MESCAL: A STUDY OF A DIVINE PLANT. 53 



II. 



At this point it may be interesting to consider briefly the sacred rites 

 with which the Indians have surrounded the mescal plant. These rites 

 have been vaguely known for a very long time and were referred to by 

 early travelers, like Hernandez and Sahagun. Father Ortega, on 

 account of its hallucinatory properties, named it Raiz diabolica, devil's 

 root. 



The first reliable account of its use in modern times was given by 

 Mr. Mooney from his experience of the Kiowa Indians on the Kiowa 

 Keservation in Indian Territory. The religious ceremonies of these 

 Indians usually take place on Saturday night; the men, having 

 obtained a supply of the drug which is brought by traders from Mexico, 

 seat themselves in a circle round a large camp fire within the tent. 

 After prayer, the leader hands each man four buttons. One of these, 

 freed from the tuft of hairs, is put into the mouth, thoroughly softened, 

 ejected into the palm of the hand, rolled into a bolus and swallowed. 

 Ten or twelve buttons are thus taken at intervals between sundown and 

 3 a.m., with the accompaniment of occasional prayers and rites. 

 Throughout the ceremony the camp-fire is kept burning brightly and 

 attendants maintain a continual beating of drums. The Indians sit 

 quietly throughout, from sundown to noon of the next day, and as the 

 effect wears off they get up and go about their work, without experien- 

 cing depression or unpleasant after-effects. On the day following they 

 abstain, from ritual reasons, from using salt with their food. These 

 and similar rites have become the chief religion of the tribes of the 

 southern plain, to such an extent that the Christian missionaries, 

 unable to grapple with the mescal cult by spiritual weapons, fell back 

 on the secular arm and induced the government authorities at Wash- 

 ington to prohibit mescal under severe penalties. Nevertheless its use 

 still persists. 



Although the propaganda of the mescal cult among the Indians of 

 the United States has thus been highly successful, it is fairly clear that 

 much of its primitive religious significance has here been lost. We may 

 understand how this is when we know that the Kiowa Indians are 

 immigrants from the south; they come from the Eio Grande, and it 

 is from the Eio Grande that they still obtain their mescal. Mexico 

 is the chief home alike of the mescal plant and of the mescal rites in 

 their primitive purity. It is to Mexico that we have to turn to realize 

 their primitive significance. 



As used by the Indians of the Nayarit Sierra in the province of 

 Xalisco, mescal (or peyote, as it is here commonly called) has been 

 described by Diguet.* Mescal is regarded by these Indians as a food of 



* L6on Diguet, Nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques, Vol. IX., 1899, 

 pp. 621-625. 



