Note 5 — APPENDIX 4: “PLANT WORSHIP” IN MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES

Mooney, Tarumari-Guayachic, says sunami is very much respected, and is used only by doctors. Women doctors grind them on metates, placing the plant upright and crushing it with one blow (cf. the “killing” of mescal beans in the Plains). Doctors assemble for this feast, which requires the sacrifice of a beef. Special rites attend its gathering, and it must be gathered in a black blanket and bleeds red blood. It must be kept in a double basket in a cave, lest it hear quarreling in the house. It dislikes fire, and after ten or twenty years it loses its virtue and must be replanted with copal incensing where originally found. Doctors rub tizwin-and-sunami over the heart and rest of the body, for it makes one win races. Anhalonium fissuratum has a striking resemblance to deer-hooves; it is likely the hikuli referred to in this and other Tarahumari-Huichol tales—but it should be recalled that peyotism in Mexico is also connected with deer-hunting.