Numunu (Comanche) IndianPeyote Jokes
The Peyote Cult or religion has become well known to the American Indian through a series of excellent monographs and descriptive papers. The religion, which entered the Plains area from Mexico around 1870, features an all-night ceremony in which the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, is consumed to the accompaniment of prayers and ritual music. Although peyotists have sometimes been persecuted, and the possession of peyote is illegal in some states and provinces, the cult continues to flourish and spread in both the United States and Canada.
As has been the case with other religions, the peyote cult has extended its influence to areas of culture far outside the religious sphere. Thus, at a Plains Indian Grass or War Dance, one sometimes sees an older peyote man dressed in the costume of the religion, even though war dancing and peyotism have no formal connection. The influence of the peyote cult is also quite evident in contemporary Plains Indian art. In most peyote-using groups it has also given rise to a particular genre of humor known as the "peyote joke," which is the subject of this paper.
The usual time for telling such jokes is in the morning after the all-night ritual or "meeting." In many peyote-using tribes the ceremony formally ends with a breakfast of coffee, sweet rolls, and bread, provided by those who have "put up" (i.e., sponsored) the gathering. [This breakfast follows the "sacred breakfast" at which water, parched corn, pounded meat, fruit, and nuts are served to the participants in small amounts.] At this breakfast participants may stand up and stretch their cramped limbs, smoke, and chat freely. In contrast to the seriousness of the previous night's worship, this is a very relaxed affair, and those present are encouraged to tell of their past experiences in peyotism, either serious or humorous. As Weston La Barre notes in his monograph The Peyote Cult: "Complete social informality now reigns as the food is passed to the man south of the door and thence clockwise. Much joking goes on during this meal, which has none of the seriousness of the Christian partaking of the Host."
The small collection of stories given below is a fair sample of the type of joke often heard on these occasions. Unlike the typical Euro-American joke, which depends on a terminal "punch line" for most of its effect, the peyote joke builds up slowly from one ridiculous situation to the next, and the "punch line," if present at all, appears rather weak to one accustomed to the machine-gun delivery of the television or night club comic. Because of this structure, a joke which is hilariously funny when told by one peyote jokester may fall flat in the hands of a less gifted raconteur. The gifted storyteller, however, can keep his audience convulsed for minutes on end, and the ability to tell amusing jokes most certainly adds to the stature of a peyote "road man" or leader.
One may wonder how these ribald and often obscene anecdotes have become attached to such an intensely devout form of worship as the peyote ritual. Perhaps the very seriousness of the ordinary peyote ceremony, lasting through some eleven hours, calls forth a release of this sort once the ceremony is ended. Likewise, they provide the peyotists with yet another body of common experience not shared by nonmembers. A familiarity with the peyote ritual is essential to the complete understanding of many of the jokes, and hence the jokes serve to bind together those whose knowledge makes the circumstances of the joke intelligible.
Many peyote jokes find their humor in human miscalculation and error and in this respect are similar to certain Euro-American jokes. La Barre cites two jokes of this type:
"A Comanche told me a Kiowa ate a lot of peyote once and tried to sing a Comanche song. He sang the wrong words, which meant 'Mentula exposita est, Mentula exposita est!'"
Likewise:
"Koshiway (Oto) told a joke in the morning about a partially deaf man's misunderstanding the song 'Jesus in the glory now, he ya na ha we,' and singing 'Jesus in Missouri now.' Jack said laughing, 'He must be getting close; He's just over the river now!'"
A story heard by the writer among the Prarie Potawatomi in Kansas involves not human, but animal error. As told by a Potawatomi peyotist the story went as follows:
"It used to be the custom at meetings down here for the road man to gather up everybody's feathers [wands of feathers carried by peyotists in the meeting] just before closing. He would put them down in a pile behind the altar, pray, and then sing the quitting songs. After the meeting everyone would come up and get his feathers back.
"Well, this one time they were having a meeting at a place out in the country here, a place where they raised chickens. It was just getting light and the road man had gathered up all the feathers and had them in a pile beside him. There was a little banty rooster running around in the yard outside. It would crow a little, scratch around a bit, then wander in a little closer to where the temple [the peyote tipi] was set up. Finally it saw the big pile of feathers by the road man, and mistook it for a hen. It gave a big run and jumped right on top of the feathers. Boy, you've never seen such a disappointed rooster in all your life!"
Several peyote jokes, however, do more than recount a comic mischance, and go on to point a moral. La Barre cites a story of this type, told by O. W. (Comanche) to E. R. (Delaware):
"The leader of a Wichita Easter meeting had a fine watch, soting from $150 to $200. At daylight, before water time, wanting to display it, he put it down by the feathers. A man to the north was singing and making vigorous punches toward the peyote. When he looked at his watch later, 'it was just a mess of works in there loose, and the hands dropped off,' though nobody touched it. "It don't pay to go in there and they try to show off.'"
Two jokes collected by the writer among the southern Ponca were also concerned with the vanity of wealthy peyotists, and its sad consequences:
"Once an old peyote man, an Osage, decided to attend a meeting that was being held on his reservation that night. His companion [peyote term for wife or mistress] told him, 'Here, take this money old man and get yourself some new clothes before you go in; you look a disgrace.' So he went into Pawhuska and bought himself a new shirt, slacks, belt, socks, and finally a pair of those fancy shoes with the tick crepe rubber soles.
"When he showed up at meeting that night the boys [other peyotists] teased him about his new clothes, and it made him kind of sore. Finally he wouldn't talk to them any more. Since he was old, fat, and kind of stiff in the joints, he sat with his legs straight out to the fire instead of folded under him goat style. Well, his shoes were awfully close to the fire, and pretty soon those crepe soles on his shoes began to melt. Finally they came loose from the uppers, sort of drooped down, and fell off [teller uses comical gestures at this point to show drooping and falling]. The old man's circulation was poor, so he didn't feel anything was wrong.
"After midnight he asked the road man if he could go outside. As he got up to leave the boys pointed to his shoes, which were just shoe tops now. He thought they were still teasing him about his new duds and wouldn't pay any attention. Well, he walked out of the tipi and right into a patch of prickly pear. Man, you could hear his screams for miles!"
The second "vanity" joke involves more aboriginal footgear:
"Once an old man came to meeting in brand new buckskin clothes. He was particularly proud of his peyote moccasins. They had fringes at least six inches long. Every now and then he would run his fingers through the heel fringes to straighten them out and get rid of the grass and burrs they had picked up.
"Well, after midnight he went out of the tipi to defecate. He forgot about the heel fringes on his moccasins and squatted right over them. When he was finished he came back into the meeting and sat down in his place. Pretty soon he reached down to fuss with the heel fringes on his moccasins again. He grabbed something besides the fringes this time, and it made him mad—'S--t,' he said, 's--t, s--t!'"
Many peyote jokes tell of serious devotional acts being interrupted by some ludicrous occurrence. Perhaps the jokes of this type reflect an unconscious resentment of the hardship and the composure which attendance at a ceremony entails. Here is an example from the Kiowa:
"Once some young men in our tribe decided they wanted to hold a peyote meeting. None of them owned a tipi, so they just built a windbreak, about waist high, using old blankets, pieces of canvas, and sticks. The young man sitting chief [i.e., acting as the leader of the ceremony] was pretty good at peyote talk. When he prayed to the Almighty, everyone sat up and listened.
"Well, the meeting was just getting underway, and this young man was praying. There was a young drunk wandering around outside, and he came stumbling up just at that time. He stood right behind the moon [altar] and leaned over the windbreak, gaping down at the leader and breathing wine fumes on his neck. The leader didn't notice him at first, and he was praying, 'Our Father, who art in heaven—' and just then he turned a little and saw the drunk, and said, without even pausing for breath, 'What in hell are you doing here?'"
A similar joke from the Crow in Montana has the prayer interrupted by an old horse, which had been grazing outside the peyote tipi, flatulating loudly at a critical point in the prayer.
Sometimes a situation occurring during the meeting itself is later recalled and told as a joke, such as the following:
Frank D. [northern Iowa] and his wife Sue [Potawatomi] went to a Potawatomi meeting in Kansas. Frank is a good singer, but it sometimes takes him a little while to get warmed up and ready to go. While he is "waiting for the song to come," he shakes the peyote gourd and sings an introductory phrase 'He ne ne ne, he ne ne ne' over and over. He did it so long on this occasion that his companion, seated next to him, leaned over and whispered in his ear, in a tone audible to all present, "Come on Frank, sing! You sound like an old hound scratching for fleas."
Stories frequently have to do with strange happenings resulting from one or another individual suffering from "peyote effect" after eating an unusually large number of "buttons" (the dried tops of the peyote cactus). La Barre notes that "Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) laughingly told me of a meeting in Kansas where the singer's jaw became locked; the whole meeting was upset while they shook and fanned him with cedar incense until his jaw 'came back.'"
