Note 96 — COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM

The ceremonial fire we have seen is Huichol and Tarahumari (cf. the “pillow of Grandfather Fire” of the Huichol with the “heart” of the Caddo-Delaware peyote fire: both are used as a “smoke stick”). The Caddo ceremonial fire, however, was pre-peyote (Handbook of the American Indians, 2:2b; Swanton, Aboriginal Culture, 701). Beals (Comparative Ethnology, 127) lists the ceremonial fire for the Tarahumari, Caddo, Hasinai, Chitimacha, Houma, Natchez, Tunica, Taënsa, Jalisco (Cutzalán), Mexico, and Maya (Lacandone); it is lacking in Tepic-Culiacan, Old Sinaloa, Old Sonora, Southern Sierra and Tamaulipas (whence a southern Plains provenience for the ceremonial fire in peyotism is implausible). See also Beal’s map 26, 209; table 121, 211-12.