Note 18 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM

Mulato, sunami, and rosapara cacti, however, protect against Apache machinations; Mooney (Tarumari-Guayachic) cites a Chalája arroyo near Conaguchi (from chärä or chälä, “squirrel,” the epithet of witches) where witches were formerly burned; cf. the use of the squirrel-fetish in the Tarahumari peyote ritual. In Tamaulipas intertribal peace was so precarious that peyote mitotes were commonly held in remote and inaccessible intermediate mountain regions; the recital of war deeds was sometimes part of the rite (Prieto, in Mooney, Tarumari-Guayachic). De la Serna (in Safford, An Aztec Narcotic, 310) describes the use of teo-nanacatl in witching. For Tarahumari witching with hikuli see Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, 1:314, 323-24, 371-72.