La Barre comments that this may have been the effect of the strychnine-like alkaloids in peyote. Another story concerning "peyote effect" was told by William C. (Ojibwa), about an old man he had seen at a Potawatomi meeting in Kansas. This old man wandered from group to group the morning after a peyote meeting. At each stop he would tell the first part of a peyote joke, but due to the amount of peyote he had eaten, he would always forget to finish them. After telling a part of each joke he would laugh loudly, and walk on to the next knot of people and begin again.
A classic peyote joke from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, and one told in several versions, involves the interruption of a religious procession. It was apparently the custom when peyote first reached Pine Ridge for the adherents to stage these processions, perhaps in imitation of Roman Catholic processions. Various peyotists would take the parts of biblical characters. One such procession which took place in the twenties involved many individuals still prominent in the cult of that area. A male leader took the part of Christ, swathed in a white sheet and riding a mule. Close behind was the Virgin Mary, played by a female devotee. Others were dressed to resemble shepherds, Roman soldiers, and so on. The shepherds, who followed closely behind Christ and the Virgin, had several sheep and a goat for added realism.
The procession wound impressively through the hills near Pine Ridge until it neared an Indian cabin. Just as it was passing this cabin, a large dog chased a cat directly under the mule ridden by Christ, causing it to buck the rider into the dust. Worse yet, every time the rider attempted to stand up and remount, the goat would butt him over again from behind. Soon the entire procession was in an uproar, with horses bucking, sheep bleating, and the biblical characters cursing and swearing as they attempted to bring order out of chaos.
Later an old Indian woman, scolding the owner of the dog and cat for not keeping them under control as the "holy" procession went by, commented: "It was bad enough when Christ got bucked off his mule, and the billy goat butted him in the rear end. But when the Holy Virgin tore her dress on the barbed wire fence, that was a terrible thing!"
More typical of the jokes told at the present time is one currently making the rounds. A young Indian (variously described as a Potawatomi, a Winnebago, or an Omaha) has just come into a bit of money from a land sale, and decides to go "girling" in Oklahoma. He buys himself a new suit of clothes and hops the first bus to Anadarko.
Getting off the bus, he sees an old Indian man, obviously of the old school, standing on the corner. The old man wears his hair in braids, neatly wrapped with blue and green yarn, has a dark shirt and trousers, moccasins, and a white sheet wrapped around his waist in lieu of a blanket. The young man thinks, "Aha, here is an old-timer who can help me out. These old-times know all about love medicines, and that's what I want right now."
Accordingly, he approaches the old man, introduces himself, and in Indian fashion invites the old man to a restaurant for a fine meal. "Order the biggest steak in the house, Uncle," he urges. "Way ahead!" [i.e., good], answers the old-timer, and does as suggested. After the main course the young man says, "How about pie à la mode, Uncle? Wouldn't that go good about now?" Again the old Indian gratefully accepts. Then, "Would you like a cigar on top of your meal?" Again the old man gladly accepts.
"You have been very nice to me, Nephew," he comments at last. "And I appreciate what you have done for a poor old man. Now in our Indian way that might mean that yu want me to help you out in some way."
"That's true, Uncle" the young man replies, "I do need your help> I am down here for social purposes, and I know you old people are wise in these old Indian medicines. Could you get hold of some love medicine for me?"
At this point the old man smiles, reaches under the sheet around his waist and into his trousers pocket. Pulling out four peyote "buttons" he hands them to the young man, saying, "Here, take these and love everybody!"
James H. Howard
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks
Peyote: The Comanche Ceremony
Foreword
It would be impossible to thank suitably all of the people who contributed to the present paper.
In 1940 I was a member of the summer field party in the study of language and culture, under the guidance of George Herzog, sent by the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University to the Comanche Indians at Indiahoma, Oklahoma. It was there that the recordings of Comanche peyote music were made and I have to express my gratitude not only to the Indians, especially Itovic and Tekwaki, who were our chief informants on peyote material, but also to the other members of the Columbia group who shared the results of their special investigations most generously both in the field and in numerous "Comanche sessions" subsequently.
The interest and help of Ralph Linton were of the greatest value. I am especially indebted to him for access to his field notes and for the contacts with Comanche informants upon which the work depended.
In those who wrote me concerning various aspects of peyote, I have many collaborators, especially Margot Astrov, Weston La Barre, and Erminie Voegelin. Among those who helped very considerably in personal discussions of peyote and peyote music I must mention E. Adamson Hoebel, Carling Malouf, and Willard Rhodes. Specific acknowledgments are made in the course of the paper but they represent only a fraction of my debt to the many correspondents and advisers I have had.
I must thank the Department of Anthropology of the University of California for access to the recordings of the many peyote songs collected by Omer Stewart and Jane Richardson Hanks, and I must also thank Martha Huot and Willard Rhodes for the use of their recordings, texts and translations of Fox and Dakota songs, and for permission to publish them. Thanks are due to Emma Reh and D'Arcy McNickle of the Office of Indian Affairs from whom I obtained a copy of their article, "Peyote and the Indian."
And last, and most, I owe more than I can say to George Herzog. From the time-consuming spadework of musical transcription through the welter of vision and revision, I have relied heavily upon his interest and his patience.
D. P. McA.
Introductory Statement
The peyote cult, a religious movement nativistic in nature and often combining Christian and pagan elements, is active today and is spreading among many of the surviving groups of North American Indians. The cult is distributed mainly in the western Plains area of the United States with extensions northward as far as Canada and into the Southwest as far as the pueblo of Taos and the Navajo and Apache country. Groups of individuals ranging in number from two or three to thirty or forty gather in a night-long meeting. In the course of the ceremony they make ritually prescribed gestures, listen to the prayers and exhortations of older members and the leader, consume portions of a small fleshy cactus known as "peyote," and take turns singing peyote songs.
Studies of peyote practices have been made from various points of view. The use of the cactus (lophophora williamsii—"peyote" from the Aztec "peyotl"), which contains a number of alkaloids and is capable of producing a marked narcosis, has interested botanists, organic chemists, and physiologists. The function of the ritual has been of interest to students of cultural dynamics, particularly in the areas of cultural borrowing and acculturation. Administrators of Indian affairs have been concerned as to whether the cult has deleterious effects, physiological or psychological, upon its participants. Out of these interests an impressive body of literature has grown up around the use of peyote and the peyote ritual practiced by American Indians.
An aspect of the cult which has not received the attention it deserves, however, is music. During the ceremony a drum and rattle, both of special design, are passed, with other paraphernalia, clockwise around the circle of participants. When a member receives the rattle he is expected to sing a number of songs, usually four, after which he passes the rattle on to the next man. The rattle goes ahead of the drum so that, immediately after his turn to sing, each man is the drummer for the man on his left. Four times during the course of the ceremony the leader interrupts the progression to sing special songs which are always used at these times. At other times a participant sings whatever songs he chooses from the repertory at his command, or even extemporizes on the spur of the moment.
Fully half of the participating time, usually a good deal more, of the peyotist is spent listening to or performing this music.
What is it like? Is it different from other American Indian music? What is its place in the general picture of aboriginal music in America? Is there a definable "peyote style" in vocal technique, melodic structure, or textual pattern? If there is such a style the further question must be asked: where does it come from and what do we know of its history?
Besides these questions on the formal musicological level there is the question of peyote music with relation to the people who sing it. What do they feel about the songs? Under what stimuli do they feel the urge to create this music? What do we know of value and attitude with respect to the music of the peyote cult? Insight into some of these questions was obtained in conversations with the informants. I have assembled the record in the section, Comanche Comments on the Songs, where native feelings concerning the music are set forth as nearly in the words of the informants as was possible when working through an interpreter.
On the musicological level this paper will present a comparison of eighty-four peyote songs from various groups. In addition, the peyote music, wherever possible is compared with other music for a given tribe or area.
Since they do not require as much space as musical material, I have included translations of the seventy-two peyote song texts collected from the Comanche and the twenty-one texts collected by Martha Huot from the Fox. These, together with a few texts sent to me in personal communications and the texts reported in the literature, are discussed in a section on the textual content of peyote songs.
Within the limitations of the material available it has been possible to make a comparative study of peyote music and textual material. I have found that in a number of features in peyote songs there exists in general an individuality sufficient to define a "peyote style." I have also discussed briefly under Conclusions the influence of the Ghost Dance on the peyote cult and peyote music, the difference between the musical styles, and the question of European influence in peyote music.
As background for the musical material I have begun the paper with a brief historical sketch of the spread of the peyote cult followed by the Comanche origin story for peyote and a description by our informants of the Comanche form of the ritual.
Historical Sketch
The available historical data on the origin and spread of the peyote cult have been thoroughly treated by Shonle and La Barre and I shall give no more than a brief résumé here.
