Note 3 — APPENDIX 3: PEYOTE AND TEO-NANACATL

Sahagún, Historia general, 3:241-42: “Hay otra yerba como tunas de tierra, se llama peiotl, es blanca, hacese ácia la parte del norte, los que la comen ó beben vén visiones espantosas ó irrisibles.” (Lib. 11, cap. vii, pt. i, “De ciertas yerbas que emborrachen.”) Jourdanet and Siméon, 737, unfortunately describe tunas as “une ... plante qui rapelle la truffe,” which is a mushroom. Sahagún’s work is virtual dictation from Aztec informants, later translated with painstaking care into Spanish. It is difficult to assume, as did Safford, that such able herbalists did not know the difference between a cactus and a fungus.