Indians of North America -- Religion; Indians of North America -- Rites and ceremonies; Peyotism
My prayer is that of a pitiful man. And also these people here,
visitors, I wish my creator to answer my prayer to take pity
on those visitors. They came to my daughter’s meeting for some
good reason to learn something about my daughter’s meeting. So
each of us give blessing, and bless the water that was brought
in this morning. So let our friendship purify it, that we might
drink this water, to give us long life, and a better life; and
I ask our father to bless all my children, and my wife, and all
of us who are in this meeting tonight. I am glad my friends
came here to help me with my prayer tonight, my daughter’s
birthday meeting, and we thank thee for this food she brought
in, that our friends who are going to eat this food, that they
might feel better from now on in everyday life. We ask in the
name of Jesus, Amen. (He then cried ceremonially at the finish
of the prayer; a few tears ran down his cheeks.)
Praying in peyote meetings appears to have much of the psychological
flavor of the old vision quest. The speaker’s voice becomes louder
as he proceeds, earnest and quavering as he sways with the fullness
of his emotion and stretches out his hands toward the peyote and the
fire. Sometimes his speech is wholly interrupted by uninhibited broken
sobbing as he cries out for the pity of the supernaturals. John Rave,
the Winnebago teacher, said that “only if you weep and repent will you
be able to attain knowledge.” Several of the Delaware face-paintings
collected by Dr. Speck represent “crying for repentance.”
_Incense._ Cedar incense is invariably placed on the fire at the
beginning of the ceremony to purify the paraphernalia and to “bless”
the participants before they eat peyote. A patient or one sick from
eating peyote is incensed and fanned with an eagle wing, and incense is
burnt for the fireman at midnight when he returns with the water, for
the leader on returning from the whistling ceremony outside, and for
the water woman in the morning. Others extend the incensing and fanning
to every person who re-enters the tipi after a recess, and the Wilson
rite[108] has special officials to perform this duty. Many leaders about
midnight provide for the cedar smoking of personally-owned feathers,
drum sticks, gourds, etc., and permit individuals to use their own after
midnight until morning in place of the equipment provided by the leader.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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