The use of the cactus in Mexico was associated with rituals apparently of long standing at the time of the first Spanish contacts. In the historical period we have good evidence of a flourishing peyote cult among the Cora-Huichol in Southern Mexico and of a less viable development among the Tarahumare, where the cult has been for many years on the decline. The use of peyote has spread northward across the Rio Grande by the early 18th century. "Velasco wrote in 1716 that many of the Indians in Texas drank 'pellote' in connection with their dances." According to Opler's informants the Lipan got peyote from the Carrizo before white contact and the Mescalero in turn learned the ritual from the Lipan. The Lipan and Mescalero Apache are the traditional links between Mexican and Plains peyote.
1870 is generally accepted as the base date for the establishment of the peyote cult as we know it today on the plains of the western United States. The first known use of peyote by a Kiowa was around 1868 or 1870, and by 1880 or earlier, meetings were being held, most features of which were already standardized among the Lipan and Mescalero. The first Comanche to use peyote is said to have learned it from the Mescalero. Quanah Parker, the outstanding peyote leader, learned about the cult "in Arizona, New Mexico, and old Mexico about 1868." One of the earliest Comanche meetings was held east of Fort Sill in 1873 or 1874.
The Comanche or Kiowa were the primary authors of the rapid spread of peyote after 1880 in the plains area north of the Rio Grande. The Comanche gave peyote directly to the Wichita, 1889-1890; the Pawnee and Shawnee, 1890; the Ponca in 1902; the Kickapoo in 1906; and the Kansa in 1907.
From the Kiowa, knowledge of peyote spread to the Oto in 1876, the Southern Arapaho in 1884, the Southern Cheyenne in the following year, and recently, in 1931, to the Creek.
From the Oto, Southern Arapaho, and Southern Cheyenne, the diffusion of the cult continued, reaching the Winnebago over the period 1893-1901, the Northern Cheyenne before 1900, the Northern Arapaho in 1903, the Omaha in 1906-1907, and Taos in 1907. These recipients in turn handed peyote on to the Crow, the Iowa, the Menomini, the Potawatomi, the Dakota, and the Southern Ute between 1908 and 1914.
This line of diffusion started by the Kiowa continued after 1914, reaching the Blackfoot, the Chippewa of Minnesota, the Gosiute, the Paiute, the Northern Ute, and others. The reader is referred to La Barre, to Newberne and Burke, and to Shonle for particulars.
That the spread of peyote has by no means come to an end is shown by its recent acquisition by some groups of the Navaho who have taken over the Ute version of the ceremony. Other newcomers to the cult are the Blood who acquired it in 1936 from the Cheyenne, the Seminole who have learned peyote only recently from Yuchi, Caddo, and Quapaw sources, the Canadian Chippewa who are learning from the Minnesota Chippewa, and the Canadian Cree, influenced by the Blackfoot.
Special developments, such as the John Wilson "Big Moon" ceremony which spread from the Caddo to the Quapaw, Osage, and others, and the Oto Chrisitianized version which spread to the Omaha, Winnebago, and other Siouan groups, are treated in La Barre's The Peyote Cult.
Comanche Peyote
Origin Story
It was from the Karisu [i.e. Carrizo Apache] that we acquired peyote in the beginning; they were enemies of our people. There was a Comanche leader who was so brave he went on raids by himself. On one occasion, however, he went on a raid with perhaps ten others. There was a fight with the Karisu and this man's companions were all killed. He himself was wounded but he gave the enemy a hard time. He used up all his arriws. He had only his hatchet left, a long knife-like sword, his lance, and a quiver and bow-case of striped mountain lion skin.
He was riding a paint mule but they surrounded him and killed him and they took all his belongings. They killed the mule there with him.
Some time after they had killed the young man and had taken all his belongings they held a peyote meeting and brought everything that had been his. It was all placed behind the leader on the ground and the bow was used for a sort of cane, a brace. When one is singing and shaking the gourd rattle in a peyote meeting, one often uses a bow, held in the other hand, for a brace.
While the meeting was going on, about midnight, they heard a sound outside the door, as if somebody had been hurt. That young Comanche who had been killed lifted the flap. He hald his hand on his forehead: one could see that he had been scalped. He groaned again and crawled into the tipi. He placed himself in front of the fire just inside the door.
The people on his left and on his right were frightened. They moved away from him towards the back of the tipi. All the people moved away.
The leader said: "All you people keep your seats and behave. He has come for some reason. He would not come here without a reason. Go back to your places!"
After the people were quieted they sat for a few moments in silence. Then the newcomer spoke up:
"You people do not understand peyote power. I, a Ute, know its power."
He said to them, "You have no power, you do not understand it. After you wore me down completely you stung me to death and took everything I had and I just came to tell you that is how it happened. Now I will tell you something more. Look here, now you people. It is midnight." And he told them then:
"You people, smell the smoke—that is the smoke of Comanches coming to see you. They are coming to you. Smell their smoke. There are seven Comanche. It will be four days before they arrive here." And he instructed them:
"When those seven arrive you are to have a peyote meeting. When you have the meeting I command you to give them my bow and this peyote. They shall take these things from you with them."
One of the Karisu spoke up in good Comanche and answered him. "Yes, we will do for your people what you request."
Then that young man told them he was ready to go. "After I have taken seven steps from the door I will stop and yell several times. When I have taken the seventh step I will yell four times. On my fourth yell I want you to sing."
With the fourth yell the leader made ready to sing. His rattle sounded and he said: "I am going to repeat the song and from that we can gather the answer."
That is the song the young Ute sang to the Karisus. They were to give it, along with the paraphernalia and the peyote, to the seven Comanches who were to come after the fourth day.
The Comanche arrived in four days. A day or two after they arrived, a tipi was put in order for a meeting and the Karisu and Comanche went in together.
The Comanche took the north wall because it was the shady side. The Karisu sat around the south side. Up to this time there was never a woman in a meeting: this time there was one woman with the men. The leader spoke to her and said:
"Tell them how we are going to handle this. Tell them, our cousins."
The woman spoke up in Comanche and said, "Relatives—" The Comanche were all startled and stared at her and she went on:
"Everybody watch. We are going to perform, in a moment, the way this man, standing here, carries out his ceremonies. That is all I am telling you now. When he is ready to have me say more I will tell you more."
Then after the meeting had gone on a while, the Karisu began to roll cigarettes. The leader said to the woman, "Tell the Comanche we are going to smoke this tobacco which our Father has given to us. I want them to go through these motions: to place their hands on the ground, to extend them upwards towards the sky, towards our Father, and then to smoke with us. Then we shall become as one, because our Father has said so."
He gave out cigarettes and they smoked. They smoked towards the ground, towards the sky, and towards the peyote. The leader prayed. Then he got ready to start the real meeting. He reached near him and took some sage. He bit off some, chewed it and rubbed it over himself. It was passed around, the others did the same, around the circle sun-wise, and it came back to him. He was notified that it had been around to everybody. Then they ate peyote. Some took two at first, but mostly they started with four. After he had taken four the leader said to the girl:
"Ask the Comanche whether they might not sing. If they do not know the songs and can not sing they may sit quietly. If they can catch the songs they are to sing along with the others."
The Karisu started in. They sang and ate peyote and sang again, and the Comanche did so too. The meeting went along through the night and the leader spoke up and said to his people:
"Before I have eaten too much, I want to tell them what I want them to know."
He told the girl about the young Comanche and his instructions and the girl told the Comanches. She said, "That leader there said this young man from your people came and told of your coming and gave us these instructions. Now you have arrived. He wants to tell you now. We might not all be together tomorrow and he wants to have you all know it. After we get through you are to take this bow and peyote and the songs, and go back home. From this time on all the Indian tribes to the north and the northeast will use this peyote."
This is the way peyote came to us. It is also how we have that song. When it was midnight the song of the young Comanche was sung and given. The leader said, "That is the song the young Comanche sang, the song you are to take from us when you leave."
When morning came the woman was told to tell them: "Now the leader will instruct you as to how peyote meetings should be held. This is what peyote says: 'When our Father made you he made me here on earth to grow with you.'"
The leader said, "Now where you are sitting here watching it, no matter what it looks like now, when it takes on power there is no knowing how it will look. Peyote says: 'I am the power of our Father. Here on earth I do as I please because of my power. I am a man. That is how I do anything that is asked of me and this here is a part of me. Even if I am in the shape of a woman she is only part of me. Take notice of the ground, of the grass that is growing on the ground, of the roots of the grass. I am like the grass. My roots are my children. They increase with me. When it is cut the peyote grows back in the same place. It is the same with grass on its roots.'"
Then the leader said, "Now tell them I am through, but they must remember that wherever they may carry it peyote must come back to us."
That is the female part of peyote. It stands for regrowth. The girl who spoke for the leader was a Comanche who had been captured by the Karisu. That is why in stories about the happenings of peyote a woman can appear. This woman brought us our knowledge of peyote. This happened a long time ago. I know this because I heard people talking about it.
