Tarahumari peyotism is on the decline in Samachique, Quírara and
Guadalupe, though still remaining around Narárachic; in Guadalupe the
bakánawa cactus is valued instead. From two or three to a dozen men make
the month-long trip to the region around the mouth of the Rio Conchos at
any time of the year, though usually not in the rainy season. They first
purify themselves with copal incense; on the way anything may be eaten,
but in the hikuli country they eat only piñole, and speech is forbidden.
Arrived, they erect a cross near the first plants found, in order to
find an abundance of others, and carefully cut off the tops with wooden
sticks to leave the roots uninjured. They sing and eat green peyote while
gathering it and in the evening they dance the dutubúri around the cross
and a fire. The harvesting lasts several days, some taking turns dancing
while the others sleep. Each variety of hikuli is put in a separate bag,
for they would fight if mixed.[44]
The plants are left on a blanket in the mountains near home, and the
blood of a slaughtered sheep or goat is sprinkled on them to “feed” them,
with a special song. After drying they are placed in covered ollas away
from the house. The hikuli-seekers are met on their return with singing,
and a fiesta is held with the sacrificial sheep or goat. The dutubúri and
the hikuli-dance are then danced all night around a large open-air fire,
much green peyote and tesvino being consumed. This ceremony is to “cure”
the pilgrims: the shaman’s necklace of _Coix lachryma-Jobi_ seeds is
dipped into a bowl of agua-miel, sotoli, or mescal, each one receiving a
spoonful, while the shaman sings of hikuli standing on a Job’s Tears seed
as big as a mountain.[45]
Tarahumari hikuli-feasts are held at other times also. The women grind
the plants with water on a metate into a thickish brown liquid. The
dancing-patio is carefully swept with a straw broom and several crosses
are planted, and near one of these the peyote is piled with jars of
“tea” and tesvino, baskets of unsalted tamales and bowls of meat and
“medicine.” A large fire is built with logs in an east-west position and
hikuli and yumari are danced all night.[46]
Near the shaman and his assistants who sit west of the fire is a
leaf-covered hole into which they carefully spit; the olla-cuspidor of
the men to one side and the women to the other is passed around and
emptied here also. With a drinking-gourd rim the shaman makes a circle on
the ground and in it the right-angled cross of the world-symbol. Then he
inverts a gourd over a hikuli placed on the cross, as a resonator for his
rasp; hikuli enjoys this music and manifests his strength by the noise
produced.[47] The shaman’s headdress is of bird-plumes, which prevent the
wind from entering and causing illness; through them the birds impart to
him all their wisdom. The assistants, of both sexes, carry incense bowls
of copal, kneeling and crossing themselves at the cross, and then pass
out the peyote.[48]
At times the shaman dances, at times his assistants, and women may dance
either separately or simultaneously with the other men participants. The
bare-footed men are wrapped to the chin in white blankets; the women wear
clean skirts and tunics. The clockwise dancing (with a turn of the body
at the shaman’s place) consists in a “peculiar quick, jumping march, with
short steps, the dancers moving forward one after another, on their toes,
and making sharp, jerky movements, without, however, turning around.” The
men have deer-hoof sonajas, and the rasping and singing are continuous
save when the shaman politely excuses himself to the fetish hikuli;
others must also ask permission to leave the patio. In the intermittent
dancing they beat their mouths with the palm imitating hikuli’s talk, or
cry “Hikuli vava! (Hikuli over yonder!)” in shrill falsetto.[49]
At dawn the dancing stops at three raps on the shaman’s rasp. All rise
and gather at the east cross. Then the shaman, followed by a boy with a
gourd of palo hediondo medicine (ohnoa roots steeped in water), “cures”
each one with his rasp wetted in the medicine, as they cry, “Thank you!”
The shaman makes three long raspings with his stick on the man’s head;
its dust is so potent in curing that it is carefully gathered from
around the resonator and preserved in buckskin bags. A spoonful of other
medicines is sometimes swallowed as the shaman blows and makes passes;
sometimes tesvino exclusively is used. Blankets are also smoked with
copal now. Then, facing the rising sun, the shaman makes three raspings
at arms’ length, waving home hikuli who had come from the east early in
the morning, riding on green doves, to prevent sorcery in the meeting;
now he turns into a ball and returns, accompanied by the owl. Doctoring
of the sick as well as “curing” may now occur. Then all wash carefully,
and after the shaman sacrifices tortillas and tesvino as they stand in a
line facing east, they all participate in a feast.[50]