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.
_Peyote Paraphernalia in General._ Typical Plains peyote paraphernalia
includes minimally the leader’s satchel, gourd rattle, water drum, drum
stick, staff, feathers, eagle wing-bone whistle, corn shucks and loose
tobacco, bags for peyote and cedar incense, altar cloth, sage, water
bucket and ritual-breakfast containers. The rasp is not used by the
Lipan or Mescalero or in the Plains, and the whistle is recent for the
two former. The Lipan previously used a bow struck with a stick in place
of the later one-sided tambourine drum; the kettle drum, from Mexico,
is still more recent.[53] Mescalero shamans sometimes added the use of
pollen, which they used to trace a cross on the father peyote, and like
the Tonkawa, occasionally served the peyote on woven trays instead of
in bags. Taos paraphernalia is standard Plains in type. A common color
for Arapaho peyote objects is yellow; Skinner thought the bead-work on
Iowa gourds and magpie feather fans indicated a Kiowa or Kiowa-Apache
provenience. Among the Delaware and others each devotee has his own gourd
rattle, but this (like personal drum sticks and feathers) may not be used
until after midnight.[54]
_Staff._ From ancient times, and possibly before Columbus, the cane or
staff was a symbol of authority in Mexico,[55] and for this reason we
should hesitate before labeling this feature of peyote an Hispanicism.
Again, Opler equates the staff of the Mescalero shaman (which he holds
throughout the ceremony, not passing it around with the drum) with the
“old age stick” held by the singer in the aboriginal girl’s puberty rite.
Similar syncretism with older patterns seems to have occurred also in the
Plains. The Comanche used a bow for a staff when holding peyote meetings
on the war path, but the term naci-hιta means literally “resting stick-to
walk,” according to White Wolf. In the Iowa Red Bean war bundle ceremony,
the rattle was held in the left hand [sic] while the bow and arrow were
waved in the right as the person sang. The Delaware call the leader’s
staff “arrow,” and so also do the Osage, Quapaw and Oto; the Ponca,
on the other hand, call it a “bow.” The Kiowa suggest that a bow was
formerly used, but the term ᴅo’ᴅęⁱä means “brace-to hold-stick”; it must
be of bois d’arc (_Maclura pomifera_ C. K. Schneider), however, and some
are nocked at the top and bottom like a bow. The Lipan “cane” was called
ilkibenatsi´e or “ram-rod.”[56]
The Shawnee, according to Mrs. Voegelin, called the peyote staff the
walking stick of the old, but the red tassel at the top symbolized the
headdress worn with a single feather at the war dance. The t’owayennemö
of Taos was held in the left hand “for the strength of life,” and the red
and white horse-hair tufts encircling the top (so Dr. White was told)
were there “because the White man is above the Indian.” A Delaware staff
which Dr. Speck saw contained designs representing a tipi, water, the
door of the lodge, the blue sky and fire, symbolized by the colors of the
bead-work.
Reinterpretations of the meaning of the staff are common. A Wichita
called it the “staff of life.” The Iowa staff represents the staff of the
Saviour, while the Winnebago variously interpret it as a shepherd’s crook
and the rod with which Moses smote the rock (in obvious reference to the
leader’s calling for water in the ceremony). Differences in the staff
have even come to symbolize a schism in the Winnebago church: that used
by Rave was decorated, as elsewhere in the Plains, but Clay used a simple
undecorated staff, lacking even feathers, calling attention to the fact
that Moses staff was undecorated.[57]
_Gourd Rattles_. Rattles made of gourds (_Lagenaria_ spp.) have become
universal in the Plains since the spread of peyotism; but the Iowa had a
small gourd rattle with beaded handle in their Red Bean war bundle dance,
and the peripheral-Plains distribution of this trait in pre-peyote times
has been traced elsewhere. Some groups (Delaware, Osage, Ute, etc.) have
individual rattles for each participant.[58] A large one seen at Apache,
Oklahoma, made by Spotted Crow (Cheyenne) had drawn on it a moon with a
fire and a Morning Star in negative, together with the following “Jesus
talk:”[59]
Help me O Lord
My God O save me
According to thy Mercy
O God my heart is
fixed. I will sing
And give praise
Even with my glory.
