formerly used the seed as an intoxicant, half of a seed
producing a delirious exhilaration followed by a deep sleep
lasting two or three days.
Opler tells a Chiricahua Apache coyote story in which the trickster
pounded up a number of the beans and gave them to the people to eat:
So while the people were out of their minds, Coyote cut out
their hair in patches the way Indians cut their hair. So there
they were, crazy.
Lumholtz says that the Tarahumari added the root (?) of the frijolillo
to their maguey wine “as a ferment,” and Bennett and Zingg report
an archaeological occurrence at a Rio Fuerte site in Chihuahua on a
Basket-Maker horizon:
Containers found here and in another site held nothing but
a few seeds of the poisonous wild “bean,” which may have
ceremonial significance.
This inference is not implausible when we recall the Mexican mode of
keeping peyote.[5]
The use of peyote in racing and in ball games is noted for the Tarahumari
and Tamaulipecan groups, and in this connection it is interesting to
learn that the Wichita used to eat mescal beans before they ran a race.
A Cheyenne informant said that his tribe used the “red-berry” as an
eye-wash long before they knew of peyote, though he never heard of their
eating it; “it’s poison,” he said. The Comanche used to get mescal beans
from near Fort Stanton, apparently for ornamental purposes only.[6] Like
most of the Plains tribes, the Kickapoo used mescal beans chiefly as
beads, but in common with the Cheyenne they used them medicinally: for
earache they boiled, mashed and strained the beans through a cloth.
The Kiowa use the ḱɔnḱoλ or mescal beans typically, as beads in peyote
meetings, much as they formerly wore bandoliers of them on the war-path.
One Kiowa is said to have chewed the inside of a mescal bean before
breaking a bad wild horse bareback. A Kiowa peyote chief had several of
the beans on his moccasin heel-fringe, to protect from the dangers of
inadvertently stepping on menstrual blood, and another Kiowa “peyote boy”
had a mescal bean attached to the thong of his gourd rattle. Mescal beans
are clearly thought to possess great medicine-power.
The Iowa had leggings which Skinner thought might have been of a modified
Kiowa-Comanche type, with a perforated scarlet mescal bean (Iowa, maka
shutze, “red medicine”) knotted on each thong of the fringe. The Omaha
used as beads and good luck charms bright red beans which Gilmore thought
were _Erythrina_, and which they called makaⁿ zhide or “red medicine”
likewise. In adopting the use of chinaberries (_Melia azerdache_ L.) as
beads, they likened them to mescal beans and called them, curiously,
makaⁿ-zhide sabe, “black red-medicine.”[7] Pawnee informants said that
long ago they used bat or mescal beans for medicine “to strengthen the
body,” but now use them only for decoration. The Oto used to eat “liar(?)
berries” or mescal beans in one of their lodges; they had the interesting
superstition that they breed (recalling the sex attributed to peyote):
Tie two or three in a bundle, leave it a year or so, and when
you open it again you’ll have a dozen.
The inference that the Pawnee and Oto used the mescal bean ritually is
borne out by the Iowa, who had a full-fledged ceremony called the “Red
Bean Dance:”[8]
This is an ancient rite (maⁿkácutzi waci) far antedating the
modern peyote eating practice but on the same principle. The
society was founded by a faster who dreamed that he received it
from the deer, for red beans (mescal) are sometimes found in
deer’s stomachs.[9] There are four assistant leaders, besides
the leader, and it is their duty to strike the drum and sing
during ceremonies.
In this society members were obliged to purchase admission from
some one of the four assistant leaders. This was done in the
regular ceremonial way. A candidate brought gifts and heaped
them on the ground before the assistant leader and begged for
the songs, etc., which he taught them and was then a leader.
There was no initiation ceremony. During performances the
members painted themselves white and wore a bunch of split
owl-feathers on their heads. Small gourd rattles were used and
the members while singing held a bow and arrow in the right
hand which they waved back and forth in front of the body while
they manipulated the rattle with the left.
This ceremony was held in the spring when the sunflowers were
in blossom on the prairie, for then nearly all the vegetable
foods given by wakanda were ripe. The leader, who was the
owner of a medicine and war bundle called maⁿkácutzi warúhawe
connected with this society, had his men prepare by “killing”
the beans[10] by placing them before the fire until they
turned yellow. Then they are taken and pounded up fine[11] and
made into a medicine brew. The members then danced all night,
and just past midnight they commenced to drink the red bean
decoction. They kept this up until about dawn when it began to
work upon them so that they vomited[12] and prayed repeatedly,
and were thus cleansed ceremonially, the evil having been
driven from their bodies. Then a feast of the new vegetable
foods[13] was given them and a prayer of thanks was made to
wakanda for vegetable foods and tobacco.