It is clear that the origin story of peyote is, despite certain supernatural elements, more of an historical account than a myth. This marks a difference from certain of the other important rituals in the Plains area. The origin myths of the Sun Dance and of the Winnebago Medicine Dance, for example, both begin with the flood and the creation of the earth and go on to tell how the rituals were given at the beginning of the tribal history and are a necessity for harmonious relations with the universe. The peyote story begins, like a typical Plains Indian life history, with an account of a battle. Part, at least, of the peyote paraphernalia derives from weapons of war: the young Comanche's bow has become the brace used by each singer in turn during the ceremony. However, the conciliatory content of the peyote philosophy is foreshadowed by the suspension of hostilities between the Carrizo Apache and the seven Comanche who arrive as predicted, and our informant assumes that the prayers which begin the ceremony must include a prayer for peace.
A curious feature of the story is that, thought peyote is ascribed to the Apache, still the Comanches manage to receive a good deal of credit for the acquisition of the ritual. The transferral is at the command of the young Comanche who had been killed. And looking large in the story is the Comanche girl captive whose ability as an interpreter is essential to the transfer and whose femininity stands for the female aspect of peyote and for regrowth.
Boas noted the difference in the minds of native informants between "historical" accounts and myths which dealt with happenings lost in the distant past when the world "had not yet assumed its present form, and when mankind was not yet in possession of all the customs and arts that belong to our period." In the peyote story none of the familiar Plains themes, such as Blood Clot Boy, the rolling skull, the ladder of arrows, the star husband, the flood, and the making of the earth, are present. The transition from a mythological period to the age of modern man and modern ways, another feature of most origin myths, is also lacking in the peyote origin story. Though not a myth, the story is, however, in the Plains genre. Such elements as initiation, the transfer of power and the special power to be gained through association with the dead are familiar in Comanche tradition and in the tradition of other Plains groups.
Comanche Ceremony
The Comanche peyote ceremonies are held periodically either for curing, or when an individual or a group of individuals have the money and inclination to sponsor a general gathering. The latter, being the more usual type of meeting will be described first.
A peyote leader, a man known to be particularly well-versed in the ritual, is chosen by the sponsors. Certain individuals among those qualified become favorite leaders and such men often have enough of a following to support regular meetings called weekly at the initiative of the leader. The cost, for peyote "buttons" and food for the breakfast after the meeting, was about thirty-five dollars in 1940.
Some members of the peyote group make two or three trips a year by automobile to Texas or even across the border into Mexico where peyote may be gathered. Salt is tabu on the trip but no special behavior is prescribed on the way down. Sexual intercourse is not allowed during the trip but there is no tabu on intercourse before the journey starts. A woman may go along even if she is not a peyote eater, provided she is not menstruating.
Upon arrival the group appoints a leader who may, in turn, select an assistant. These two make cigarettes, smoke, and address prayers to Father Peyote. If they see an uncut peyote plant while preparing the smokes, the ritual will be addressed to this plant.
No peyote is gathered on the first day at the peyote fields. In the evening the group forms a circle in the open around a small fire and an abbreviated version of the regular ceremony, as described in the following pages, takes place. The group sleeps in the open this night and during the rest of the expedition. On the second day two men or two women gather enough fresh peyote for another short ceremony that evening. They are supposed to cut only enough for this purpose, but if any is left over it will be brought back with the rest of the newly gathered supply.
On the third day the general gathering begins. Each person is on his own, gathering for himself. It is customary to sing while cutting peyote; no special songs are required, not even peyote songs. The plant is cut with a knife, close to the ground, and thereafter no knife is supposed to touch the peyote button. When the button is eaten fresh, the tough outer skin is peeled off with the fingers. In a year or two a new plant will grow on the root of a peyote plant that has been harvested.
An expedition to the peyote fields may take a week or longer; there is no set time.
The usual night for a regular Comanche peyote meeting is Saturday night. It is convenient for the "morning after" to fall on Sunday since the social aftermath of the ceremony often takes all morning following the ritual and a period of rest is welcome after the night-long exercises. There is a suggestion that Saturday night meetings are an adaption to the modern working week in Tekwakï's remark, "When I was raised we did not know when it was Saturday. One day was just like the others."
A special tipi is used for the peyote ceremony; neither the tipi cover nor the poles are allowed to lie on the ground. When not in use, the latter are stacked on a special rack. During the day, before the ceremony, this tipi is set up with the door facing east. Inside the tipi an altar is constructed of earth or clay in the shape of a crescent, the open ends pointing toward the east.
The usual time for a meeting to begin is "at about sundown," or between seven or eight o'clock in the evening, though of course this varies with the time of year. After the leader, and his assistant, the members and visitors file into the tipi. The leader sits opposite the door on the west side, his assistant sits on his right. The other members are ranged about the tipi, friends often sitting together, and the fire-tender, who like the assistant has been appointed for the occasion by the leader, sits just north of the door. Women attend meetings but do not participate very actively. They eat peyote and help with some of the songs sung by the men, but do not sing songs of their own when it would be their turn.
There are women who sing very well. They never lead a song, though they sing with the men. I have never seen a woman beat the drum for some one. It is not customary. I heard of one case where a woman did that: she and her husband were alone having a peyote meeting just for the two of them. A woman does not sing at a peyote meeting. She sits in the circle and passes the rattle but she does not use the rattle. She may join in and help sing a song (Tekwakï).
When the members enter the tipi they turn south and move clockwise ("in the direction of the sun") about the circle until they find seats. They peyotists sit in various ways. Young people tend to sit cross-legged, old people often adopt a kneeling posture, sitting back on the heels. It is usual to rise up on the right knee when singing, the left foot being moved out in front for support.
The leader begins the singing with the opening song and three others to make a set of four. Like the other singers he holds the rattle in his right hand and accompanies his own songs. In his left hand together with four twigs of sage and an eagle feather fan, is held the brace, a decorated wooden staff four or five feet long. This is used as a support while the singer is in the upright kneeling position. His assistant, sitting on his right does the drumming. At the end of the leader's four songs he exchanges instruments with his assistant and drums while the latter sings. The rattle and drum then move on about the circle in the usual sunwise direction, the rattle always moving one step ahead of the drum. Before the instruments and paraphernalia are passed, they are held out toward the fire and a circular sunwise motion is made with them. "Everything in the tipi is handled that way." If other members want to join in on songs, they know they may do so but are expected to sing quietly.
The singing continues around the circle until midnight; throughout this period peyote buttons are consumed. Members are not supposed to leave the tipi for any purpose until the break at midnight but in an emergency the proper etiquette is to get permission from the leader, rise, turn clockwise in one's place, then move around the tipi clockwise until the door is reached. Some members, instead of turning the entire body after rising, may make a circular motion on the ground with the right foot.
If on the way out one comes to another member who is in the act of eating a peyote button, it is proper to stop and wait for him to finish. The feeling is that it is wrong to pass between the fire and a person engaged in this religious act. A person sitting on the south side of the tipi may leave in a counter-clockwise direction if a member is eating peyote in the path of his ritually proper route, but if he crosses the west point (where the leader is sitting), and then discovers that his way is blocked he must stand and wait. At midnight, during the general break in the ceremony, this problem is solved by a cessation in the eating of peyote buttons.
An emphasis is laid on human understanding in the observance of the formalities just described. Thus if a member is nauseated or needs to urinate or is dizzy from the effects of the peyote, others will keep him from making aux pas. "Everybody else is watching and will let you know if you don't see a man eating peyote. They just tell you: 'This man is eating, you'd better wait.'"
Often the request to the leader for permission to leave is in sign language. The advantage of speech by gesture is obvious in a ceremony where singing is often almost continuous. Here again, if the leader does not happen to notice a signal of distress, others will call it to his attention. Sign language is not necessary if one is sitting close to the leader.
During the ceremony a small fire is kept burning in the center of the tipi, between the altar and the door. The fire tender or "fire-chief" keeps the blaze burning steadily; he is free to step outside for firewood whenever it is needed. Elm and willow are favorites for fuel since they burn with a minimum of smoke and sparks. The fire tender is also the official time-keeper. He is asked the time, by the peyote leader, at four intervals, the first soon after the meeting is seated and the fourth at about midnight. He can tell when it is midnight by the position of the stars; one is also supposed to hear coyotes howling at midnight and at dawn. The position of the Corona Borealis (PamudyïKWIkaTï "they are sitting down for a smoke") is sometimes used for an indication of the time. Each time the fire-tender is asked the time he is supposed to step outside the tipi and look.
