formerly a major hallucinogen. It was the basis, for example, of 
the ajuca ceremony of the Pankaruru Indians and was em- 
ployed also amongst the Kariri, Tusha, Fulnio, Guegue, 
Acroa, Pimentiera, Atanaye and other tribes now totally dis- 
appeared or fully acculturated. Furthermore, the magico-reli- 
gious use of this Indian narcotic apparently early entered some 
of the Afro-American rituals in eastern Brazil. 
An early — and probably reliable — report by the Brazilian 
writer Caminhoa, quoted by the Brazilian botanist Mello 
Morais in 1881, referred to the hallucinogenic effects of jurema. 
He stated that medicine men experienced ‘‘fantastic and 
agreeable dreams’’ following its ingestion (Mello Morais, 
1881). 
Another early report by the Brazilian missionary José Mon- 
teiro de Noronha suggested in 1768 that the use of jurema may 
once have been much wider (Noronha, 1768). Another early 
Brazilian report maintained in 1843 that, among the Amanajoz 
Indians of the Rio Negro in western Amazonia, warriors, 
strong young men and old women singers took a narcotic drink 
from the root of a certain tree called jurema. Still another 
Brazilian missionary — the Jesuit Joao Daniel — stated that a 
number of Amazonian tribes used jurema. These three reports 
are most certainly erroneous and confused, since they all were 
probably second-hand, and one of them obviously confused 
jurema with yopo-snuff and coca powder, both of which are 
used only in the Orinoco and western Amazon regions. 
Jurema does not occur in the rain-forested Amazon. The 
plant or plants yielding vinho de jurema are native only in the 
xerophytic caatinga vegetation of the States of Pernambuco 
and Paraiba. While it is true — as has been pointed out — that 
certain tribes (e.g., the Amanajo) migrated to various points in 
the Amazon from northeastern Brazil in the late 1700's, the 
major question remains unanswered: where could these In- 
dians have found jurema roots in their new and very different 
environment? In a weak defense of the early and probably 
erroneous reports, we might mention the slight possibility that 
the term jurema referred to a number of different psychoactive 
plants and that these early migrant Indians applied the term to 
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