Chapter IV: Part 4

[90] “A sweatbath was always undergone by warriors preparing for war ... and perhaps generally, before any serious or hazardous undertaking.... Sweating was important in medical practice for the cure of disease.... Sometimes the friends and relatives of the sick person ... assembled in the sweathouse, sang and prayed for the patient’s recovery” (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:661b). The peyote meeting and sweating present many such analogies.

[91] Painting is commonly dictated in visions: a Kiowa saw a red-bird after a meeting once as a red-blanketed man who told him to use red paint thereafter. Comanche formerly went in wearing only breech-clout and “blanket,” being painted white or yellow all over the body. One Comanche had an all-over body yellow with blue zigzags up the arm and down the side and leg, with a red zigzag paralleling this (on the outside of the arm and therefore on the inside of the leg); on each cheek a small blue-bordered red spot, and a large three-inch red spot on the breast under the throat. The Tonkawa painted the top of the fetish-plant red also. Leaders often wear otter skin braid-coverings, and at certain points in the ritual fur headdresses. Mescal beans as necklaces or on moccasin- and gourd-fringes are common (the Kiowa wear them on their moccasins as protection against stepping on menstrual blood). The “blanket,” or sheet (in the summer), is invariable.

[92] Mooney (_A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 64-65) describes a Kiowa gourd with the Peyote Woman, peyote, moon, ash crescent, and Morning-Star under her feet heralding her morning approach with water.

[93] The basic rite is practically free from Christian symbolism. Some call the sage under the fetish a “cross”; some leaders make a cross under the water-bucket or in the water with feathers at midnight. Mooney wrote that “many of the mescal eaters wear crucifixes ... the cross representing the cross of scented leaves ... while Christ is the mescal goddess.” But all crosses are not necessarily Christian. See Appendix 8.

[94] Older men carry real “feathers,” but younger ones often bring small, ribbed, commercial, folding ladies’ fans—an interesting compromise. The Comanche nácihita “resting-stick, to walk,” was formerly a bow, according to Hoebel, on war-party meetings, while the drum was formerly of wood. The Lipan formerly used a bow, hit with a stick.

[95] Following a suggestion of Dr. Wissler, I made a special note of this and found that the ubiquitous satchel is as much a “trait” of the peyote leader’s paraphernalia as his staff or gourd or feathers.

[96] The Kiowa moon is crescent-shaped, the Comanche horseshoe-shaped—a significant point in tracing provenience of altars in other tribes. Some Comanche garland the entire west side of the altar with sage, in which the fetish rests. In war the Comanche used a shield as an altar. A cement moon made by a Choctaw adopted by the Kiowa was an innovation much in disfavor, as was a Seminole altar made among the Caddo; the symbolical interior of the latter was removed to make a simple crescent. Indeed, many Caddo are moving away from the John Wilson symbolic cement moon.

[97] Cf. the Huichol “pillow” for Grandfather Fire.

[98] Belo Kozad’s (Kiowa) father peyote had been Quanah Parker’s (Comanche) and was handed around after the meeting almost as an heirloom. Mumsika (Comanche) still preserves a famous peyote button of Kutubi’s (Hoebel). Howard White Wolf (Comanche) has a peyote he addresses as “older brother” since it had cured him as a baby. Clyde Koko (Kiowa) quit peyote one Christmas night and gave Charley two father peyotes to take back to Laredo and plant with smoke and prayer; uncertain, the latter brought them back to find Koko had completely changed his mind: “I never made such a mistake in my life. If you’d done that it sure would have ruined me. I’ve learned a lesson!”

[99] “The neophyte is constantly exhorted not to allow his eyes to wander, but to keep them fixed upon the sacred mescal in the center of the circle.” (Mooney, _The Mescal Plant_, 11). Changing the cross-legged position too often, leaning backward on one elbow or the like to rest is considered frivolous, indicating lack of seriousness. One may leave the meeting at any time with permission, but it is best to try to wait till after midnight, unless there is the emergency of nausea from peyote. In leaving and entering the leader is always consulted to see if the path to one’s seat is “clear,” i.e., that no one is eating peyote or smoking; as smoking or eating peyote is conceptually praying, it is extremely bad manners to pass between a person doing either and the altar fire, hence the need for instruction from the leader. This is old Plains etiquette (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:442b). Thus, to avoid his having to pass before smokers, the brand might be passed backwards to the fireman; his movements in tending the fire never entail passing before anyone, and the feather given him by the leader symbolizes delegation of power to enter or leave as necessary for wood. But no one may pass between him and his seat while tending the fire.