At midnight the leader interrupts the round of songs for prayer and the drinking of water. This is done even if some member is in the midst of his group of songs at the time. The leader prays and then calls the drum, rattle and other paraphernalia back to himself, and with his assistant drumming, sings the midnight song. He then prays again, after which the fire tender brings in the pail of water and sits at the door with the water before him and waits for orders from the leader. When he receives word, the fire tender carries the pail around the tipi in the usual sunrise direction until it comes to the leader's assistant. The assistant drinks, then the leader, after which the pail is passed from person to person around the tipi. Occasionally the pail is passed to the leader instead of being carried and some leaders drink first. By allowing the assistant precedence the pail can go sunwise without interruption. Rarely, the water may skip the assistant and finally reach him at the end of the entire circuit.
The period during which the water is being passed seems to be the most informal part of the midnight break. It is during this time that members feel free to go outside, stretch their legs and attend to body functions.
The fire tender has two stakes on which this water pail may be hung. These are fifteen or twenty yards from the tipi, one on either side, so that the water may be hung upwind from the tipi no matter what the wind's direction may be. This is apparently to safeguard the ritual purity of the water. Similarly a menstruating woman is not supposed to pass between a man and the wind. At a doctoring meeting the water is not supposed to be downwind from the patient. In most meetings this avoidance is "done anyway to guard against accidents." There is no special name for these stakes and a convenient tree in the right direction makes an equally fitting place to hang the water pail.
When the water has gone the rounds and all the members are back in their places, the fire tender takes the bucket back to its place and returns to the tipi. The leader now goes outside, taking with him a special reed whistle, or, if a reed whistle is not available, one made of an eagle bone. Outside the tipi the leader faces to the east and blows a sharp blast on the whistle. Then he walks to the south, to the west, and to the north of the tipi, stopping at each quarter of the compass to face in that direction and blow the whistle. He then enters the tipi, takes his seat, and a period of smoking and praying ensues.
The leader produces tobacco and asks the fire tender to roll a cigarette. For cigarette papers the Comanche prefer the dried leaf of the blackjack oak. When the cigarette has been prepared, the fire tender is ordered to light it and pray. A live coal is used for the light, two sticks being used to lift the coal from the fire. The cigarette is then brought to the leader, the fire tender returns to his seat, and the leader begins his prayer. He blows smoke to Mother Earth, the Sun, the Beings above the clouds, to "what is below the earth," peyote, to "what may be in the air," and to the eagle, the principal sacred bird in peyote. The following is a prayer that Tekwakï has often used:
Well! you, great Earth, may we live upon you in blessing. Well! You, Sun-bird, receive this smoke! May we live beneath you in blessing. Bless us, you our master, bless us! May we live in blessing. You also White Peyote, receive this smoke. May we continue living in blessing under you! And you also our Father, who created us, the earth, and everything that is on it.
The prayer is for guidance in this life on earth, for safety, for protection against enemies and disease. Recently a few leaders have included prayers to Jesus.
After the leader, other members smoke and pray. Those who do not wish to pray smoke in silence and meditate on the deity. During this midnight period green cedar twigs are put on the fire and the peyote members breathe in the fragrant smoke and purify themselves with it. After the prayers and purification the meeting goes on with singing as before until dawn.
"It seems everyone inside can tell dawn is coming even though the tipi door-flap is closed." As the members begin to sense the approach of daylight, the songs reflect this feeling. Although these are not formal dawn or morning songs, references are working into the texts concerning daylight, the rays of the rising sun, awakening, and getting up. Admonitions are heard in the songs to "sit straight," and "to arise." These are addressed to members who seem to be dozing. Herman Asenap, who was interpreting for Tekwakï said, "It is an awful sleepy ordeal to go through one of the meetings."
When the gray streak of dawn appears in the east, water is brought in again, this time by a specially appointed woman, often the wife of the sponsor of the meeting. Whether or not she is the sponsor's wife, the water woman is chosen on the basis of "respectability." She leaves the tipi to get water when told to do so by the leader who then tells the fire tender to clean up around the fire. The fire is replenished and the fire tender tells the leader when this task has been accomplished. The leader now calls for the drum, rattle, and other paraphernalia and tells the group, "We are going to sing the morning song." The woman returns to the tipi with the water and calls that she is outside. The leader replies and starts the morning song with the other members helping. At the conclusion of the song the woman steps inside and sits at the entrance, placing the water, in a bucket covered with a white cloth, directly before her.
Three more of the regular peyote songs are now sung by the leader and his assistant after which the woman rolls a blackjack cigarette. She puffs ceremonially and prays. When she indicates to the leader that she is through he requests the assistant to bring her cigarette to him. The assistant does so and the leader likewise smokes and prays. Then the butt of the cigarette is placed by the altar mound back of the fire and the water is passed. The water woman drinks first and the bucket is then passed around the circle. When it returns to the woman she takes it, makes a circuit of the entire tipi, and goes out.
By this time a frugal meal, the "peyote breakfast," has been prepared by the women of the sponsor's family. It is brought to the tipi and the leader is notified. He then sings a final group of four songs, the last of which is the closing song or "crow song." The sill pins of the tipi are loosened and the food pushed inside. The fire tender receives it and starts it around the circle, he being the last person to have any. A less common procedure is for the fire-tender to carry the food around to the leader, the eating thus starting at the west point in the tipi.
Roasted corn, corn mush, plums, and dried and pounded meat are the main fare of the breakfast. European food is avoided, particularly salt, but an exception is sugar which is used copiously. Fat and sugar are added to the pounded meat. Water and a towel accompany the food around the circle and each member washes before eating.
We do not eat breakfast until the close of the meeting. The food is always the end of the thing. Our closing song is an Apache song. Kayate is an Apache word. Then the ropes are taken off the drum, it is taken all apart. We all quit by that song.
The meeting is thus customarily over after the peyote breakfast, but Itovic added that here again the practice depends upon the leader. Occasionally a meeting continues until noon, about time for the singing to go around the circle twice more after breakfast. When the meeting does close with the meal, the members very often remain lying around in the tipi or under arbors made of brush. They chat informally, practice peyote songs, (it is at this time that novices do a good deal of their learning), or simply doze, making up for the sleep lost during the ceremony.
The Curing Ceremony
In certain ways the Comanche peyote meeting for curing differs from the regular meeting. It is usually smaller, consisting of the patient or patients, the family and a few close friends may be present even though they may not all be members of the peyote cult. The usual prayers for general welfare, long life, etc., are made, and in addition there are prayers specific to the needs of a particular patient. If the sick man is ambulatory he comes to a special tipi owned by the peyote leader but the meeting may take place in a sick man's home. Though curing meetings are often held on Saturday night they may be held on any evening in an emergency.
As stated above, the water, tipi cover and tipi poles are all handled with extreme care in a curing meeting.
The Officers
Rather than overload the running account of the regular peyote ceremony with too much detail, additional material has been reserved for the following pages concerning officers and paraphernalia.
The leader (Ka'PanaKarïgwapl: "west side sitting chief") is the central figure of the ceremony. Our informants considered that there were perhaps eight or ten men whose standing in the peyote group qualified them for leadership. Certain of these men are more popular than others.
Nearly every move, except for the regular progression of songs, the prayers, and the eating of peyote, is made at the request of the leader or only after his permission has been obtained. The steps of the ritual may vary according to the leader's own particular way of handling it, for example, as mentioned above, the ceremonial breakfast usually begins with the serving of the man just south of the door but may begin with the leader if he wishes it. The meeting may end with the breakfast or it may be continued until noon. Tekwakï attended a meeting that continued for four nights and three days. No meeting can be held without a leader; among the Comanche there is always a high degree of dependence upon his instructions.
The fire tender (Ko'Towapl, "fire chief") must see that the fire is in order, watch the passage of time, carry in water at midnight and help in the distribution of food and water at dawn.
The fire tender must not let the coals scatter out, he coaxes the coals close together. There is a special man just for that. He knows how to do this, he does not have to be told and he takes part in the rest of the meeting just like all the others. (Itovic)
He makes frequent trips outside the tipi to the wood supply which is stacked just south of the door, "towards the sun." When not engaged in his duties he sits in the first place north of the door.
The assistant (TïroyawapI, "cedar chief") like the other officers is chosen by the leader. He acts as the leader's drummer and assists in handling the paraphernalia.
It is interesting to note that both informants say the cedar chief or assistant acts throughout as the drummer for the leader and is seated on his right. They give the somewhat elaborate procedure for handling the water bucket with him in this position. In La Barre's account of the Kiowa-Comanche rite the leader's drummer is on his right and his cedar man, if there is one, is on his left.
The water woman who brings the drinking water in the morning is the fourth person who has an assigned function in the course of the peyote ceremony. Elderly female relatives are often chosen for this function, post-climacteric women being preferred.
The Paraphernalia
The drum in peyote is ideally a small iron kettle partially filled with water and with a canvas diaphragm. Small stones are placed under the covering material at intervals below the rim of the kettle, and around the knobs thus formed a rope is twisted. This rope is secured by strands passing under the kettle and the whole thing can be tightened by torsion of the vertical strands, using short pieces of sticks for the purpose. A pin—hole is usually made in the canvas, "so it will sound better."
