Indians of North America -- Religion; Indians of North America -- Rites and ceremonies; Peyotism
The next morning [he writes] I tried to sleep. I suffered a
great deal. I lay down in a very comfortable position. After
a while a fear arose in me. I could not remain in that place,
so I went out into the prairie, but here again I was seized
with this fear. Finally I returned to a lodge near the one in
which the peyote meeting was being held, and there I lay down
alone. I feared that I might do something foolish to myself if
I remained there alone, and I hoped that someone would come and
talk to me. Then someone did come and talk to me, but I did
not feel any better. I went inside the lodge where the meeting
was taking place. “I am going inside,” I told him. I went in
and sat down. It was very hot and I felt as though I was going
to die. I was very thirsty, but I feared to ask for water.
I thought that I was surely going to die. I began to totter
over. I died and my body was moved by another life. I began to
move about and make signs. It was not myself doing it and I
could not see it. At last it stood up. The eagle feathers and
the gourds, these it said, were holy. They also had a large
book there. What was contained in the book my body saw. It
was the Bible.... Not I, but my body standing there, had done
the talking [this schizoid quality of consciousness in peyote
intoxication has been frequently noted by white observers].
After a while I returned to my normal condition. Some of the
people present had been frightened thinking I had gone crazy.
Others, on the other hand, liked it. It was discussed a great
deal; they called it the “shaking state.”
The vision experiences of John Wilson (Caddo-Delaware) and Enoch
Hoag (Caddo) are typical results of physiologically-induced
hallucinations in individuals whose culture-background highly values
vision-experiences.[36] The Enoch Hoag “moon” had its origin apparently
in a (tetanic?) trance, wherein he saw himself as dead, with many people
around him weeping and his arms composed on his chest as with a corpse.
His companions tried to give him water with a spoon, but his jaws were
stiff—a common symptom of strychnine poisoning.[37]
The stimulating effect of peyote may partly account for the holding of
meetings at night, for there is no desire or ability to sleep for ten or
twelve hours after eating peyote; however, all-night meetings for various
purposes are not unknown in the Plains, and the older culture pattern
merely exploits the physiological fact as a limiting condition probably.
Some observers report that, although there is heightened reflex-activity
(including those of the skin), peyote induces a partial skin anaesthesis.
A Zacatecas ceremony reported by Arlegui,[38] on the occasion of the
birth of the first male child, appears to utilize this virtue of the
plant:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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