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.