Indians of North America -- Religion; Indians of North America -- Rites and ceremonies; Peyotism
Again, given these factors and the nature of peyote leadership, it is
not surprising to find variations run riot; sometimes even the same
leader does not conduct two meetings exactly alike, or construct the moon
precisely the same (changing the ashes, etc.) Three Osage leaders, for
example, change the tribal altar by simply turning everything through
180° to make a “West Moon.” John Elcare (Delaware) is said to have a
unique “fish moon,” north of the fire and facing east, which he feeds
and gives to drink. The Omaha[86] dug a heart-shaped fireplace eight to
twelve inches deep to represent the heart of Jesus. We were unable to
discover the exact nature of Leonard Taylor’s (Cheyenne) “Heart Moon,”
no longer conducted, but it appears rather to resemble a Winnebago altar
figured by Densmore: a heart superimposed on a cross in the fireplace,
under the fire, with a small mound to the east representing the earth.
This mound opposite and to the east of the crescent appears to be of
Caddoan origin.[87] Jimmy Hunter’s moon shows this in perhaps its
earliest, and certainly its simplest form: a line joining the mound and
the center of the crescent, with another crossing this from horn to
horn of the crescent. Bob Dunlap’s moon has a further minor addition, a
heart at the juncture of the crossed lines. The moon of Ernest Spybuck,
pictured in Harrington, is Shawnee rather than Delaware-Caddo, but shows
definite Big Moon influence; it is intermediate in complexity, perhaps,
between the Caddoan small moons and the elaborately symbolic John Wilson
Big Moon. The Enoch Hoag moon[88] (a favorite among the Caddo nowadays)
shows features parallel with the Wilson moon: it has a star and a
heart at the hair-parting or forehead of the altar “face,” ash mounds
simulating eyes, an inverted heart at the crossing of the altar-lines as
a nose, four concentric lozenges for an oracular mouth, and another heart
east of this resembling a cleft chin; the moon itself is the figure’s
hair. Moonhead’s (i.e. John Wilson’s) altar similarly represents a man’s
head, and contains the leader’s initials or “foot-prints” and his “grave”
alongside that of Jesus. The Black Wolf moon is another elaboration of
the Big Moon type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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