A descriptive account of a ritual pattern, however meticulously detailed
it be, must always fall short of reality unless supplemented by further
information regarding its functioning in terms of individuals. The older
descriptive ethnography and the newer interest in the dynamics of culture
are as necessary to each other as anatomy and physiology, of which,
indeed, they are the anthropological parallels. We accordingly embark
upon the somewhat anecdotal filling in of the pattern sketched in the
preceding section.
Every student of peyote has been met with a sometimes odd mixture of
suspiciousness and candor, an ambivalence in attitude derived primarily
from the native attitudes toward peyotism itself. Most of the younger
adherents of the cult have had White schooling of a sort, but though
the express intent of this schooling has been the deculturation of the
Indian, on returning to their tribes old loyalties are characteristically
reestablished and old ways of thinking fallen into; the total effect of
Christian teaching on peyotism, therefore, has not been particularly
profound.
But all peyote adherents are aware of the efforts, both religious and
secular, to suppress the movement, and most of them are familiar with
the arguments advanced against peyote as an allegedly harmful drug.
They have commonly met this with the counter-propaganda that peyote is
a specific cure for alcoholism, but nevertheless this attitude on the
part of bearers of the powerful and prestige-full White culture has not
left them unimpressed, and there is a consequent lack of psychological
security in their belief and practice of peyotism. Though the cult is
a compromise solution between Christianity and older native religions,
there is still a large number of persons whose attitude toward peyote is
thoroughly precarious—as evidenced by the vacillations, defections and
rationalizations we are about to list.
Save for the Caddo (and there are perhaps historical reasons for this)
ordinary sincerity and interest are met by the Plains practitioners with
corresponding candor and friendliness toward the ethnographer. There
is no very great difficulty in a sympathetic White man’s attending a
peyote meeting nowadays. Indeed, some groups, out of naïve faith in the
plant’s power, seem even to invite attendance in the hope of producing
a propagandist for the cult to counteract the unfriendliness which they
feel, and not unrightly, has arisen from ignorance and prejudice. An
instance of this good faith and even naïveté occurs in an Osage petition
to Congress that in the event of a law being passed to regulate the
use of peyote, an exception be made for the “Indian lodges using it as
a sacrament,” and they promised to use it only under the supervision
of reservation superintendents![1] And a sincerity not open to doubt
was evidenced by a Cheyenne, one time president of the Native American
Church, who sent 200 peyote buttons on his own initiative through his
agency-superintendent to a chemist at Stanford University, requesting a
thorough and disinterested scientific analysis, and offering his further
services if necessary.[2]
Another factor making for insecurity of belief and practice has been the
intense opposition on the part of some leaders of older cults in the
tribe itself. We will recur to this subject in discussing the history of
peyote in specific groups, but cite here the rather accentuated example
of hostility at Taos.[3] Dr. Parsons tells of a lawsuit between a “peyote
boy” and one of the Mexican Penitentes which was resolved by both paying
the costs, to prevent the betrayal of native customs. Thereafter the
chiefs said:
[Peyote] does not belong to us. It is not the work given to us.
It will stop the rain. Something will happen.
But as desire for rain is the typical anxiety reflected in native ritual
in the agricultural Southwest, the peyote boys retorted in the same vein.
In the drought of 1922 they said:
“Now it is so dry this summer because the peyote boys can’t
have their meetings; they used to bring so much rain.” [Indeed,
nowadays,] the townspeople are given to referring all their
inclination to feud to the peyote situation.
But there is ample evidence that this tendency existed before peyote ever
came to Taos. On the other hand, the wife of one peyote-user asserted
that there was no more “witch sickness” in the town because of the
peyote people, who were able to exorcize witches; nevertheless, one man
attributed his trachoma to witching by “foreigners” in peyote meetings.
Such intense seriousness is in marked contrast to the situation in some
Plains tribes, where peyote jokes are told at times in the forenoons
after meetings, when sufficient rapport has been established. A Comanche
story tells of a leader who took his expensive watch into a meeting and
laid it on the altar cloth near the father peyote to “show off.” A man
shaking the gourd vigorously on the north side was making motions toward
the father peyote, and miraculously the watch became broken up; “it
was just a mess of works there loose, and the hands dropped off.” The
informant was highly amused at this story. An Oto told the tale of a man
whose jaw became stiff as he was singing, a contretemps which upset the
whole meeting. Though this effect was apparently due to peyote, the story
was greeted with much laughter. People laugh at the incorrect singing
of peyote songs too. We have already mentioned the one involving the
alarming proximity of the Messiah just across the river in Missouri.
Another story is told of a visiting Kiowa who attempted to sing a
Comanche song in meeting. He mispronounced the words and sang, “_Mentula
exposita est! Mentula exposita est!_” All the auditors of this story
laughed at this further proof that the Comanche have “no shame.”
The attitudes surrounding the plant itself are interesting. Perhaps the
Tarahumari[4] attitudes are most accentuated:
Those who have never eaten peyote fear it most. Should they
touch the plant, they believe they would go crazy or die. Those
who have once eaten it at a fiesta need have no fear of it,
providing they treat it properly.
At Tarahumari feasts of the dead peyote protects the living from the
ghost of the deceased, quite as eating it prevents bears from attacking
the hunter or deer from running away from him; it confers invulnerability
from the Apaches and warns of their approach, and likewise foils the
machinations of sorcerers and robbers. In short, “hikuli is a powerful
protector of its people under all circumstances.”
The Lipan well represent the attitude of early users in the United States:
If a fellow is not scared, is not afraid of it, he will surely
have a good time. A fellow who is afraid of it just gets dizzy
and frightened. He sees things that frighten him. What he sees
is not true, but is just playing a joke on him.... When a
fellow is honest and good natured it is easy for him. But when
a fellow is rough and ill tempered he will have a hard time
learning from peyote. It will scare him and make it hard for
him.... The chief peyote is pretty tough. It watches what is
going on. It keeps everything straight. It is a plant, but it
can see and understand better than a man. If someone has wrong
thoughts, he had better look out or he will go crazy....
When they first start eating peyote they put their thoughts on
something good, something they want, for they say that whatever
you are thinking about when you start is what you will see all
during the night in your vision.... Sometimes a man sees a
vision and it scares him and he goes out running. But he is all
right the next day. The thing that frightened him won’t happen
unless he thinks about it all the time and it frightens him
continually. Then he begins to be afraid of it and thinks it
will happen. But if he holds it off—holds off the bad thoughts
that frighten him—nothing will occur.... Sometimes it makes
you dream something pleasant, sometimes it makes you dream
something dangerous.... In the morning, just after the meeting
is over, you can tell others what you saw.