NARCOTIC PLANTS AND STIMULANTS SAFFORD, 405 



sensuousness. These they ate before the break of day, and they also drank 

 cacao (chocolate) before dawn. The mushrooms they ate with sirup (of 

 maguey sap), and when they began to feel the effect they began to dance; some 

 sang; others wept because they were already intoxicated by the mushrooms; 

 and some did n9t wish to sing, but seated themselves in their rooms and re- 

 mained there as though meditating. Some had visions that they were dying 

 and shed tears; others imagined that some wild beast was devouring them; 

 others that they were capturing prisoners in warfare; others that they were 

 rich ; others that they had many slaves ; others that they had committed adul- 

 tery and were to have their heads broken as a penalty ; others that they had been 

 guilty of a jtheft, for which they were to be executed ; and many other visions 

 were seen by them. After the intoxication of the mushrooms had passed off 

 they conversed with one another about the visions which they had seen. ^ 



NARCOTIC DATURAS. 



In early accounts of the aborigines of America, both north and 

 south of the Equator, we find repeated references to the use of 

 various daturas as narcotics. The Quichuas of Peru put the seeds 

 of a datura into their azua, or fermented corn beer, to make it more 

 intoxicating. They believed that the visions thus produced were 

 supernatural and, like the remote Zuhis of New Mexico, they resorted 

 to datura seeds in order to divine the hiding place of some precious 

 object or to detect the thief who had stolen it. The professional 

 Indian hechiceros of Spanish America were prosecuted by the church 

 authorities for using narcotics in their practices of idolatry and 

 witchcraft, very much as were the dhatura doctors of India for 

 dispensing datura to criminals; and in the New World, as in the Old 

 World, datura seeds were administered in various ways as a love 

 potion or aphrodisiac. Another remarkable parallel may be seen 

 in the religious use of the drug. Among the Aztecs the seeds of a 

 certain datura were held sacred and the spirit of the plant was 

 invoked to expel evil spirits, recalling the exhortations of the priests, 

 or physicians, of ancient Babylon and the necromancers of medijeval 

 Europe. In the Andes of South America Indian priests used datura 

 seeds to produce delirium, recalling the use of intoxicants to induce 

 frenzy by the Pythias in consulting the famous oracle of Apollo at 

 Delphi. 



M. de la Condamine, while exploring the Kio Marahon in 

 1743, found the Omagua Indians inhabiting the banks of that 

 river addicted to narcotics, one of which was referred by him to 

 Datura arhorea^ the plant " called by the Spaniards floripondio, 

 with flowers shaped like a drooping bell, which has been described 

 by Pore Feuillee."^ Miss Alice Eastwood, while exploring south- 

 eastern Utah, came upon an abundance of D. meteloides, and she 



^Sahagun, Bernardino. Hist. Nucva Espafla (rd. Bustamante) 2:366. 1829. 

 2 See Mem. de rAcad. Roy. des Sciences, Ann^e 1745, p. 430. 1749. 



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