A rubber diaphragm is sometimes made by stretching a piece of inner-tubing over the kettle and securing it with twine wrapped just below the rim. Some of our informants made serviceable and resonant drums with inner-tubing stretched over a #10 tin can. Here too the container was partially filled with water and a pin-hole was made in the diaphragm. Still another type of container used is an ordinary medium-sized earthenware bean pot. A small unpadded stick was used in all cases for a drumstick.
The rattle is made of a small round gourd on a straight handle, about eighteen inches long, which passes through the gourd and projects a little more than an inch beyond the top. The handle is usually beaded over its entire length and the distal end tufted with horsehair dyed red, yellow, or a pale pink. In beading the handle a favorite design is an alternation of dark and light color in twelve bands. Small stones inside the gourd sound against its dry shell when the instrument is shaken. It is smaller in the bowl and longer in the handle than the usual gourd rattle.
The brace, according to the Comanche origin story for the peyote ceremony, derives from the bow of the scalped Comanche warrior. It is a staff by which a singer supports himself when he rises on one knee to sing. In the early days of Comanche peyote any stick could be used for this purpose:
…it did not make any difference what kind of stick it was. It was just for comfort in singing. For a long time we used just any straight stick too, in imitation of the old people. Now we prefer a bow of bow d'arc (bois d'arc—osage orange). These bows are not quite the same as a bow that would be used for hunting. There are no notches and no string. They are straight and there is just a little decoration above the grip (Tekwakï).
The Comanche word for the brace is náci•'To (cane). The word "bow" (é•to) is never applied to the ritual implement.
Sage and feathers are also part of the paraphernalia that is passed around the tipi from singer to singer as the meeting goes on and the members take their turns drumming and singing. Four twigs of sage and a feather fan are held with the brace in the left hand by each member as he sings. Peyote buttons to be consumed during the meeting are kept on a bed of sage twigs and sage is chewed and smeared over the body as one of the rituals of purification. Tekwakï mentioned that sage is much used in curing ceremonies.
The whistle used by the leader at midnight is called hú•Kumudyake (tree cry). It is made from a bamboo-like reed. When the reed whistle cannot be obtained an eagle-bone whistle may be used. In either case it is a simple one-block whistle with no stops.
It is not my intention to make a detailed comparison of the peyote ritual with other ceremonies in the Plains area but I should like to point out here that although the peyote ceremony has a distinct flavor of its own, many of its components may be found in other Plains rituals. There are a few features which are not at least approximated in the major ceremonies of long standing. The punctilio with respect to direction of motion and the use of the number four is familiar to anyone acquainted with Plains religion. Other similarities are listed below.
The Hako, for example, had special songs for dawn, elaborate care with water, a sacred journey, invocation of a plant, the eagle bone whistle and ritual circuits of the lodge. Nearly all of these features were much more highly formalized than in peyote but the familiar ideas were there.
The Sun Dance had a somewhat different roster of features reminiscent of parts of peyote practice and paraphernalia. The preparation of an altar, often with a dry painting, is an example. The use of eagle bone whistles blown in ceremonially prescribed directions, of sage as a ceremonial carpet and also carried by participants, and of cedar incense, may also be cited.
The Ghost Dance had the clockwise motion of participants, singing in connection with trance, stress on vision, and an ethical content in its teachings, again all features which may be found in peyote.
However, the particular form and combination of these elements is unique for peyote. Though there is singing in all three of the older Plains ceremonies mentioned above, it is nowhere else done in the peyote manner. In the Ghost Dance songs are unaccompanied and are first sung by the leaders, then by the entire assemblage of dancers. There are opening and closing songs; it is interesting that the latter are called "crow" songs and refer to this bird in the Ghost Dance and also in the Comanche peyote ceremony, but in the Ghost Dance we do not find solo singing by turns, the use of song cycles, the extemporization of songs during the ritual and the constant creation of new songs, often through visions.
In the Hako there is a great deal of singing as the ritual develops but each song, and in fact each stanza of each song, precedes some ceremonial act and is intimately connected with it. This is true for only four of the songs in peyote. In the Winnebago Medicine Dance there is singing by turns but it is the participating bands, not individuals, that alternate.
No other type of Plains ceremony uses the type of drum and rattle prescribed for peyote. The eagle bone whistles in the Sun Dance were used by all the dancers, not by a leader as at the midnight break in the peyote ritual. Though plants are revered and obtained in a ceremonial manner in the Sun Dance, and though corn is addressed by a kinship term in the Hako, no other major ceremony of the Plains carried the role of a plant quite so far as the peyote ritual where the cactus is a drug, a sacrament and a deity.
Comanche Peyote Songs
Perhaps the best evaluation of the nature of the material may be made from a description of the field situation. The trip was oriented primarily around the study of linguistics. Because of other interests we did not press the issue when then occasion to attend a peyote ceremony did not arise.
Itovic, a man of about fifty and the first informant on peyote, was a good member of the Post Oak (Lutheran) Mission and had been since he withdrew from the peyote group some thirty years before. Although he came to us as a linguistic informant, we discovered that he was willing to talk about peyote and that he had a remarkably fresh memory for a considerable number of the songs. He explained that for many years he had been teaching them to boys who came to him for this purpose. We recorded all the peyote songs he knew.
Naya, a man somewhat older than Itovic, who was sometimes a Lutheran and sometimes a peyotist, rendered the midnight song.
We were eager to check the information and song material with an actively participating peyote member and for one day we had the help of Pïcïa, also in his fifties, who fulfilled this condition. At the time Pïcïa was making pilgrimages to the peyote fields in Texas two or three times a year and bringing back "peyote buttons" for Comanche use.
Itovic often mentioned Tekwakï, a man of about Naya's age who was a well known peyote leader in the Indiahoma region, and we finally had the good fortune to engage Tekwakï's services as a regular informant concerning peyote usage and the music. All of our interviews and discussions with the four informants took place in the Indiahoma schoolhouse where there was a source of electricity for the recording machine.
Most of our information came from Itovic and Tekwakï. It is interesting that none of the songs recorded by Itovic were of his own composition. He himself stated that this was rather odd, that peyote members often do think of songs themselves or learn them from peyote, or seek them in a vision by going to some lonely place and fasting. Most of the songs he sang were, as he said, "handed down," and a large percentage of them he identified as Apache. "They came from the Apache, from whom peyote came to the Comanche." In most cases he was unable to give translations of the song texts.
The great majority of Tekwakï's songs were Comanche. Of a total of sixty-three songs, fifty-two were sung in the Comanche language and twenty-nine of these were designated by him as his own compositions. Eleven of his songs seem to have been Apache in origin; seven of these were explicitly identified as such.
It was Tekwakï who gave us, besides a wealth of song material, an unusual insight into the process of native song-making. And in telling us what he did of his feelings with respect to peyote and peyote songs, Tekwakï revealed himself to us as an admirable as well as devout person.
Instrumental and Vocal Technique
Detailed information was collected concerning instrumental and vocal technique among the Comanche, which is given below. Probably at most points these details hold for the performance of peyote songs in other tribes, but data are scarce. Where available they are mentioned under the tribal headings.
The Rattle
The rattle is held upright in front of the body, the elbow bent, and lower and closer to the body than the hand. The rattle is shaken from the wrist with comparatively little action of the shoulder and elbow. Violent action is to be avoided: if one moves the arm from the elbow when shaking the rattle, the saying goes, one may be struck by lightening.
According to Tekwakï some singers shake the rattle away from the body, some towards the body, and some across and downwards at each beat. It is not unusual for a singer to extend his arm gradually in the course of a song and to draw it back towards the body at the end. Although Tekwakï does not do this he mentioned it as a stylistic feature in the rattle technique of some singers.
The singer sets the pace of the song and may signal with the little rattle to indicate the end. Tekwakï sometimes slowed his tempo in the course of a song, listening for some word from peyote. "When I slow up I listen so that maybe I hear something. When I speed up it is because I have heard it." In a case like this the drummer must follow the lead of the singer.
Since a song may be sung through once or repeated as many as three or four times, the singer may indicate which is the last time by raising the rattle at the end. "Sometimes, when two men haven't been to a meeting for quite a while, and one likes a song, and wants to make sure the other is coming along, he signals for the end by raising the rattle." This practice is a stylistic constant with some players and may be done rarely or not at all by others. Itovic stated explicitly that there is no symbolism involved, such as a reference to the eagle, or the sun, in raising the rattle. The idea of such symbolism was suggested by Herman Asenap, the interpreter.
Singers are particular about the rattle. The one provided by the peyote leader for the ceremony should not be too heavy to allow quick sensitive beating. Too much weight in the bowl made Itovic unhappy on one occasion. In song 10 he missed several beats in the course of the song and complained that the rattle was not satisfactory for this reason.
