time finding them you do this: when you find just one by itself you eat it. When it takes effect, when you get a little dizzy, you will hear a noise like the wind from a certain direction. Go over there ... from the place where the noise is coming you will get many peyote plants.
Mrs. Voegelin[4] reports an interesting Shawnee concept:
You can get power by visiting the peyote patch in Texas, and telling it at evening that you want help to cure people and get medicine. You sprinkle tobacco there. The next morning, when the Morning Star comes up, the person goes to the patch where he put the tobacco and when he comes close he hears a rattler rattling. If he has nerve enough to go over there, likely he does not find a snake there, but just something to scare him. If he does find a snake there, he grabs the rattlesnake (which is coiled up on top of the medicine) and takes it off and then he picks one peyote button from that place. Then he goes to another bunch and picks another button.... Perhaps at the fourth spot where he picks his fourth button, the snake is there again and he must remove it.... Jim Clark related this defying of a rattlesnake to the obtaining of another very powerful herb in the old days.[5]
The typical Plains gathering ceremony has been described to the writer for the Kiowa, Wichita, and Kickapoo: one sits west of the first peyote found and makes a smoke-prayer before orienting the plant with a thorn or mark that it may be properly used as a “father peyote” later; this first plant shows the gatherer where to find more.
_Vowing of Meetings._ Spier has traced the pattern of “vowing” the Sun Dance in the Plains and it is interesting to note the persistence of this trait in the peyote ceremony. It is particularly a pattern of the Algonquian-speaking peoples; but we have recorded it for the Kiowa and Wichita as well as the Shawnee, Kickapoo, and Northern Cheyenne.[6]
_Time of Meetings._ Peyote meetings are generally held Saturday nights so that the forenoon of the following Sunday may be spent relaxing and talking under a “shade”; but the Comanche and Seminole sometimes set theirs for Sunday night, following the White pattern for religious meetings.[7] The Caddo, Tonkawa and Lipan often had four meetings on successive nights, particularly for sick persons; the Caddo sometimes mark four birthdays with meetings a year apart. Holiday meetings on Easter, New Year’s, Thanksgiving and Christmas are common; an Arapaho meeting was once held with a Christmas tree. Many tribes like the Northern Cheyenne drink tea outside meetings, when practising songs or “to sharpen one’s mind” when solving some particularly knotty personal problem, but some groups maintain that it is forbidden to use peyote outside meetings, for it would be useless then, even for doctoring. The frequency of meetings throughout the year would be difficult to ascertain, though there is no seasonal restriction as in Mexico; perhaps one or two meetings a month in each tribe might be an average number when the whole year is considered.
_Purpose._ Doctoring of the sick is the commonest reason given for calling a meeting; but though infrequently expressed as an official motive, the vision-producing physiological effect of peyote is probably the major reason. However, so various are the stated purposes of meetings, that one is led to conclude that when a man wishes to have one, he ordinarily finds little difficulty in discovering a reason for it. A Lipan Apache said,
In the early days they just had a good time for one night. It was not used as a curing ceremony then.... At first they wanted to have good visions, that’s what they were after. But then, recently, they began to use it as a medicine for sick people.[8]
The Kickapoo and Caddo do not doctor in meetings; the latter pray for the sick, however, and commonly have four meetings in close succession for this purpose, as well as on the first four anniversaries of a child’s birth or a man’s death.
The primary reason for Northern Cheyenne meetings is social, with doctoring second; they knew of meetings held for rain, but despite prolonged droughts in their region never made them themselves. Comanche formerly held meetings to exercise clairvoyance about the enemies’ position, to obtain protection from them[9] and to ascertain by prophecy the outcome of battle; like the Mescalero they also held meetings to divine and combat sorcery, and one meeting was held to celebrate the surveying of their lands. Delaware meetings were for the welfare of the community in general, to show hospitality to visiting friends and to mark the first four anniversaries of a death.[10] Kickapoo hold meetings to obtain rain, in consolation for a death, to name a child[11] and for a dead person.[12]
Mescalero ate peyote to locate the enemy, to find lost objects and to foretell the future as well as for curing.[13] The Osage have funeral meetings, and meetings to “see the face of Jesus” or the faces of their dead relatives;[14] the Oto say they can see the deceased in meetings too. In the Oto Church of the First-born, Jonathan Koshiway baptized, married, and conducted funerals; the Pawnee have no funeral meetings but celebrate birthdays, New Year’s Eve, Christmas and Easter.[15]
A typical Ponca meeting attended at White Eagle was to doctor a sick child with peyote tea. Another, a Shawnee meeting at McCloud, had been vowed if the soldiers’ bonus legislation passed Congress. One Shawnee held meetings for his eldest daughter yearly for thirteen years; sometimes they hold purely social meetings and for health and doctoring, but not for rain. Wichita, on the other hand, set up meetings to pray for rain and good crops, on anniversaries, and for doctoring; and a Wichita “bonus” meeting was held in 1936. Prophecy has been present in Wichita meetings also. The Winnebago[16] have death-consolation meetings, death-anniversary meetings and meetings to doctor the sick. At Taos[17] meetings are for curing, or simply when “someone thinks they ought to have a peyote meeting.”
