OTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CampripGe, Massacnusetts, Marcu 9, 1966 Vou, 21, No.5 
THE PSYCHOTROPIC BANISTERIOPSIS 
AMONG THE SIBUNDOY OF COLOMBIA 
BY 
MELVIN L. BristTou 
I 
THE malpighiaceous psychotropic drugs of northwestern 
Amazomia have long fascinated numerous native peoples 
of that region, but it was not until about a century ago 
that their existence became more widely known. Villa- 
vicencio (44) wrote of the Zaparo in eastern Ecuador, in 
1858, saying, ‘‘They take a vine called Aya huasca (death 
or soul vine) from which they make a light decoction and 
the Indian drinks it. . . and ina few moments it begins 
to produce the strangest phenomena’’. Spruce (47) col- 
lected botanical specimens in 1852-53 of large forest 
lianas in the Rio Uaupés drainage in Brazil which were 
used by the Tukano to alter consciousness during festive 
communal dances. He named the lianas as a new species 
of the genus Banisteria of the Malpighiaceae; Morton 
(24) transferred them to an allied genus, and today they 
are known as Banisteriopsis Caapi (Spruce ex Griseb. ) 
Mort. 
During the century following the early discoveries, 
many other travellers in the Amazon basin recorded their 
experiences and observations of the hallucinogens vari- 
ously known as caapi (e.g., capt; 10), yagé, ayahuasca, 
etc., but the literature that accumulated was extremely 
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