Drumming
T.: Even though you say that, if some one would beat the drum for you, you would go about from place to place singing.
I.: With drumming it is only good when a good sound is heard. It comes not from hard beating but from a putting sound like this (he shows it on the table). Then it catches the stride well. (Fragment of conversation between Tekwakï and Itovic, accidentally recorded at the beginning of a song.)
Before playing, the drummer shakes his instrument so that the diaphragm is thoroughly moistened by the water in the body of the drum. In the case of the canvas diaphragm this treatment undoubtedly increases the tension and improves the tone. Moisture invades and thickens, thereby shortening, vegetable fiber. However, the unusual pinhole is made in a rubber drum head as well, and the instrument is shaken until a small amount of water appears on the outside. Albert Asenap, Herman's son, who was drumming for Tekwakï, maintained that this procedure improved the tone here too. Either type of drum is played with a rapid sustained beat; droplets of water are thrown off in a fine haze by the vibrating drumhead.
Occasionally, while playing, the drummer may alter the pitch of his instrument by the pressure of the thumb of his free hand on the diaphragm. As the pressure is increased the pitch of the drum tone rises. The new tone is held for a few beats, then the pressure is relaxed and the tone drops back to its original level. This variation in playing is employed when trying out a newly assembled drum; it does not occur during the accompaniment of the peyote songs.
The drum beat is usually in time with the rhythm of the vocal melody, the great majority of which are in duple meter. Occasionally the drum runs ahead of the singer, evenly and by intention. Tekwakï in singing sometimes slowed his tempo markedly and at such times the drummer is supposed to adjust his beat to that of the singer.
Because signals are given with the rattle for song endings and for variations in tempo such as the one noted above, Tekwakï ceased to act as drummer for other singers when he became blind. He now asks his assistant to move from his right to his left side and substitute for him in drumming for the next man. At the close of this man's four songs the assistant goes around the tipi sunwise until he is back in his original position on Tekwakï's right.
All exchanging of drummers is made with the leader's permission. A man who is a poor drummer is glad to be relieved of his turn; after he has sung, he hands the rattle and singer's paraphernalia on to the next man and moves over to make room for a substitute drummer. Usually the substitute is directed by the leader to make the sunwise circuit of the tipi until he comes to his place on the right of the singer. Sometimes, however, two members who like to sing and drum for each other sit side by side and hand the instruments back and forth. In this case the man on the right sings first after handing the drum across to his partner. Then the drum moves back one step; the first man drums while the man on the left sings. When he has finished singing, he will be drummer again as the singing moves on in the usual manner.
The drumming is felt to have more effect than a mere statement of rhythm. Itovic said:
It seems the drum just raises the voice up in the air.... What I want when I sing is to go up high with my voice and come down. I like to sing high but now I am old and start low, though it gets a little higher. The drum forces the voice up higher.
Singing
The usual peyote song begins with a rattle and drum introduction. After a few measures of very rapid playing during which the rattle is often shaken tremolo the instruments slow to the rhythm which will be maintained throughout the song. At this point Tekwakï sometimes makes a short announcement, saying something about the song. When he sang the opening song even in the informal recording situation, Tekwakï made the announcement that he felt should always precede this particular melody: "Now this day, that one (Tekwakï), is going to sing the song that has helped bring him through life so far."
There were differences of voice production among our four informants. Naya, Pïcïa, and Tekwakï sang in a buoyant, lusty, somewhat rubato manner. Itovic sang much more quickly and sometimes, as an ornamental technique, with his throat constricted so that for a few notes the tone was decidedly fricative. These were always repeated notes somewhere in the middle of phrases and pitched low in the range of the song.
Other characteristics of the Comanche singing of peyote songs were the frequent fairly strong accents, the occasional break of the voice into the falsetto register, and the use of vocal pulsations particularly on the notes held for two or more beats. These ornamental devices were used more frequently in the songs of widest range.
The accents are used more often, as in European singing, to mark the beginning of rhythmic units or "measures." It is a stylistic feature in Comanche peyote singing that the attack is almost always strong and is sometimes very strong. The "robust" quality of the songs owes much to this feature: even in the milder singing of Itovic the attacca is often more pronounced than in most European singing. These accents occur characteristically at the beginning of a downward movement in the melodic line.
The break into falsetto occurs in a few songs in the cases of both Tekwakï and Itovic. As with the accent, the break comes before a descent in pitch; it is very brief in duration and is best written as an appogiatura connected with either the preceding or the following note depending on the stress.
A mildly pulsating tone is a common feature in these songs. Pulsations beyond the ordinary vibrato of the voice are given most frequently to the longer notes in the melody, especially when these notes follow one another on the same tone as in the he ne ne ne of an introduction or coda.
A feature that should be mentioned in connection with Comanche singing is throat clearing. In a large number of the songs both Itovic and Tekwakï cleared their throats during the drum introduction or, often, after the vocal introduction had begun. In nearly all cases the singer goes right on singing noisily clearing his throat at the same time. The tempo is not interrupted. Less frequently our informant cleared their throats in the course of the main body of the song. It was done in the same way, the tone of the melody being interrupted but not the rhythm.
A word change at the end of a stanza may be another cue for the drummer that a song will repeat. Thus in one song the phrase háyaKimayó is repeated with only slight variations until the end of a musical phrase is reached. But four times in the song the text changes to háyakiniyá followed by the vocables he no yo wa. This, Tekwaki said, was a sign for a repetition.
The Melodies
Within the group of thirty Comanche examples comparisons may be made. It happened that those rendered by Itovic represented older songs dating from at least as far back as 1910 when he left the peyote movement. He remarked himself that he did not know the later songs. Tekwaki, on the other hand, currently active in the cult, was not only familiar with the old songs still in use but was still learning and composing songs. He had considerable pride in not repeating himself or other singers in a ceremony
There are differences between these two groups of Comanche songs that become apparent at once. One of the most noticeable differences is in the textural pattern. The songs of Itovic tend to ramble on with rather long, full content while those of Tekwakï are more choppy. In twelve songs out of fourteen the text consists of short phrases as "It is coming," or "Wings beating," repeated over and over. Of songs of this type, Itovic sang five in a total of thirteen melodies.
In the melodies collected from the two singers the range provides another contrast.
In Tekwakï's songs the range is usually small, often over a distance of only a fifth while the scale frequently consists of but three notes. Itovic also sings songs of this pattern but more often sings songs ranging from an octave to an octave and a half. All of the songs are sung with at least one complete repetition, and often more. An analysis of the melodic phrase pattern usually reveals before the first full repetition a sequence such as |ABCD|BCD|. Variations of this are |ABC|BC|; |AABCD|-BCD|. The full song would then be |ABCD|BCD| repeated two or more times. This is the predominant pattern in Tekwakï's songs: there are nine of this type and five with a straight |ABC| or |ABCD| and repeat. Itovic also sings five songs with straight repeats, but only four which employ the partial repeat. The other four are more complex, as |ABCDE|CDE|ABCDE|.
The use of paired patterns which is so marked in Ghost Dance melodies occurs to a lesser degree in much of the Comanche peyote music. Here another marked contrast between the songs of Itovic and Tekwakï may be noted. In three songs of the former the pairing principle is strong but in the rest it is quite absent, whereas eight of Tekwakï's songs contain more or less pairing.
There is a rhythmic difference between the songs of Itovic and those of Tekwakï. In the former a large number are irregular in the smaller divisions of the phrases, some "measures" containing two beats, others three, and still others four or five. This in a large phrase of twelve beats there may well be four measures of three, two, three, and four beats respectively. Accompanying this irregularity there is often a lively use of syncopation.
The song from the origin story and the four set songs (Opening, Midnight, Dawn, and Closing) were said to be Carrizo Apache, as were others. In addition there are two "imitation" Apache songs. Tekwakï said of one "I learned an Apache song something like this," and "I was trying to sound like an Apache."
The main difference between the straight Comanche and the "Apache-Comanche" songs is in the texts. The ranges of the "Apache" songs are intermediate on the whole and paired patterns are infrequent. However, both Tekwakï's imitation Apache songs do have paired patterns.
After a consideration of these differences one might wonder why, after all, these songs sound so similar to the ear. Of course the fact that they are all performed with a somewhat similar vocal technique accounts for some of this impression. But more significant musicologically are the many structural similarities to which we now turn.
In general all of these songs have a similar pattern of instrumental introduction and accompaniment. The drum and rattle begin quite fast, sometimes even tremolo. After a few beats they slow down and fall into a duple or undifferentiated rhythm which is maintained throughout the song. At the end, near the beginning of the final phrase, there is an interruption of several beats in the accompaniment which is then resumed accelerando and the voice and accompaniment together hurry to the end of the song.
