. 
tures. They are round, having a rather high stipe, slender and terete. 
When eaten, they have a bad taste, hurting the throat,and they cause 
intoxication. They are medicinal for fevers and for rheumatism. Only 
two or three need to be eaten. Those who eat them see visions and 
feel a faintness of the heart. And they provoke to lust those who eat 
a number, or even a few, of them. 
In the first of these excerpts, Sahagun clearly distin¬ 
guished between “the root which they call peiotl ” and 
“nanacatl, which are harmful mushrooms. ” Likewise in 
his chapter on narcotic plants from which the second ex¬ 
cerpt is taken, Sahagun discussed the “small mushrooms 
. . . which are called teonanacatl ” and in another para¬ 
graph recognized peiotl as a distinct plant: 
There is another herb like the earth-tunas which is called peiotl. 
It is white and grows in the north. Those who eat it see terrifying 
and amusing visions. The intoxication persists for two or three days 
and then stops . . . 
In a third reference to the mushrooms, Sahagun ex¬ 
plained the intoxication in great detail: 
The first thing which they ate at the gathering was small, black 
mushrooms which they called nanacatl. These are intoxicating and 
these [mushrooms] before dawn, and they also drank chocolate before 
daylight. They ate these little mushrooms with honey, and when they 
began to be excited by them, they began to dance, some singing, 
others weeping, for they were already intoxicated by the mushrooms. 
Some did not want to sing but sat down in their quarters and remained 
there as if in a meditative mood. Some saw themselves dying in a 
vision and wept; others saw themselves being eaten by a wild beast; 
others imagined that they were capturing prisoners in battle, that they 
were rich, that they possessed many slaves, that they had committed 
adultery and were to have their heads crushed for the offense, that 
they were guilty of a theft for which they were to be killed, and many 
other visions which they saw. When the intoxication from the little 
mushrooms had passed, they talked over among themselves the visions 
which they had seen. 
From Sahagun’s three references, it is obvious that 
the root-word nanacatl meant “mushroom.” Teonana- 
[49] 
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