The connection of the maⁿkácutzi warúhawe, or red bean war
bundle with the society is not altogether clear to me, save
that it was a sacred object possessed by the society which
brought success in war, hunting, especially for the buffalo,
and in horse-racing.[14] Members of this society tied red
beans around their belts when they went to war, deeming them a
protection against injury.[15] Cedar berries and sagebrush were
also used with this medicine.[16] Sage was boiled and used to
medicate sweat baths on the war trail.
Further information is afforded by Harrington,[17] who collected a
typical red bean bundle figured by Skinner, indicating a Pawnee parallel
to the Iowa cult:
In addition to the two varieties of Ioway war bundles before
described, a third sort was found, Maⁿkaⁿshudje oyu, or Red
Medicine Bundles.... This was not discussed with the others,
for the reason that the Ioways claim that it did not originate
with them, but was derived from the Pawnee, who, in return for
many presents, gave them authority to use it, and instructed
them in its preparation and ritual. The legend of its origin
among the Pawnee was not known to my informants.
The bundle, says Chief Tohee, belonged to a society, whose
annual meeting was held about the time corn is ripe.[18]
There was but one main bundle, but each member had a “flute”
or whistle, and a small package of medicine. When the time
approached for the meeting, the member who was to give the
feast sent a crier or “waiter” around to the different members,
calling them to meet at a certain night in his bark house
or tipi, whichever he was using at the time. All painted
themselves and fixed themselves up in their best style for the
occasion. Music was furnished by a number of singers, who kept
time to the sound of drumming upon a tight bow-string,[19] and
the sound of small gourd rattles. During the ceremonies the
singers seated themselves in four different places at the side
of the lodge, corresponding to the four directions, and sang in
each one the verses prescribed by tradition, the order being:
east, south, west, and north.[20] The dance is said to have
consisted of peculiar jumping movements.
Now, the “Red Medicine” which forms the basis of the bundle, is
the sacred red Mescal bean (_Erythrina flabelliformis_) which
seems to have narcotic or perhaps intoxicating properties when
taken internally.[21] Formerly widely used by the Indians of
the Southern Plains[22] to produce dreams or visions at certain
ceremonies, it has now been supplanted by the more powerful
“button” cut from the Peyote cactus, which is sometimes wrongly
also called “mescal,” thus taking the name of its predecessor.
When morning put an end to the dances of the ceremony under
discussion, a large number of the red beans were broken up,
or “killed” as the Indians say (regarding the beans as alive)
and stirred up with water in a large kettle, together with
certain herbs which are said to make the decoction milder in
action. Then all the participants drank a cup or two of the
mixture. The only description of the action of the drug was
that everything looks red to the drinker for a while, when he
vomits, and evacuates the bowels, which the Indians say, cleans
out the system, and benefits the health, even in the case of
children. The medicine drinking, and the stupor and purging
consequent upon it end the ceremony.
It is said that the bundle has been handed down for a number
of generations, since it was obtained from the Pawnee, all
in one family, which must have benefited considerably, one
would think, from the valuable presents necessary to join the
society.... The [bundle’s] taboo was very strict, forbidding
its owners to break the bones[23] of any animal under any
circumstances. They must never allow the bundle to touch the
ground either....
When not in use, it was kept carefully wrapped in hides or
canvas so as to exclude the weather, hanging on a pole standing
just east of the owner’s lodge, in front of the doorway. In
addressing the bundle, they called it “Grandfather,” and made
offerings to it by throwing tobacco on the ground near the pole
where it hung. On festal occasions the sweet smoke of burning
cedar twigs was wafted upon it as an offering.
In time of war, a special man was appointed to carry it, as was
the case with most war bundles. Like them, too, it was opened
when the enemy was sighted, when its enclosed amulets were put
on by the warriors. Tooting their war-whistles, they rushed
gaily into battle, confident of the Red Medicine’s protection.
Mrs. Voegelin[24] quotes an informant on a Shawnee use of mescal in a war
connection:
Čalikwa’s grandfather gave him one of these mescal beans
(manitowimskočii’Oa). This old man knew prayers about these
beans.... He had four grandsons. He made a prayer to give each
of these boys a bean—one apiece.... He made a prayer about
how the Creator made these beans and how they’re used, using
tobacco ... out in the woods; he built a fire, where he offered
prayer. This old man wanted his grandsons to be warriors. So he
told the first grandson to swallow one of those beans.
When the first boy swallowed the bean, the bean came out. He
told the boy, “You can never be a powerful man or anything;
there’s something in the way, that that bean didn’t want to
stay (inside you).” This happened to three of the boys. The
last grandson to take the bean was Čalikwa; when he took it,
the bean didn’t come out. So when he saw his grandson keeping
that bean, the old man was thankful. He told him, “Now you
have a power; any time you see a battle you’ll be the leader.”
[And so he was in 1865, when the Shawnee almost wiped out the
Tonkawa in battle.]