APPENDIX 2: PEYOTE AND THE MESCAL BEAN
Reading edition
Far the commonest designation for peyote in the older literature is “mescal bean,” a curiously persistent misusage, since either in the dried or the green state Lophophora williamsii resembles a bean even less than a mushroom, Safford’s teo-nanacatl. On probing more deeply into this confusion, a widespread pre-peyote narcotic cult of the southern Plains was discovered. The ethnographic results of this study are presented in the text, but a brief characterization of the “mescal bean” proper is essential as well.
Collected specimens of the old Plains “red bean” (= mescal bean proper) have been identified by authorities at the Harvard Botanical Museum as Sophora secundiflora (Ortega) Lag. ex DC.[1] Variously known as “mescal bean” (southern Plains), “colorín” (Coahuila, Nuevo León, Texas), “frijolillo” (Nuevo León, Texas), “frijolito” (Texas), “evergreen coral-bean,” “coral-bean” and “mountain laurel” (southern New Mexico), this plant grows from Coahuila to San Luis Potosí, western Texas and southern New Mexico, being specially characteristic of the dry limestone hills. It is not, however, the “mountain laurel” Kalmia latifolia, being a true member of the Fabaceae or Bean Family; the term “coral-bean” is likewise applied to two other legumes of Texas, both, however, Erythrina spp., not Sophora.[2]
Sophora secundiflora contains the highly toxic narcotic alkaloid sophorine, C₁₁H₁₄ON₂, which is identical with cytisine (= ulexine, = baptitoxine). Resembling nicotine closely in physiological action, the contents of one bean are said to be able to produce nausea, convulsions and even death by asphyxiation in man.[3] Sophora secundiflora (= Broussonetia secundiflora) itself is a handsome evergreen shrub or small tree, eight to thirty-five feet high, bearing thick, leathery, dark glossy green leaves. The violet-blue bunches of flowers appearing in the spring give off a strong rank fragrance, and from these develop, in the summer, woody pods, satiny outside, two to four inches long, and containing one to four hard-shelled bright red beans.[4]
Safford[5] states that “these beans are often confused with those of certain species of Erythrina, which are sometimes sold in their place in the markets of Mexico, but which are not at all narcotic.” It is therefore possible, and indeed probable, that the beans used as necklaces and bandoliers in the Plains were both Sophora spp. and Erythrina spp.; Mooney[6] for example had specimens of red bean necklaces identified as S. secundiflora and E. fruticisa. The confusion of the two closely related groups is understandable when the beans alone are available for diagnosis; the bean of Sophora secundiflora differs from that of Erythrina flabelliformis, for example, in little more than the shape of the hilum, or scar of attachment, that of the former being rounded and of the latter more linear, while the beans of E. corraloides are more elongate than those of Sophora. Gilmore’s[7] identification of the Omaha “red-medicine” with Erythrina spp. may possibly be wholly correct since he mentions only decorative and magic uses for the beans; but in view of the chemical composition of the two, any ritual narcotic use must a fortiori refer to Sophora secundiflora, the “mescal bean” proper.