Note 65 — COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM

The Chickasaw beat on a wet deer skin tied over the mouth of a large clay pot (Adair, History, 140). The Choctaw beat with one drumstick on a deer skin stretched over an earthen pot or kettle (Swanton, Social and Religious Beliefs, 222); they used the goat skin covered cypress knee drum as well (Bushnell, Choctaw, 22), and also bear skin and deer skin (Swanton, op. cit., 224). The Koasati older drum was deer skin over a cypress knee, and later the small iron kettle (Paz, Field Notes). The Taskigi Creek used a hollow vessel partly filled with water (Speck, The Creek Indians, 137). The Yuchi, besides the log drum, had the pot drum, containing water, about 18″ high; the hide was usually decorated with a wheel-like design and the privilege of beating the drum was invested in a certain individual (Speck, Yuchi, 61, cf. the Caddo, in some respects a peripheral Southeastern group and who have the “crock” drum). The Catawba and Quapaw also had the pot-drum (Speck, Catawba Texts; Handbook of the American Indian, 2:335b). It is not known if the Tonkawa water-drum is pre-peyote, but the Lipan pottery drum is late according to Opler. The water-drum of the Southeast is continuous through the Antilles into South America (Wissler, The American Indian, 154).

Wissler makes no mention of Mexican or Southwestern occurrences of the kettle-drum or water-drum, but the trait is common in these regions. The Aztec had the kettle-drum (Sahagún, A History of Ancient Mexico, 1:87, 91). Beals (Comparative Ethnology, 112, 188, Table 71) lists the atabale or kettle-drum in Tehueco, Culiacan, Tepic (Zentispac), Tarasco, and Mexico. The pottery drum is Lacandone, Natchez and Chitimacha also (Swanton, Aboriginal Culture, 708, in Beals, 188). Stevenson (The Zuñi, 39) mentions a Tepehan pottery drum struck loudly at certain ceremonies to insure the presence of beings who would keep the singing of songs correct. The Western Apache have “male” and “female” water drums (Henry, J., Cult of Silas John Edwards). The Huichol use no drum in the peyote ceremony; the Tamaulipecan peyote-drum is the wooden type, as is also the Tarahumari drum (Bennett and Zingg, The Tarahumara, 67-68) and the Huichol drum, which is “alive” (Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, 2:32-34). The Taos is the standard peyote drum; but the pottery drum is found among non-users of peyote: e.g., Navaho, Chiricahua, W. Apache, Jicarilla, Yavapai and Pueblo in general (Spier, information).