A Wichita gourd was said by one informant to represent the world or sun;
the beads are “people talking” and the bead-work in general is “things on
the earth,” while the horse-hair tuft dyed red on the top represents the
rays of the rising sun. A Delaware gourd of Dr. Speck’s has bead-work on
its handle symbolizing morning (blue), fire (red) and a row of X X X’s
(the songs sun).[60]
_Drum._ The standard peyote drum, already described for the Kiowa, made
of a small iron kettle with seven bosses in the lacing, is found also
among the Arapaho, Comanche, Iowa, Cheyenne, Lipan, Pawnee, Ute, Shawnee,
Kickapoo, etc.[61] The Kickapoo say the seven marbles represent the days
of the week, just as the twelve eagle feathers of the fan symbolize the
twelve months of the year; the four coals which are dropped into the
water of the drum are lightning, the water rain and the drumming itself
thunder.[62]
In drumming, the vessel is given an occasional shake to wet the head
with the contained water, and the left thumb is used to test the tone
and tighten the head: sometimes too the head is sucked or blown upon, so
that the water is forced to ooze through the skin. The Ponca, however,
do not permit the drum head to be touched—“peyote makes the sound, not
the hand,”[63] they say—and hence make a handle of the lacing-rope
twisted upon itself. Old Man Sack (Caddo) also forbade blowing on
the drum, “even when it cups up and sounds like a tin can,” a Kiowa
peyote-boy said; in the stricter Caddo moons no water is drunk until the
drum has made four rounds, with the result that some of their meetings
consequently last well into the forenoon of the next day—a genuine
ordeal according to informants. Among the Iowa, and possibly also in
some Caddo Delaware “Big Moons” the drum chief accompanies the drum
around the circle, drumming for each singer. The Jesse Clay style of
drumming among the Winnebago, described by Densmore, is common among the
southern tribes: a rapid unaccented beating before the beginning of the
singing, gradually slackening to match the speed of the voice. Another
mannerism may be noted at the end of each song, when the rattle is shaken
unrhythmically as fast as possible during the last few bars of the song,
then suddenly stopped with the last drum beat.[64] The water drum is
typically Southeastern in distribution, but its presence in the Plains
peyote cult must be accounted another Southwestern feature, inasmuch as
it was standardized and diffused over the Plains before Southeastern
groups in Oklahoma received peyote and hence could have introduced the
trait into it.[65]
_Feathers._ Feathers are important in peyote symbolism. In the original
Comanche rite only the leader brought in a medicine fan with him; “now
many young men bring them who have no special business to.” Skinner wrote
that eagle feathers were “badges of the society” among peyote-using Iowa;
women were never allowed to use eagle feathers in meetings, however.
Younger Oto men carry modern ribbed folding-fans, older ones commonly an
entire wing. The individual fans of the Northern Cheyenne, as elsewhere,
are not produced until the full effects of the peyote come on, some time
after midnight. The eagle feather fans of the Winnebago represent the
wings of birds mentioned in Revelations, while the Kickapoo state that
the twelve feathers of the eagle fan symbolize the twelve months of the
year; twelve is a common Delaware ritual number also.[66]
The Arapaho hang bunches of feathers on the northeast, northwest,
southeast and southwest tipi poles to brush off the bodies of tired
worshippers. The Mescalero use eagle feathers as a spoon to feed their
first peyote to neophytes. The Winnebago, like other tribes, pass a
feather around with the staff in its circuit. The Kiowa, Ponca and others
use feathers in the water rites: the former make a cross in the midnight
water with the feathers of all present, held in a bunch, while the latter
place a single feather across the top of the bucket and whistle along
the feather. The use of feathers among the Ponca, where cedar incensing
is not a strong trait, is especially conspicuous: a feather is passed
to the fireman as a symbol of authority, allowing him to leave the tipi
without express permission each time from the “road-man,” and there is
a “baptism” with feathers in the water ceremonies too. The vanes of
Ponca feathers are often notched. The red blankets of the two Carrizo
women helpers were fastened with a woodpecker and a flicker feather
respectively.[67]
Feathers are common in visions too. A Kiowa envisaged his barred
hawk-feathers as a ladder rising through the smoke hole of the tipi
to heaven, like a Jacob’s Ladder, and another time as rippling water.