[100] Corn shucks are standard, but Comanche and Shawnee sometimes use black-jack oak-leaves (just so the materials are native). Interestingly, the elbow pipe is never used in the Plains, but at Mescalero a pipe was used instead of the usual Southwestern cigarette—a case of reverse or reciprocal borrowing.

[101] There are many individualized modes of eating peyote. Hoebel describes a Comanche way: chew into a ball, spit into palm of hand, rub in clockwise circle, swallow bolus. On the war-path one spits in his hands again and rubs his head and ears, the better to hear. Belo said he once ate a button when each person sang. Kiowa often make several clockwise motions of buttons toward the fire before eating, to prevent nausea, or hold the palms out toward it and rub themselves. One may request another to chew peyote for him if he has bad teeth or is sick, and swallow the bolus so prepared. The number of buttons eaten ranges from four to about thirty.

[102] Mooney (_Miscellaneous Notes_) mentions an odorous root from New Mexico, but is unclear about its use; cedar incense was universal in the writer’s experience. The sage may be passed around also; some chew, eat it.

[103] Cf. the whisk of sage used in sweat-bathing; in view of other parallels, this otherwise functionless item in the peyote meeting should not be overlooked.

[104] This is the first of four sets of four songs each, sung at stated times in the ritual; the others are: Yáhiyano (midnight water song), Wakahó (daylight song for morning water) and Gayatina (Closing Song). All are Esikwita (Mescalero); all end with a fast unrhythmical shaking of the gourd. The two Kiowa groups sęįhoṇ (Peyote Road) and Goihoṇ (Kiowa Road) differ in that in the former only the initial song of each group is set, in the latter all songs of all four groups are set.

[105] There are specific and detailed rules about passing the paraphernalia. Ordinarily, save in the case of the leader and his assistant at the opening song, etc., the paraphernalia (here the staff) never move counter-clockwise. The drum always passes inside the staff, i.e., proximally, the staff at arm’s length in the left hand, the drum being passed under it with the right, when for any reason this occurs. The symbolism of this is perhaps obvious. A man may not be the singer more than once in a round, but he may be successively drummer, singer and drummer. (Though the staff may not go backward, the drum may, and in this case A receiving the staff, passes the drum with his right hand under his outstretched left, from the man on his right to the man on his left, B. A then sings to B’s drumming; the staff is then passed forward from A to B, and the drum exchanged or passed backward from B to A, this time A drumming and B singing. Still going clockwise, the staff may be passed from B to C, and the drum from A to B, C singing this time and B drumming a second time.)

[106] At the east door the drum may be passed as stated to the second man so that the first man south of the door gets a chance to sing (because the fireman is too far away to drum for him) then an exchange and normal passing again, staff first. If a person right of the singer is old, sick, a woman or a visitor, he may request a friend to drum for him of the leader; the friend moves clockwise and sits by him temporarily. Women neither drum nor rattle nor sing (but like other participants they tend to sing softly favorite songs or the universally known set songs). Men try to make their four songs different from those previously sung, but favorites may be repeated.

[107] Kutubi (Comanche) in a war-party peyote meeting once visioned that they would be killed, and wept and upbraided peyote for doing this. H. H. (Wichita) during a meeting wept with total unrestraint for his brother and nephew, who had been hurt in an auto accident.

[108] The Kiowa sometimes make a humming-bird of the ashes (a prominent Kiowa family is called Hummingbird); cf. the Comanche, Oto, Shawnee, Yuchi and (?) Ute ash-birds.

[109] Peyote Road cultists: one fixed song, three optional; Kiowa Road: four fixed songs. The words of the standard song are unintelligible. Many tribes use their own language for these set songs (e.g., one Winnebago group). The schism in the Kiowa, if such it may be called, is excessively minor and communicants of one are freely welcomed in the other; though it purports (probably wrongly) to be the original and more pure rite, the Kiowa Road (led by Atape) is felt to be an uncalled-for variant.

