Aside from the John Wilson, John Rave, and Church of the First-born
variants, the basic Plains ceremony is remarkably homogeneous in various
tribes. Since the Kiowa and the Comanche, historically considered, were
the center of this diffusion,[86] in the interests of economy we choose
their ceremony to detail as the “Plains type-rite.” In the following
account care is taken that every statement be specifically true of the
Kiowa and at the same time representative of the Plains; minor Comanche
differences are shown in footnotes.
Living beyond the habitat of peyote, all Plains tribes have to make
pilgrimages for it or buy it. The journey is not ritualized, but there
is a modest ceremony at the site: on finding the first plant, a Kiowa
pilgrim sits west of it, rolls a cornshuck cigarette and prays, “I have
found you, now open up, show me where the rest of you are;[87] I want to
use you to pray for the health of my people.” He sings and eats green
plants while harvesting them; only the tops are taken, that the root may
regenerate buds, a fine large one being saved as a “father peyote” for
meetings later.[88]
Many groups, like the Kiowa, “vow” meetings as in the Sun Dance. They may
be held in gratitude for recovery from illness, on a child’s first four
birthdays, for doctoring the sick, to pray for the successful delivery of
a child, or for the health of the participants in general. Present too
is the possibility of instruction and power through a peyote vision; in
the Plains this is the primary motive, with doctoring second. In the last
twenty years “holiday meetings” have been introduced.[89]
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Arrangement of interior of tipi for peyote
meeting. a, Kiowa “standard” peyote meeting; b, Comanche horseshoe moon
variant.]
In preparation, the Kiowa commonly take a sweatbath.[90] In the old
days buckskin dress was prescribed, but nowadays a “blanket” or folded
sheet for men and a shawl for women satisfies this requirement; buckskin
moccasins are more comfortable than stiff-soled shoes during a night
spent sitting cross-legged. Older men still paint for meetings; one
leader for example had a yellow hair-part with a short red forehead line
perpendicular to this, vertical red lines in front of the ears, and
yellow around the eyes.[91]
The sponsor selects his leader (ᴅωλḱi) or himself acts as one; a leader
usually has his own drummer (o’ᴅ’asodeḱi) and fireman (ɢ’iɢ’uḱi), and
some a “cedar man” also. The sponsor’s womenfolk erect the tipi, prepare
and bring the food and water the next morning. The floor is carefully
cleaned and plumes of sagebrush are spread around the inside of the
tipi, as in a sweat-lodge, for a seat. The sponsor stands the cost of
the meeting (from twenty-five to fifty dollars), or others may help
in paying; he also supplies the peyote or pays the leader for it, but
communicants often bring their own buttons also.
The leader supplies the paraphernalia: the staff (ᴅo’ᴅę́ä, “brace-to
hold-stick”) of bois d’arc, the gourd rattle, eagle wing-bone whistle,
cedar incense, altar cloth, drum, and perhaps his personal “feathers”
for doctoring. The drum (ᴅωä´ᴅω or ʙώλkωᴅωä`ᴅω) is a No. 6 cast-iron
three-legged trade-kettle with the bail-ears filed off. The buckskin head
is well soaked and tied over the kettle, a third- or half-filled with
water into which ten or a dozen live coals (and sometimes herb-perfumes)
have been dropped; the Kiowa say the drum represents thunder, the water
in it rain, and the coals lightning. Seven marbles are put under the
buckskin around the outside kettle rim to serve as bosses for the thong
wound once-and-a-half times round them; the same thong is passed through
each loop and laced criss-cross seven times under the kettle, unknotted,
to tighten the head and form on the bottom the seven-pointed “Morning
Star.” The single drumstick (ʙωλkωtωn) is straight, carved, beaded, and
embellished with a buckskin tassel or fringe on the handle end. The
gourd-handle is also beaded and fringed, and tufted with red horse-hair
(ɢuλks’ǫgʸä) at the top end passing through the gourd, the neck of which
is plugged with half a spool; the gourd itself may be covered with
texts or symbolical drawings.[92] Participants are free after midnight
to use the cult drumstick and gourd or their individual ones as they
choose. Formerly “only the leader brought in the medicine fan with him,
but now many young men bring them in who have no special business to.”