_Participants._ The Carrizo had two women by the door to bring water into the meeting, but the Lipan permitted no women to be present or even erect the tipi. In the early days the Kiowa, Comanche, Tonkawa, Sauk, and Oto prohibited women from attending, and only old men used peyote, but forty or fifty years ago women started coming in to be doctored and gradually came in for other reasons, though they could not use the ritual paraphernalia; under no circumstances may a menstruant woman enter.[18] The restriction against women appears to apply only to groups who early had peyote, when it still had much of the flavor of a warriors’ society about it; for example, the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ponca, Kickapoo, Mescalero, Shawnee, Taos and Wichita apparently always allowed women to attend.[19] In the Iowa meeting the women formed the outer of two concentric circles, the men the inner, and the former were allowed only two buttons.[20] Women never use eagle feather fans.
Some tribes, like the Caddo, still have a strong objection to the presence of White men in meetings, but other groups do not object to White men as such.[21] A number of tribes have a bias against the attendance of Negroes, but this is not the case at least with the Kiowa, Wichita, and Kickapoo.[22]
_Visiting._ All Indians, however, of whatever tribe, are welcome in the meetings of all other tribes.[23] For example, at a Shawnee leader’s meeting at McCloud there were 12 Kickapoo, 6 Shawnee, 3 Caddo, 2 Kiowa, 2 Whites, a Wichita, a Seminole, a Sauk-and-Fox, an Oto, a Potawatomi and a Negro—a not untypical aggregate.[24] Individual users visit around a great deal in trying to “learn about peyote”; an old Kickapoo user had been in meetings of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Caddo, Delaware, Wichita, Apache, Kiowa, Osage, Yuchi, Sauk-and-Fox, Oto, Iowa, Shawnee, Comanche, Pawnee and Ponca. Indeed, the very origin legend of peyote indicates a period of beginning intertribal contacts, and peyotism in later days became the specific vehicle of intertribal friendships, when mutual warfare disappeared.
_Place of Meeting._ The typical place of meeting for the Plains, as well as Taos, Mescalero, and Lipan, is the tipi. The Arapaho-Winnebago peyote tipi has twelve poles, symbolizing the earth.[25] The Pawnee have special painted tipis for peyote, as in the Ghost Dance; and, like the Pawnee, the Wichita and Winnebago dismantle the tipi immediately at the end of a meeting.[26] The Osage, Quapaw, Omaha, Northern Winnebago and others[27] have special peyote churches, or “round houses” (really polygonal), and many, like the Taos, hold winter meetings in the home of some member.
But meetings were held elsewhere too in the past. The Carrizo had meetings in the open within a circle of sticks. The first Kiowa meetings took place within a circle of upright poles with canvas stretched around it, open to the sky; Comanche also used simple wind-breaks as do even now the Northern Cheyenne, who sometimes also hold the ceremony on a hill-top in the open.[28] The Caddo have held meetings in a canvas-covered subconical “stick house” holding over forty people in two rows; and the Bannock of Idaho, on account of opposition to peyotism, have held meetings in backwoods log-houses—in short, the holding of the meeting in a tipi, while common and typical, is not ritually required.
_Bathing._ The Lipan customarily washed their hair in yucca suds before a meeting, and perfumed themselves with mint. In the Plains and at Mescalero they take a sweatbath or a bath with water; the Arapaho[29] plunge once against the current and once with it, then rub themselves with teaxuwineⁿ or waxuwahan and other scented plants. The Osage build a sweat lodge as an integral part of their church, in a direct line east of it. A man in Hominy specializes in giving Osage old-style sweat baths, but some of them somewhat ostentatiously travel to Claremore, a hundred miles away, to take “radium baths” before meetings.