[110] Mooney (_The Mescal Plant_, 8) writes: “At midnight a vessel of water is passed around, and each takes a drink and sprinkles a few drops upon his head.” We believe Mooney has slipped into error here, for this “baptismal” ceremony comes in the morning when the contents of the drum, not the bucket, are used. Non-Kiowa data likewise agree on this point. According to Mooney, the leader drinks first among the Comanche. The Caddo drink no water at this time: “One must suffer to peyote.” Such abstemiousness with a thirst-producing substance like peyote suggests the psychological flavor of the vision quest. Note that Anhalonium means “without salt.” “If there is suffering, this is the time. That’s the reason I took a good rest so I could stand it. Many a time I have fallen over at this time. The hour of the Crucifixion. Everyone is suffering now ... the dark hour” (Simmons, in _Peyote Road_).

[111] “The four whistles at midnight by the leader outside the tipi are to notify all things in all directions that they were having a meeting there at the center of the cross ... calling the great power to be with us while we were drinking so that it could hear our prayers and bless us” (Hoebel, _Comanche Field Notes_).

[112] Others may be incensed when they reënter too, and everyone holds out his fan for the blessing. If a communicant is smoking when another reënters, it is good manners to place the cigarette on the ground temporarily that he may pass in front of him.

[113] There is a suggestion that this woman, usually the wife of the sponsor, symbolizes sęįmąyi or “Peyote Woman”; the Morning Star heralds her approach (see Mooney, _A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_).

[114] Doctoring is second only to the vision for individual knowledge and power in the Plains. Kiowa peyote doctors have special prestige among other tribes. In 1936 I sponsored a Kiowa meeting near Stecker, Oklahoma, for Belo Kozad to doctor Ernest Kokome who was suffering from tuberculosis. (Ernest had given me his trade-blanket beaded peyote-necktie in 1935 on the morning after a meeting at which I had admired it.) After midnight, Belo chewed four peyote and gave them to Ernest, fanning him with feathers and cedar incense; then he made a cross in front of the patient with a glowing coal, and, putting it in his mouth, blew all over the face and chest of the sick young man, who unbuttoned his shirt for the purpose. Next Belo fanned or batted him with his feathers, the patient holding up his palms to absorb the medicine virtue. Finally he took a mouthful of water and blew it on Ernest’s head, praying and beseeching in the name of Jesus Christ for him to get well. Peyote gave Belo the power to doctor thus and not be burned by the coal.

Peyote was brought to the Creek, indeed, for doctoring by Jim Aton (a famous Kiowa peyote doctor). Much in demand, he has doctored in peyote meetings of the Yuchi, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Creek, Caddo, Osage, Comanche, Kiowa Apache, Kiowa, Mescalero Apache and Quapaw; also whites and Mexicans. His methods of doctoring have been described previously. The well-known Comanche peyote doctor, Jim Post-oak, “hollers like a bear in doctoring.” (People often imitate the animal-sources of their power in the morning, in the midst of others’ singing, either from peyote-“euphoria” or in praise of particularly good singing.) Peyote doctoring by Old Man Horse (Kiowa) influenced the Oto rite of the Church of the First-born too. Peyote can perform cures unassisted outside meetings also, as shown by the case of Tommy Cat who ate peyote over the protests of his nurse in a hospital and was cured.

[115] Polonian obviousness is usually the note in these harangues (sit up straight and keep awake in meetings, wear clean clothes and bathe before coming, wear a blanket, keep your mind on good things in the ceremony, don’t look around the tipi, don’t drink whiskey, don’t lie to your wife or show off, but pray for your wife and children, respect old people, humble yourself, go home again if you come to a crowded meeting)—but occasionally specific admonitions are made. A Kiowa jokester, J. S., had had trouble with his wife, and was plainly talked to in meeting. Quanah Parker used to lecture young people in the morning. Long prayers are another means of making psychological transactions. Some tribes make individual public confessions at this time.

[116] Mooney, _The Mescal Plant_, 8.

[117] Some rattle the marbles of the drum, put them in the mouth and spit them into the palm. Members commonly “baptize” themselves with the drum-water, using the drumstick to moisten the palm and rubbing the hair, face, chest, arms and thighs as in blessing with cedar incense; some paint themselves with the charcoal in the drum. The remaining water in the drum is poured along the moon. The sage under the peyote may be passed to the patient, if there is one, or it may be requested for absent ailing relatives.