These have a beaded and fringed cylindrical handle, with feathers loosely
supported in individual buckskin sockets sewed around the shafts; often
they are notched, tipped with horse-hair, or down feathers are added at
the base—as individual “visions” dictate. The leader also supplies the
fetish “father peyote,” but no Bible is used in the Kiowa or usual Plains
ceremony.[93] Formerly only old men and warriors attended meetings, but
now women and girls over thirteen come in, when not menstruating, though
they may not sing the songs or use the paraphernalia.[94]
The tipi is entered any time after nightfall, with a preliminary
clockwise circuit outside as in the sweatbath (all circuits inside
must be clockwise also). Sometimes several line up behind the leader,
who prays briefly: “I am going into my place of worship. Be with us
tonight.” Entrance however is often informal and made one by one, before
the leader comes in with his rattle and staff in one hand, and his
paraphernalia-satchel[95] in the other; he sits west of the fire, which
has been started by the fireman, north of the door, who comes in first
of all. His drummer is south of him, to his right, his cedar-man (if
there is one) north and left. Others enter and informally take places,
but after he is seated they kneel on the right knee at the door for a
moment, looking to him for permission to enter and be assigned a place;
the sponsor meanwhile may call out, “Come in! So-and-so,” to these,
informally welcoming them. A tipi some twenty-five feet in diameter seats
thirty people comfortably. In summer the sides are raised to allow a
breeze to blow through.
At the west center, horns to the east, is the crescent altar[96] (piέtᴅω)
with a groove or “path” (ɢ’ωmhoṇ) along it from horn to horn, interrupted
by a flat space in the center where the “father peyote” is later to
rest on sprigs of sage. The “path” symbolizes man’s path from birth
(southern tip) to the crest of maturity and knowledge (at the place of
the peyote) and thence downward again to the ground through old age to
death (northern tip). The crescent, carefully shaped beforehand by the
fireman out of clayey earth, also represents the mountain range of the
origin story where sęmąyi or “Peyote Woman” first discovered the plant.
East of it in a shelving depression is a fire, constantly mended by the
“fire-chief” during the night to keep it in a worm-fence arrangement, the
closest approximation to the ritual crescent-shape possible with straight
sticks. The accumulating ashes are shaped with great care into another
crescent between fire and altar. A “smokestick”[97] is kept smoldering in
an east-west position close to the fire to light all cigarettes.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Peyote paraphernalia. _Left to right_, Mescal bean
necklace; “peyote” necktie from a strip of trade-blanket with selvage
stripes, and bead-work representing peyote buttons; beaded and fringed
pheasant feather fan; black velvet, gold-fringed altar cloth; smokestick
carved with water bird, etc., eagle bone whistle; drumstick; peyote
buttons; corn husk cigarette “papers”; bundle of sage plumes; pile of
powdered cedar incense; a beaded, fringed, and carved drumstick; mescal
bean necklace.]
All seated, the leader places the father peyote on the sage sprigs,
orienting it by the thorn or mark made when he cut it.[98] After this the
ceremony is considered begun, all informal talking and joking ceases,
and others entering are late-comers. Everyone begins to stare at the
fetish peyote and the flickering fire.[99] Then the leader leans his
eagle-humerus whistle against the west outside of the moon, mouth end up,
takes out his cedar incense bag, gourd, tobacco, etc., and arranges them
conveniently near him.
The first ceremony is smoking or praying together. The leader makes
himself a cigarette of Bull Durham with corn husk “papers” dried and
cut to shape, and passes the makings clockwise to the rest, including
women.[100] His own made, the fireman presents the smokestick to the
leader (who may first offer it courteously to his drummer) and this
too is passed to the left. While all smoke, the leader prays: “beha´be
sęį´ᴅɔki (smoke, peyote power). Be with us when we pray tonight. Tell
your father to look at us and listen to our prayers.” He holds his
cigarette mouth end toward the peyote and motions upward that it may
smoke as he prays:
We are just beginning our prayer meeting. We want you to be
with us tonight and help us. We want no one to be sick at this
meeting from eating peyote. I will pause again at midnight to
pray to you. I will pause again in the morning to pray to you.
