Peyote (Nahuatl, peyotl) or _Lophophora williamsii_ Lemaire, is a small,
spineless, carrot-shaped cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and
southward. It contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the isoquiniline
series, some of them strychnine-like in physiological action, the rest
morphine-like. In pre-Columbian times the Aztec, Huichol, and other
Mexican Indians ate the plant ceremonially either in the dried or green
state. This produces profound sensory and psychic derangements lasting
twenty-four hours, a property which led the natives to value and use it
religiously. Peyote is not, however, the same as teo-nanacatl, as Safford
believed; the latter is a narcotic mushroom which likewise had a Mexican
distribution. The term “peyotl” is also used in Mexico to designate other
cacti and non-cacti, some of which, like peyote, are reputed to have
aphrodisiac and other properties.
Physiologically, the salient characteristic of peyote is its production
of visual hallucinations or color visions, as well as kinaesthetic,
olfactory and auditory derangements. Psychiatrists have used it
(experimentally) with unsatisfactory results in producing temporary
psychosis, and therapeutically its use has been similarly disappointing
because of the uncertainty of action of the antagonistic alkaloids of
pan-peyotl. First, exhilaration is produced by the strychnine-like
alkaloids, followed by profound depression, nausea and wakefulness, and
finally, under the influence of the morphine-like alkaloids, brilliant
color visions are produced, which last for several hours. There are no
ill after-effects, and peyote is not known to be habit-forming. These
properties have led to a number of non-ritual uses by natives for
prophesying, clairvoyance, finding lost objects and the like, as well as
empirically for the cure of all manner of illnesses.
In Mexico peyote was used seasonally in an agricultural-hunting religious
festival, preceded by a ritual pilgrimage for the plant. Participants
danced all night around a fire to the rasp-music of the shaman, as they
ate the drug in this tribal celebration. Since about 1870 the cult has
spread to the United States, particularly in the Plains, where nearly all
groups use it. In the Southwest transitional region peyote became deeply
involved in shamanistic rivalries and witchcraft, and in the Plains with
war. A pre-peyote narcotic, the “mescal bean” (_Sophora secundiflora_)
had there prepared the way for its introduction. The Plains cult is
like the warriors’ societies of earlier times in some respects. The
Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo were the chief agents of the spread of the
cult throughout the entire Plains region to southern Canada and parts of
the Great Basin. The standard ritual is an all-night meeting in a tipi
around a crescent-shaped earthen mound and a ceremonially-built fire;
here a special drum, gourd rattle and carved staff are passed around
after smoking and purifying ceremonies, as each person sings four “peyote
songs.” Various water-bringing ceremonies occur at midnight and dawn,
when there is a “baptism” or curing rite, followed by a special ritual
breakfast of parched com, fruit, and boneless meat.
The Caddo-Delaware John Wilson had peyote visions that led him to
modify the altar and ceremony; this new form has spread to the Caddo,
Delaware, Quapaw, Osage and others. Wilson was one of a long line of
Indian prophet-messiahs, and his “moon” has been somewhat exploited
economically. The Oto teacher, Jonathan Koshiway, founded a Christianized
version of peyotism which spread to the Omaha, Winnebago and others. An
organization of confederated tribes known as “The Native American Church”
grew out of Koshiway’s “Church of the First-born” (which latter spread to
Negro groups also). The cult has had considerable legal difficulties.
Praying and doctoring in meetings, and occasionally public confession
of sins, are the major means for the liquidation of life-anxieties of
this profoundly functional cult’s many present-day communicants. In the
following pages we shall attempt to delineate the history of the study
of the cult, the various botanical questions surrounding peyote, its
physiological action and the various ethnological, psychological and
historical questions involved in its diffusion.
First of modern students to describe the peyote rite was James Mooney,
who visited the Kiowa, Comanche, Tarahumari, and “a number of other
tribes, among them the Mexican tribes of the Sierra Madre, and as far
south as the City of Mexico.”[1] But at his death he had published no
further study of peyote; ethnographers of the period were in general
concerned with preserving complete records of older native cultures, and
ignored or paid scant attention to the modern cult of peyote. Mooney
himself gave little notice to the rite in his monographs on the Cheyenne
and the Kiowa,[2] although at the time he was undoubtedly the authority
on the subject.
Wissler, for example, barely mentions the peyote cult.[3] Indeed, in its
role of modern destroyer or supplanter of older native religions, peyote
was even a matter of concern[4] and annoyance to some ethnographers.
Lumholtz, with wonted thoroughness, published considerable data on
Huichol and Tarahumari peyote in 1898 and later, and Kroeber in 1902
wrote a chapter on Arapaho peyote which has remained a model for later
investigators.[5]
It remained for Paul Radin, however, in his studies of Winnebago
peyote,[6] to point out to ethnographers an engrossingly interesting,
but widely ignored, religious cult which was growing and spreading
before their very eyes. Since the appearance of his papers in the
years following 1914, the ethnographic literature on peyote has grown
considerably, due importantly to the impetus Radin gave such studies.
Lowie devoted a chapter partly to peyote in his book _Primitive
Religion_; Rouhier paid some attention to ethnographic questions in his
pharmacological monograph on peyote; and Wagner wrote a short comparative
paper based largely on the Comanche and Huichol cults. Petrullo’s
_Diabolic Root_ was devoted entirely to Delaware peyotism.[7]
No comparative treatment of the peyote cult of the order of Mooney’s on
the Ghost Dance, Lowie’s on Plains societies, or Spier’s on the Sun Dance
had ever been made when Dr. Maurice Smith of the University of Oklahoma
began his studies. The unfortunate death of this investigator, however,
prevented the finishing of his work, of which only a short paper[8] has
seen publication. But studies of the peyote cult in individual tribes,
both published and in manuscript, have multiplied to such an extent since
the time of Kroeber’s and Radin’s studies that the time appears ripe to
attempt an integrated comparative treatment of the religion.