Note 19 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM

A favorite diversion of witches to weaken the leader was to make his assistants vomit (Opler, The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern). My Kiowa companion vomited in a Ponca meeting, the first he had ever attended in that tribe. He attributed it to their unfriendly feeling and felt considerably relieved when we visited next morning a meeting held by old friends among the Oto; but he himself had once witched a Comanche in a meeting (Autobiography of a Kiowa Indian). Tonkawa data is from Opler, Autobiography of a Chiricahua Apache. The exploits of the Kiowa witch Tonakat have already been mentioned. The Comanche “used it in the old times, but not rightly; the medicine men used it for sorcery, so people got scared and stopped using it” (Hoebel, Comanche Field Notes). Among the Cheyenne, Flacco and Cloud Chief strongly opposed the introduction of peyote; the former said “it was used to witch people and make them crazy.” The Northern Cheyenne (Hoebel, Field Notes) and Lipan (Opler, The Use of Peyote) and Winnebago “fear states” may have a physiological basis.

Mrs. Voegelin (Shawnee Field Notes) quotes an informant: “Wilson showed them how to swallow mescal beads.... N. S. didn’t go; she was afraid of them. The Delaware had it too; she never wanted to go look. John Wilson also taught them how to shoot a person with red beads two inches long; the person would fall down, hard; then John Wilson doctored on them with medicine. [Several Shawnee] crept up in the grass when the Quapaws were holding a Ghost Dance once, at night. S’s wife got shot.... Finally some one spoke to John Wilson, ‘You men, you abuse the women.’ An old Peoria woman who went all the time, and swallowed those red beads—she was kind of crazy—told Wilson that. The agent finally stopped it.... When they were shot, John Wilson used peyote to bring them back.”