[Then he prays for the person who is sick or whose birthday the
meeting celebrates or for relatives and participants.] If there
are any rules connected with you, peyote, that we don’t know
of, forgive us if we should break them, as we are ignorant.
All pray silently to ᴅómᴅɔki, “earth-creator” or “earth-lord,” and older
men may add their prayers aloud after the leader. Then, following the
leader, all snuff their cigarettes in the ground and place them on the
west curve of the altar, outside, or at either horn; the fireman may
gather those of women, old people or visitors.
The incense-blessing ceremony immediately follows. The leader (or his
“cedar-man”) sprinkles some dried and rubbed cedar on the fire; then he
makes four clockwise motions of the peyote bag toward the fire, takes
out four buttons and passes the bag. Kneeling on both knees, he reaches
down beneath the hides or blankets of the seat, and bruises a tuft of
sage between his palms, and smelling it with deep inhalations, rubs his
hands over and down his head, breast, shoulders and arms, with outward
downward movements, ending with the thighs. Though the peyote may not yet
have reached them, the others follow suit, reaching out their palms to
absorb the blessing of the incense and rubbing themselves.
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Peyote drum with lashing around bosses.]
This done, all eat[101] their peyote, to the accompaniment of much
spitting out of the woolly center of the buttons; hereafter during the
night in the intermissions of singing, anyone can call for the peyote
bag (the incense burning may or may not be repeated). Then more cedar is
sprinkled on the fire and the leader makes four motions with the staff
in his left hand and the rattle in his right toward the rising incense
smoke.[102] The drummer motions similarly with the drumstick, pulling
smoke from the fire to the drum. The leader takes a bunch of sagebrush
from between the tipi-cover and pole behind him (previously prepared by
the fireman), holds it with his staff and the singing begins.[103] The
drummer shifts his left thumb over the drumhead or sloshes the water
inside on it or blows on it to get the proper tension and tone, then the
leader holds his staff and sage at arm’s length between himself and the
fire and rattles for the Hayätinayo or Opening Song.[104] The leader
exchanges his staff and rattle for the drum the latter always passing
_under_ the staff,[105] and the drummer sings four songs of his own
choosing. The paraphernalia, staff preceding drum, are then passed to the
left; each man sings to the drumming of the man on his right, and then
himself drums for the man on his left.[106] This singing, rattling, and
drumming forms the bulk of the ceremony during the night. At intervals
older men pray aloud, with affecting sincerity, often with tears running
down their cheeks, their voices choked with emotion, and their bodies
swaying with earnestness as they gesture and stretch out their arms
to invoke the aid of Peyote. The tone is of a poor and pitiful person
humbly asking the aid and pity of a great power, and absolutely no shame
whatever is felt by anyone when a grown man breaks down into loud sobbing
during his prayer.[107]
About midnight the leader announces that he is going to put incense on
the fire after the next four songs, and when he does, everyone blesses
himself in the smoke. The announcement gives the fireman time to mend
the fire and build up the ash moon[108] and sweep the cigarette butts
into the fire. If the paraphernalia are north of the door they are passed
backwards to the leader drum first, if at the south (i.e. past the door)
clockwise and staff first as usual. Smoking stops, and the leader, to the
drumming of his assistant, sings the Midnight Song.[109] When the first
of the four is finished, the fireman (sometimes given a feather for
this errand by the leader) leaves, gets a bucket of water, returns, sets
it in front of the fire and unfolds a blanket on which he sits in line
with it facing west. The leader, finishing the second song, blows four
increasingly loud blasts on the eagle wing-bone whistle (to imitate the
water bird) then replaces it by the peyote and sings the last two songs.
While his assistant holds the staff and gourd, he spreads an altar cloth
just west of the fetish, and places on this the staff, gourd, sage and
his fan, together with the “feathers” of communicants passed to him for
this purpose; the drum is to the south of this, the drumstick, etc., on
the cloth.
