proceedings: botanical society 651 



covered the properties and made use of these "evil mushrooms wh^ch 

 intoxicate like wine." Hernandez distinguishes them from other mush- 

 rooms {nanacanie, plural of nanacatl,) which are used as food, by the 

 distinguishing adjective teyhuinti, inebriating, "quoniam inebrare sol- 

 ent. " The belief survives that the drug thus used was a mushroom. 

 According to Remi Simeon, the teonanacatl is "une espece de petit 

 champignon qui a mauvais gout, enivre et cause des hallucinations." 

 (Diet, de la langue Nahuatl, p. 436, 1885.) 



Investigations by tlie author have proved that the drug in question 

 is not a fungus but a small, fleshy, spineless cactus endemic on both 

 sides of the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Laredo, Texas, and in the state 

 of Coahuila, i-anging southward to the states of Zacatecas, San Luis 

 Potosi, and Queretaro, a region inhabited in ancient times by the 

 tribes called Chichimecas. The drug is prepared in two principal 

 forms: (1) discoid, in which the head of the plant is cut off transversely 

 and, when dried, bears a close resemblance to a mushroom; (2) in longi- 

 tudinal pieces or irregular fragments, in which the entire plant, includ- 

 ing the tap root, is sliced longitudinally into strips like a radish or pars- 

 nip, bearing no resemblance whatever to a mushroom, and designated 

 by early writers as peyotl, and also as raiz diaholica, or "devil's root." 



The first to call attention to the ceremonial or religious use of this 

 drug by the Indians of today was Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology, in a paper read before the Anthropological 

 Society of Washington, November 3, 1891. Since the time of Mr. 

 Mooney's observations the use of the drug has spread widely among 

 the Indians of the United States, by whom it is commonly called "mes- 

 cal button" or "peyote." 



Efforts have been made to prevent the Indians from using it, chiefly 

 because it is believed by some of those interested in the Christianizing 

 of the Indians that it has a tendency to make them revert to their primi- 

 tive condition and to their heathen beliefs. Action was taken in the 

 courts to prosecute a certain Indian for furnishing this drug to the 

 Indians of the Menominee Reservation of Wisconsin on March 15,1914. 

 It developed that the drug was received by parcel post from the vicinity 

 of Laredo, Texas. In a paper before the Lake Mohonk Conference in 

 October, 1914, affidavits of certain Indians of the Omaha and Winne- 

 bago tribes of the Nebraska reservation were read. The evidence 

 showed the existence of a religious organization among the Indians 

 called the "Sacred Peyote Society," the ceremonial meetings of which 

 are remarkably like those of the ancient Mexicans at which the "sacred 

 mushroom" was eaten; and that the physiological effects, as described 

 by those partaking of the drug, were identical with those attributed 

 by the early writers to the teonanacatl. The chemical properties of 

 the drug have been studied in Germany and the United States, especially 

 by Lewin, of Berlin, Heffter, of Leipsic, and the late Ervin E. 

 EwELL, of the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture; 

 and the physiological effects by Drs. D. W. Prentiss and Francis P. 

 Morgan, of Washington, D. C.; but it is not possible to give the de- 

 tailed results of these investigations in the scope of the present paper. 