[118] Sometimes the stories have a moral point; the following was told by O. W. (Comanche) to E. R. (Delaware): the leader of a Wichita Easter meeting had a fine watch, costing from $150 to $200. At daylight, before water time, wanting to display it, he put it down by the feathers. A man to the north was singing and making vigorous punches toward the peyote. When he looked at his watch later, “it was just a mess of works in there loose, and the hands dropped off,” though nobody had touched it. “It don’t pay to go in there and then try to show off.”

[119] “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Hoebel says the Comanche fire-chief takes one step outside, turns completely around once, and continues his way, the others exiting in a straight fashion. Cf. the Huichol turns.

[120] A Comanche told me a Kiowa ate a lot of peyote once and tried to sing a Comanche song. He sang the wrong words, which meant “Mentula exposita est, Mentula exposita est!” (Cf. the Oto jokes about songs.) A typical experience of Belo Kozad involves the hearing of a new peyote song, psychological anxiety, a moral, and an explanation about power-getting: A peyote song, without words, once came to him in a vision. He seemed to be in the south, in soft grass. In the distance he saw a man, whom he followed. He did not know it, but this man represented Temptation. Belo followed the man, who was leading him off somewhere. Suddenly the man kicked backwards with his foot [a familiar folkloristic element] and went on. When Belo approached he found apples there; he refused to take one. Further on the man kicked back with his other foot. This time Belo found dollar bills and playing cards; these he refused too. A third time he found pictures of beautiful girls in various poses, but he withstood temptation. Finally he came to the top of a hill, over the brow of which the man had disappeared ahead of him. Then he heard the man talk to him from behind: “The apples, the cards, and the pictures all meant temptation. You have withstood them all. Upon the top of this hill you will find good fortune if you take this peyote.” Belo went up and saw there a terrible chasm, crossed by a bridge of a single tipi pole. The man said that the pole had to be crossed with four steps; if he did this he would have great curing power. The man danced forward and backward across the pole to show Belo, singing this song the while. But Belo was afraid to cross the chasm and turned back thus not acquiring the curing power.

[121] Indeed, among some groups like the Caddo, doctoring is expressly absent.

[122] In Mescalero, too, “prophecy and advice were no small part of the performance. It was rarely that his power did not vouchsafe the shaman some reassuring information concerning the longevity of his patient, the number of grandchildren with which he would be blessed, and the future state of his fortunes.” They also controlled the weather thus, found lost objects, located the enemy, etc., but doctoring was the main feature of Mescalero peyote meetings.

[123] Shonle (_Peyote: Giver of Visions_, 57) notes that peyote was latterly a reservation phenomenon, when tribal enmities were gone. The Ghost Dance had been anti-White; peyotism was a compromise, and the friendly intertribal contacts growing out of the Ghost Dance could now be exploited.

[124] Cf. Tamaulipecan rites and the black-drink ball-game of the Southeast. (The black drink was as nearby as the Karankawa.) The Southwest-Southeast connections are more than superficial; Beals (_Comparative Ethnology_, 142) believes there is a probable connection of Southwest-Mexican alcoholic drinks with the Southeastern black drink.

[125] Curiously the cigarette of the region farther west is universal in the intrusive Plains peyote rite, while at Mescalero the stone elbow pipe is passed around in the calumet fashion of the Plains in one leader’s ceremony.

[126] Is this a culture-environmental problem?—for the same substance which was spectacularly aphrodisiac in Lame Deer, Montana, was stubbornly anaphrodisiac in Philadelphia. Unfortunately for the accusing school of thought, Bennett and Zingg’s trait-distribution tables indicate a negative association of sexual promiscuity and the ritual use of peyote in Mexico.

[127] Opler says that “in no other Mescalero ceremony is a mound of earth in the shape of a crescent found. On the other hand, crude earth tracings did grace a Mescalero rite occasionally, and the moon was much in evidence in ritual song and design. The staff of the peyote shaman seems an innovation at first thought; yet it has a counterpart in the ‘old age stick’ held by the singer in the girl’s puberty rite.” The gourd in Mescalero has exclusively peyote associations. On the whole, the standard Plains ceremony appears to have taken shape among the Lipan-Mescalero. But Curtis (_North American Indian_ 19:199-200) says that the White Mountain Apache were the first United States users and that “the ritual [in the United States] is obviously copied from the Wichita ceremonial form.”

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM

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]