_Painting._ Face and body painting is recorded for the Arapaho, Comanche, Delaware, Kiowa, Oto, Shawnee, Tonkawa, Wichita and Winnebago, yellow being the commonest color used by the Arapaho and Comanche.[30] A Kiowa story tells of the acquiring of an individual paint design in a vision of a red bird which turned into a man. The Tonkawa even painted the fuzz on the top of the fetish peyote red, according to Opler. Painted stripes symbolize for the Wichita the extent of one’s experience with peyote: a beginner paints the part of the hair yellow and puts one blue line on his face, adding up to four finally: “He’s supposed to know something then.” Both men and women painted for Winnebago meetings.[31]
_Clothing and Headdress._ Formerly native dress was prescribed for Plains peyote meetings, and even now a blanket (in summer a folded sheet) among male communicants and a shawl among female is common—to symbolize affiliation with “blanket Indians.” Younger men, otherwise in ordinary White dress, often wear a “peyote-necktie” made of an old-fashioned trade blanket, beaded, and with the selvage-stripes as a design; soft neckerchiefs drawn through rings with “water-bird” and “Morning-Star” designs are also common. The Arapaho[32] water woman wears a symbolically painted buckskin dress; men wear special wrist-bands and headdresses of yellow hammer and woodpecker feathers. Carrizo men wore only a loincloth in meetings, not even moccasins; the women attendants wore red blankets, the one to the north with woodpecker feathers and the one to the south with a red flicker feather.[33] Iowa wear Kiowa-Comanche style leggings, the thongs of which are knotted with “red medicine” or mescal beans.[34]
A turban or head-scarf has been observed among the Delaware, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Wichita and Winnebago,[35] but the otter-skin cap of the Kiowa and Winnebago is optional. At Taos the variant dress of the “peyote boys” has become a symbol of the strife of the old and the new. The young men who use peyote cut out the seats of their trousers, thus converting them into a G-string and leggings and necessitating a blanket, and let their hair grow in Plains fashion.[36] Among older Osage men the “roached” style of scalp lock was formerly still in vogue, but the younger men who have adopted the peyote religion wear their hair long, parted and braided on each side with ribbons and yarn.[37] Among the Winnebago, on the other hand, the progressivism of the peyote cult demands that long hair be cut, and Crashing Thunder discovered that it was a “shame to wear long hair.”[38]
_Ritual Restrictions._ Salt may not be eaten on the day that peyote is consumed among the Huichol, Tarahumari, Arapaho, Comanche, Kickapoo, Wichita, etc.; the distributional gaps are more likely gaps in our information than lack of the taboo, which is probably universal at least among the early Plains users of peyote.[39] It is also considered hygienically if not ethically unwise to use peyote in connection with alcoholic drinks; indeed, many insist that the former cures addiction to the latter. The Arapaho[40] did not bring sharp instruments into a peyote meeting, a taboo elsewhere unreported.
_Officials._ The “road chief” is the most important individual in a meeting. Kroeber writes of the Arapaho leader in a manner which might apply to any Plains leader:[41]
The leader of each ceremony is sole director of it. He may ... base [his ceremony] partly on visions during previous ceremonies. In other cases, he follows ceremonies that he has participated in, changing or adding details to suit his personal ideas. No two ceremonies conducted by different individuals are therefore exactly alike; but the general course of all is quite similar.
We do not agree with Petrullo that the leader is a mere “figurehead.” Indeed, as we shall see later, the variation in ceremonies is a function of leadership far more than of tribal affiliation. The leader has full authority to change the ceremony in any way he wishes, and his permission must be asked and secured even in such little matters as leaving the tipi temporarily; even the fireman, his chief assistant, constantly consults with him and receives directions.[42]
In fact, peyote leadership is a matter bringing much prestige, and in these days is a major means of advancement among one’s fellows. John Rave, Albert Hensley, Jonathan Koshiway, Quanah Parker and John Wilson find parallels to a less degree in all peyote leaders, and rare is the man who does not seize the opportunity presented by his authority to introduce some change, however trifling, into the ceremony.[43] Each tribe has a limited number of recognized peyote leaders which can be named. The Shawnee, for example, have nine only and the Pawnee have only eight recognized leaders in a population of eight hundred. In the case of the Osage the number of leaders is further limited by the number of permanent “churches” available; Murphy lists eighteen “East Moons” on the reservation and three “West Moons.”