Feathers are commonly arranged and cut, colored and tufted, etc., in
accordance with visions seen during meetings.[68] Jonathan Koshiway
(Oto) had assembled a favorite fan from individual gift feathers, each
of which had a different history—one from an old Osage woman who wished
for him her long life, two from Hunting-horse (Kiowa), and the like. An
interesting development in the Big Moon ceremony is the ritual necessity
for each person to be fanned at the fire by the fireman or others every
time he re-enters the tipi. This trait is Delaware, Caddo, Osage and
Quapaw[69] in distribution, the latter having two special “guards” at
the north and south arms of the altar cross who are charged with fanning
each entrant; ordinary incensing with cedar has been reported even among
the Ute and is probably universal in peyotism. Perhaps with the same
purpose in mind, protection from dangerous influences, the Mescalero
takes an eagle feather from either side of the door as he makes his exit,
returning as soon as possible.[70]
_Birds._ We have already noted the importance of birds in Huichol and
Tarahumari peyote symbolism, and are to discover that they are equally
significant in the Plains. Here the “water-bird” somewhat ambiguously
suggests a bird that lives in the water or the bird involved with the
whistling for the midnight water. Arapaho songs refer to peyote and the
birds which are its messengers, and sparrow hawk, yellow hammer and other
woodpecker feathers are common in their meetings. When the fireman goes
to get the water he carries an eagle wing, and the whistling which he
makes is said to imitate the cry of a bird in search of water (the end of
the eagle wing-bone whistle is finally dipped into the water bucket, as
though it were the bird drinking).[71]
The Comanche peyote bird is the “sun-eagle,” said to be just under
the rising morning sun; “Comanches always mention that bird in their
meeting.” This bird, the kʷina-óhap (literally, “eagle-yellow”), which is
represented in the shaped ashes west of the peyote fire, “flashes like
the sun; ... water bird feathers are used just because they are pretty.”
In this connection it is interesting to recall the Tarahumari place name
Couwápigóchi, “place of the wapigóri,” from the name of a fishing bird,
“a cross between an eagle and a hawk, with feet like an eagle,” which
the Mexicans call aquillala, and the brilliantly colored macao and other
birds belonging to the Huichol “Grandfather Fire.”[72]
The Kiowa represent their “water-bird” on peyote tie-slides as a
long-necked bird like a kingfisher or crane; these have been traded all
over the Plains. If a Kiowa peyote-user sees an eagle in a vision, he
thereafter carries his eagle-feather fan in his left hand as a sign of
this.[73] The peyote bird is prominent in symbolic Kiowa paintings also.
Jonathan Koshiway, the Oto peyote teacher, said:
The peyote spirit is like a little humming bird. When you are
quiet and nothing is disturbing it, it will come to a flower
and get the sweet flavor. But if it is disturbed, it goes quick.
Hence the admonitions to sit quietly in meetings and “study” to see if
you can “maybe learn something.” Tom Panther, a Shawnee leader, called
the ash-bird
a holy bird; it drinks as well as we do of the holy water
[_i.e._ some of the ritual water is poured on the ash-figure in
the morning] and it gets alive a little when people drink, and
from then on is lively until morning.
The martin is said to be the Shawnee peyote bird, as indicated perhaps
in the “scissors-tail” shape of some ashes. A Mexican who had long lived
with the Wichita had an interesting vision during the water-ceremonies
of an Arapaho meeting, when he saw a white feather of the leader “turn
into Christ and boss the bald-eagle feather of the fireman around.” The
association of birds with peyotism, therefore, appears to be universal in
the Plains and Mexico alike.
_Fetish Peyote._ Peyote is the only plant toward which the Kiowa and
other typical non-agricultural Plains tribes have a religious attitude
and from which they can get “power.” Yet the fetishistic attitude as
a psychological phenomenon is not unknown in the Plains of pre-peyote
times; the Kiowa taime or Sun Dance image and the “Ten-Medicine” bundles
have widespread parallels in the Plains—the Cheyenne fetish-arrows
and sacred heart, the Iowa red bean war-bundles, and the ubiquitous
medicine-bundles of which the Blackfoot are a type.[74] The Arapaho wore
the fetish-plant in an amulet pouch covered with beads, and when placed
on the altar a head-plume was sometimes put nearby. The Cheyenne also
carry exceptionally large specimens in beaded buckskin cases,[75]
the bead-work being in the form of a star to represent the sun
[?] and the case being suspended from his neck by four strands
of beads “to represent the four thoughts that lead to peyote.”