After cedar-incensing, the fireman makes a smoke, puffs four times
and prays, thanking those responsible for the honor of being chosen
fire-chief, and praying for the leader and his family, the sick and
the absent. Next the leader prays, then the drummer, using the same
cigarette, and to complete the figure of a cross, the man to the north
or “cedar-man” prays. When the butt is placed by the altar, the fireman
makes a circuit of the altar and passes the bucket to the man south
of the door. Quiet conversation is permitted in the somewhat informal
drinking period.[110] When the fireman has drunk, the leader passes back
the fans and the paraphernalia to where the singing had been interrupted,
and leaves the tipi. He goes about thirty feet east of the tipi,
whistles four times and prays, repeating this at the south, west and
north.[111] When four songs are completed, he returns, blessing himself
in the incense smoke which the drummer throws on the fire.[112] Now is
the preferred time to leave the tipi and stretch cramped legs. Singing
continues as before until dawn.
As the first grey light appears, the leader tells the fireman to waken
or notify the woman who is to bring the water (she has no special seat,
if she has attended the meeting). The fireman always brings the midnight
water, a woman that at dawn.[113] The leader whistles four times, even
in the middle of a song, when the fireman tells him she has arrived
outside. When the singer finishes his four songs, the leader calls for
the paraphernalia and sings the four Morning Songs; after the first of
these the woman enters, arranges a blanket and sits as did the fireman.
Finishing the three remaining songs, the leader calls for feathers and
spreads them with the paraphernalia on the altar cloth, as at midnight. A
smoke is made for the woman, who thereupon prays, after which the leader
and his assistants smoke it. Doctoring[114] is best done at this time;
the leader may do this, or he may ask an older man to fan the patient
with consecrated feathers from the altar cloth.
Then the fireman spills a little water before the fire, the woman drinks,
and the bucket moves clockwise as before from south of the door. The
woman makes a circuit of the altar, picks up her blanket and takes the
bucket out. The feathers are passed out again, and the paraphernalia
returned to the place of the next singers in the circle (because of such
ritual interruptions, praying, passing of peyote, etc., a complete round
of the drum requires two or three hours).
While waiting for the ritual breakfast, the meeting is again somewhat
informal. Several women may leave to help the water-woman prepare
the food, and younger men may go outside for a stroll and a secular
smoke. Old men often lecture younger members on behavior at this time,
“preaching” directly to a relative, and more indirectly to others.[115]
When he has finished another old man may exhort: “You must do as that old
man has said. He’s had experience. What he’s telling you is good.” At
this time too visitors are given opportunity to express gratitude for the
hospitality of their host, who in turn thanks them for coming.
When the food arrives outside, the fireman notifies the leader, who
calls for the paraphernalia and sings four songs, the last of which is
the Quitting Song. The food meanwhile is passed in and placed in line
with the father-peyote and fire, west-to-east thus: water, parched corn
in syrup, fruit and meat.[116] No one sits east of it as in the water
ceremonies. The four songs completed, the leader tells the drummer to
unlace the drum, and all the paraphernalia are passed around (between the
food and the fire at the east) for everyone to handle,[117] as an older
woman (“because food is their life-work”) or a Ten-Medicine keeper, who
typically functions at such Kiowa group-prayers, asks a blessing. The
leader then removes the father peyote from the altar, and when he puts it
in his satchel with the rest of the paraphernalia the meeting is ended.
Complete social informality now reigns as the food is passed to the man
south of the door and thence clockwise. Much joking[118] goes on during
this meal, which has none of the seriousness of the Christian partaking
of the Host. When the fireman has finished eating, at the leader’s
instruction, he leads the line out of the tipi.[119] The tipi may be
taken down immediately, or moved bodily a little, but the older men
drift back into its shade and lie around talking and exchanging peyote
experiences.[120] As meetings are ordinarily held on Saturday nights,
Sunday forenoon is free for such visiting, talking and dozing under
arbors. Nearly everyone stays for a secular dinner at noon, and they
take home what they cannot eat; sometimes other guests come who have not
attended the meeting.