Originally the officials in a peyote meeting appear to have been limited to the “road-chief,” drummer, and “fire-chief.”[44] The “cedar-chief” is a later development. Among the Winnebago the leader, drummer and cedar-man symbolize respectively the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the leader gives the drummer his staff even as God delegated authority to Jesus.[45] In the Quapaw “Big Moon” the officials number eight: three firemen north of the door (required since every person must be fanned with feathers every time he reënters the tipi), the leader, drummer and cedar-man west of the altar, and in addition “one good man” at each arm of the altar-crucifix cross-piece.
_Economics._ On the basis of 13,300 peyote users in 1922 (and the number has since substantially increased) in the United States alone, it is clear that the cult is of economic significance in a number of ways. The price of peyote from dealers in Laredo, who supply most of the northern Plains and Great Basin users, is from $2.50 to $5.00 a thousand buttons; it is said that “the inhabitants of the small town of Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, derive their livelihood almost exclusively from the peyote trade.” Schultes estimates $20,000 as the annual commercial transactions involved north of the Rio Grande.[46]
The Tarahumari used to combine their peyote journeys with trading and other commercial transactions, but the trip was otherwise profitable since peyote itself commanded a good price; Lumholtz says one plant cost a sheep at one time in Tarahumariland, and he himself was asked $10 for a dozen plants.[47] The Huichol sold part of their harvest sometimes to non-pilgrims.[48]
In the Plains the sponsor usually meets the expense of a meeting himself, but some groups like the Oto pass around a vessel in the morning for a “free-will offering.” At Taos the peyote chief bears the expense, though others may make contributions to help defray the cost. The chief expense at Tarahumari, as elsewhere, is the sacrificial beef. The total cost of a meeting varies considerably, according to the number of persons fed at the secular meal the next day. Meetings that Mooney attended in 1918 cost $15, $58 (including a beef costing $35), and $80 respectively, but these amounts seem excessive. The writer has sponsored an average meeting costing only about $15, and Hoebel has supplied “groceries” for meetings at from $6 to $10 only.[49]
Considering their importance and authority, it is not surprising that the peyote chiefs come in for some financial recompense. The Tarahumari peyotero was given a quarter of the slaughtered beef, and one peyote doctor at Narárachic made his entire living by peyote cures. Several Kiowa doctors nearly or completely match this. A Sioux doctor at Taos was given a silk dress of the patient’s wife, a belt and $5 cash. Indeed, one of the complaints against Wilson, the Caddo-Delaware peyote messiah, was that he over-exploited the financial opportunities afforded by peyote leadership.[50] Victor Griffin (Quapaw) claims to be the only man authorized by Wilson to make Big Moons, and for the building of a small Quapaw “round house” near Miami, Oklahoma, he and his assistant, Charles Tyner (Quapaw) received $750. There was and is considerable exchanging of gifts in connection with peyote meetings and intertribal visiting; feathers, drum sticks, etc. are common gifts, as well as “father peyotes” which have become heirlooms.[51]
_Amount of Peyote Eaten._ The minimum number of buttons eaten by each participant is usually four. Several persons claim to have eaten 75 to 100 or more, but the average is nearer a third or a fourth of this.[52] Personal observations tend to confirm Mooney’s estimate of 12 to 20 as a night’s average consumption; he said that 90 was the most any Kiowa had ever eaten, and he believed this was possible since the individual was powerfully built—although that number would amount to about a pound and a half. This may be so, but one is skeptical of alleged consumptions of more than 30 or 40 average-sized buttons in the dry form. For the green form we should set the maximum at considerably fewer, perhaps 15 or 20 good-sized plants, which even so is a liberal estimate. About 300 each was the average for two Winnebago meetings, and assuming an ordinary group of 20 communicants this amounts to only 15 buttons apiece. We should call this a fair estimate of the average for beginners and old users combined in a meeting; before accepting larger estimates it should be recalled that there is a certain prestige in eating and retaining large amounts of peyote, a fact which may color statements somewhat. Peyote is also consumed as tea, especially by the old and the sick; in one case 24 discs made 15 cups of tea, and in another 30 made 2 quarts of the infusion. A pneumonia patient drank the latter, one cupful every two hours, to induce perspiration deemed necessary for his cure.