APPENDIX 9: The Native American Church and Other Peyote Churches 167 BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES Explanation of plates AT END 1. Peyote leaders 2. Altar and ash birds TEXT FIGURES PAGE 1. Arrangement of tipi for peyote meeting (Kiowa) 44 2. Peyote paraphernalia 47 3. Peyote drum 49 4. Peyote altars or moons 75 5. The diffusion of peyotism 122 6. Cement altar of the Big Moon rite (Osage) 154 7. Altar in West Moon Church (Osage) 155 THE PEYOTE CULT INTRODUCTION Peyote (Nahuatl, peyotl) or _Lophophora williamsii_ Lemaire, is a small, spineless, carrot-shaped cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and southward. It contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the isoquiniline series, some of them strychnine-like in physiological action, the rest morphine-like. In pre-Columbian times the Aztec, Huichol, and other Mexican Indians ate the plant ceremonially either in the dried or green state. This produces profound sensory and psychic derangements lasting twenty-four hours, a property which led the natives to value and use it religiously. Peyote is not, however, the same as teo-nanacatl, as Safford believed; the latter is a narcotic mushroom which likewise had a Mexican distribution. The term “peyotl” is also used in Mexico to designate other cacti and non-cacti, some of which, like peyote, are reputed to have aphrodisiac and other properties. Physiologically, the salient characteristic of peyote is its production of visual hallucinations or color visions, as well as kinaesthetic, olfactory and auditory derangements. Psychiatrists have used it (experimentally) with unsatisfactory results in producing temporary psychosis, and therapeutically its use has been similarly disappointing because of the uncertainty of action of the antagonistic alkaloids of pan-peyotl. First, exhilaration is produced by the strychnine-like alkaloids, followed by profound depression, nausea and wakefulness, and finally, under the influence of the morphine-like alkaloids, brilliant color visions are produced, which last for several hours. There are no ill after-effects, and peyote is not known to be habit-forming. These properties have led to a number of non-ritual uses by natives for prophesying, clairvoyance, finding lost objects and the like, as well as empirically for the cure of all manner of illnesses.