A Wichita informant carried a peyote button with him to France in the
late War, and the fetish miraculously escaped detection during the
sterilizing of uniforms; it protected him until he could return to
collect his soldier’s bonus in 1936, when a special meeting was held to
thank peyote for these boons.
Some Shawnee call the hogimá or “peyote chief” the messenger between
humans and God; others call it the “interpreter” or the Holy
Ghost. Crashing Thunder addressed the most holy peyote medicine as
“grandfather,” but the usual designation of the fetish is “peyote chief”
or “father peyote.” While Wolf (Comanche) called it “elder brother”
because as a child one specific plant had protected him during an illness.
The Winnebago are evidently influenced by an older tribal pattern in
their use of two sacred peyotes, one “male” and the other “female.” John
Wilson in an early Caddo meeting near Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, “before the
country opened,” placed three peyote buttons on the moon (symbolizing the
Trinity of leaders?); his drummer saw one of these turn into a person he
had known in life. The Lipan usually had only one hucdjiya´isia, or “big
peyote lying,” but sometimes put buttons in a circle around the fire pit,
somewhat like the Comanche who placed them in the sage crescent west of
the fire.[76]
The Osage, with their usual flair for ostentation, place the “chief
peyote” “within the marked outline of a heart and set upon a beaded
cylinder support,” according to Dr. Speck. Iowa father peyotes are
notable for their size. The Tonkawa sometimes painted the fuzz on the
plant red, as though it were a person. The Taos addressed the peyote
chief as “Father Ear,” probably carrying over to peyote a common Pueblo
fetishistic attitude toward corn. Lipan and Mescalero father peyotes
were an active ally of the shaman leading the meeting, as any attempt at
witchcraft would “show” on it and inform him of something amiss.[77]
Some individuals particularly cherish and prize their “father peyotes.”
A well-known Wichita leader showed the writer his private collection of
them one forenoon after a meeting.[78] Some famous “peyote chiefs” are
almost heirlooms. Belo Kozad, a prominent Kiowa peyote leader, has one
which once belonged to the famous Comanche chieftain, Quanah Parker. This
was passed around at the end of the meeting and handled with the utmost
reverence.[79]
_Bible._ Peyote-users have also taken over the typical Protestant
fetishism of the Bible, but this Christian element in peyote meetings
is confined exclusively to Siouan-speaking groups. Radin states
categorically that “the use of the Bible is an entirely new element
introduced by the Winnebago,” but there is good reason to believe that
Hensley borrowed this trait from more southerly Oklahoma groups which he
visited in the early days of Winnebago peyotism. The Omaha placing of
an open Bible near the father peyote may indeed have been influenced by
the Winnebago (who put the peyote directly on the open book), and so too
the Iowa, but the Oto use of the Bible in the Church of the First-born
probably preceded it in Oklahoma, where, indeed, John Wilson’s Big Moon
cult embodied Christian elements. Further, the reading of the Bible is a
feature of the Rave rite only, not of the Clay version, a more aboriginal
form.[80]
The Winnebago use the New Testament, especially Revelations. Hensley used
to have the singing stop at intervals, so that the younger educated men
might translate and interpret portions for non-reading members. For some
individuals at least, the Bible was the touchstone of behavior:
Then we went home [says Crashing Thunder] and they showed me a
passage in the Bible where it said that it was a shame for any
man to wear long hair. I looked at the passage. I was not a
man learned in books, but I wanted to give them the impression
that I knew how to read so I told them to cut my hair. I was
still wearing it long at the time. After my hair was cut I took
out a lot of medicines, many small bundles of them. These and
my shorn hair I gave to my brother-in-law. Then I cried and
my brother-in-law also cried. He thanked me, told me that I
understood and that I had done well.
Another time, in a peyote vision, his body deserted Crashing Thunder and
turned the leaves of the Bible until it came to Matthew 16 and read[81]
that “Peter did not give himself up”; this meant that the peyote was
troubling him because he was stubborn and would not acquiesce to its
power.[82]