402 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



RAIZ DIABOLICA, OR DEVIL's ROOT. 



(Plates 6 and 7.) 



By this term it was designated by Padre Jose Ortega, who tells of 

 its use by the Cora Indians in his Historia del Nayarit, published 

 anonymously at Barcelona in 1754, and republished under his own 

 name in 1887. In describing their nocturnal dances he writes as fol- 

 lows: 



Close to the musician was seated the leader of the singing whose business 

 it was to marlf the time. Each of these liad his assistants to take his place 

 when he should become fatigued. Nearby was placed a tray filled with peyote 

 which is a diabolical root (raiz diabolica) that is ground up and drunk by 

 them so that they may not become weakened by the exhausting effects of so 

 long a function, which they began by forming as large a circle of men and 

 women as could occupy the space of ground that had been swept off for this 

 purpose. One after the other went dancing in a ring or marking time with 

 their feet, keeping in the middle the musician and the choirmaster whom they 

 invited, and singing in the same unmusical tune (el mismo descompasado tono) 

 that he set them. They would dance all night, from 5 o'clock in the evening to 

 7 o'clock in the morning, without stopping nor leaving the circle. When the 

 dance was ended all stood who could hold themselves on their feet; for the 

 majority from the peyote and the wine which they drank were unable to 

 utilize their legs to hold themselves upright. ^ 



The early missionaries were opposed to the drug not so much on 

 account of its physiological effects upon the Indians but because of 

 its connection with certain superstitious rites connected with their 

 primitive religion. Eating the teonanacatl, or peyotl, was declared 

 by the padres to be almost as grave a sin as eating human flesh. In a 

 little religious manual published by Fray Bartholome Garcia in 

 1760, for the use of the missionaries to the Indians of San Antonio, 

 Tex., the following questions, to be used in the confessional, are 

 printed : 



"Has comido carne de gente? " (Hast thou eaten flesh of man?) 

 "Has comido el peyote? " (Hast eaten the peyote?) ^ 

 The name teonanacatl is now obsolete. The drug is called by 

 various names among the Indians using it — xicori by the Huicholes 

 of Jalisco; hikori, or hikuli, by the Tarahumaris of Chihuahua; 

 huatari by the Cora Indians of the Tepic Mountains ; kamaba by the 

 Tepehuanes of Durango; ho by the Mescalero Apaches, of New 

 Mexico, who formerly ranged as far south as Coahuila; seni by the 

 Kiowas; and wokowi by the Comanches, some of whom formerly 

 lived in the State of Chihuahua. The name peyote has survived as 

 a general commercial term; and the mushroomlike disks from the 

 Rio Grande region are now widely spread among the northern In- 



1 Ortega, Padre Jos6 (d. 1700). Hist, del Nayarit, pp. 22-23 (new ed.). 1887. 



2 Garcia, Fr. Bartholome. Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos, etc., p. 15. 

 1760, 