In almost all of the songs there is a vocal introduction on vocables such as he ne ne ne ne for from six to twelve beats, a slight pause, and then the song proper is begun. This introduction is usually sung on the "tonic" or base note of the song scale and the singer then jumps up to the fifth, sixth, or octave for the beginning of the main body of the song. A jump up of a fifth is most frequent in the Comanche songs and longer intervals are common in the melodies which our informants said came from the Apache.
The tempi are always quite fast—between a metronome speed of 130 for a quarter-note and 140 for the most part, though some are slower and a few are as fast as 150.
The number of different phrases and the lengths of these phrases show further similarities in most of these songs. There are usually from three to five different phrases in a song and the lengths in general run around nine, ten, or eleven beats with a tendency to lengthen out in final phrases where coda-like vocable formulae on the tonic are often added.
Phrase compasses are similarly variable in all these songs. Phrases may be one note in compass, two, three, and on up to an octave. There is a unique example of a phrase extending in range to the fifth beyond the octave. The fifth is by far the most frequent phrase compass but there is a liberal use of octaves, sevenths, and sixths; many songs lean heavily on thirds.
An unusual feature in a number of these songs is that they are constructed on a scale of a "broken triad." Thus the scales of songs if transposed to the key of C would all be either C-E-G or C-E-flat-G, the major or minor triad. It is no accident when it is found in approximately a third of the examples.
The melodic line shows a general similarity in all the songs considered. After the introduction it begins high and moves down to a base note which has a strong feeling of the tonic.
The melodic movement is active with strong accents and pulsations. The movement downward tends to be smoother, with shorter jumps, then the movement upward. There is much more movement downward in steps of seconds or, particularly, thirds. Intervals of fifths, sixths, or octaves occur in jumps upward between phrases before the downward movement begins again.
The tabulation of the final notes in each phrase of a melody gives the analyst a pattern which reveals much of the inner structure of the song. Thus a numerical series such as 8, 5, 3, 1 indicates that in each of the four phrases of the melody the final note is on a successively lower pitch, moving from the eighth to the tonic or base note.
In the Comanche examples the pattern of "finals" varies from a formula indicating gradual descent such as 10, 8, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1 to a pattern which shows that all phrases, from the first to the last, end on the tonic: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. The latter type, which is frequently associated with songs of limited range, indicates a "collapsing" type of melodic descent.
The prevalence of the collapsing type of phrase pattern is clear for the Comanche melodies. Only one song reserves the tonic for the last phrase. Moreover, the fact that this pattern appears in songs of wider range indicates that this feature may often be independent of considerations of compass. There is virtually no transposition of phrases in these songs nor is there a great deal of variation.
Another similarity throughout these songs is in the syllabification. There is one syllable to a note for the most part, though in perhaps half the songs an occasional "yo" or "ne" or "na" may be sung on two eighth notes, almost always on a descending third.
And lastly, the notes themselves are almost always either eighth or quarter notes. This feature does much to give all of these songs a feeling of regularity even though there is syncopation and considerable variation in measure lengths. The absence of dotted notes and notes held for two or more beats is striking to any one who is accustomed to Western European musical tradition.
The overall effect of these similarities is to create in the listener an impression of a unity in style for these Comanche songs in spite of the differences given above. Whether this "style" may be observed in the peyote songs of other groups will be the subject of the following pages.
David P. McAllester
Peyote Music, 1949
The Peyote Cult or religion has become well known to the American Indian through a series of excellent monographs and descriptive papers. The religion, which entered the Plains area from Mexico around 1870, features an all-night ceremony in which the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, is consumed to the accompaniment of prayers and ritual music. Although peyotists have sometimes been persecuted, and the possession of peyote is illegal in some states and provinces, the cult continues to flourish and spread in both the United States and Canada.
As has been the case with other religions, the peyote cult has extended its influence to areas of culture far outside the religious sphere. Thus, at a Plains Indian Grass or War Dance, one sometimes sees an older peyote man dressed in the costume of the religion, even though war dancing and peyotism have no formal connection. The influence of the peyote cult is also quite evident in contemporary Plains Indian art. In most peyote-using groups it has also given rise to a particular genre of humor known as the "peyote joke," which is the subject of this paper.
The usual time for telling such jokes is in the morning after the all-night ritual or "meeting." In many peyote-using tribes the ceremony formally ends with a breakfast of coffee, sweet rolls, and bread, provided by those who have "put up" (i.e., sponsored) the gathering. [This breakfast follows the "sacred breakfast" at which water, parched corn, pounded meat, fruit, and nuts are served to the participants in small amounts.] At this breakfast participants may stand up and stretch their cramped limbs, smoke, and chat freely. In contrast to the seriousness of the previous night's worship, this is a very relaxed affair, and those present are encouraged to tell of their past experiences in peyotism, either serious or humorous. As Weston La Barre notes in his monograph The Peyote Cult: "Complete social informality now reigns as the food is passed to the man south of the door and thence clockwise. Much joking goes on during this meal, which has none of the seriousness of the Christian partaking of the Host."
The small collection of stories given below is a fair sample of the type of joke often heard on these occasions. Unlike the typical Euro-American joke, which depends on a terminal "punch line" for most of its effect, the peyote joke builds up slowly from one ridiculous situation to the next, and the "punch line," if present at all, appears rather weak to one accustomed to the machine-gun delivery of the television or night club comic. Because of this structure, a joke which is hilariously funny when told by one peyote jokester may fall flat in the hands of a less gifted raconteur. The gifted storyteller, however, can keep his audience convulsed for minutes on end, and the ability to tell amusing jokes most certainly adds to the stature of a peyote "road man" or leader.
One may wonder how these ribald and often obscene anecdotes have become attached to such an intensely devout form of worship as the peyote ritual. Perhaps the very seriousness of the ordinary peyote ceremony, lasting through some eleven hours, calls forth a release of this sort once the ceremony is ended. Likewise, they provide the peyotists with yet another body of common experience not shared by nonmembers. A familiarity with the peyote ritual is essential to the complete understanding of many of the jokes, and hence the jokes serve to bind together those whose knowledge makes the circumstances of the joke intelligible.
Many peyote jokes find their humor in human miscalculation and error and in this respect are similar to certain Euro-American jokes. La Barre cites two jokes of this type:
"A Comanche told me a Kiowa ate a lot of peyote once and tried to sing a Comanche song. He sang the wrong words, which meant 'Mentula exposita est, Mentula exposita est!'"
Likewise:
"Koshiway (Oto) told a joke in the morning about a partially deaf man's misunderstanding the song 'Jesus in the glory now, he ya na ha we,' and singing 'Jesus in Missouri now.' Jack said laughing, 'He must be getting close; He's just over the river now!'"
A story heard by the writer among the Prarie Potawatomi in Kansas involves not human, but animal error. As told by a Potawatomi peyotist the story went as follows:
"It used to be the custom at meetings down here for the road man to gather up everybody's feathers [wands of feathers carried by peyotists in the meeting] just before closing. He would put them down in a pile behind the altar, pray, and then sing the quitting songs. After the meeting everyone would come up and get his feathers back.
"Well, this one time they were having a meeting at a place out in the country here, a place where they raised chickens. It was just getting light and the road man had gathered up all the feathers and had them in a pile beside him. There was a little banty rooster running around in the yard outside. It would crow a little, scratch around a bit, then wander in a little closer to where the temple [the peyote tipi] was set up. Finally it saw the big pile of feathers by the road man, and mistook it for a hen. It gave a big run and jumped right on top of the feathers. Boy, you've never seen such a disappointed rooster in all your life!"
Several peyote jokes, however, do more than recount a comic mischance, and go on to point a moral. La Barre cites a story of this type, told by O. W. (Comanche) to E. R. (Delaware):
"The leader of a Wichita Easter meeting had a fine watch, soting from $150 to $200. At daylight, before water time, wanting to display it, he put it down by the feathers. A man to the north was singing and making vigorous punches toward the peyote. When he looked at his watch later, 'it was just a mess of works in there loose, and the hands dropped off,' though nobody touched it. "It don't pay to go in there and they try to show off.'"
Two jokes collected by the writer among the southern Ponca were also concerned with the vanity of wealthy peyotists, and its sad consequences:
"Once an old peyote man, an Osage, decided to attend a meeting that was being held on his reservation that night. His companion [peyote term for wife or mistress] told him, 'Here, take this money old man and get yourself some new clothes before you go in; you look a disgrace.' So he went into Pawhuska and bought himself a new shirt, slacks, belt, socks, and finally a pair of those fancy shoes with the tick crepe rubber soles.
"When he showed up at meeting that night the boys [other peyotists] teased him about his new clothes, and it made him kind of sore. Finally he wouldn't talk to them any more. Since he was old, fat, and kind of stiff in the joints, he sat with his legs straight out to the fire instead of folded under him goat style. Well, his shoes were awfully close to the fire, and pretty soon those crepe soles on his shoes began to melt. Finally they came loose from the uppers, sort of drooped down, and fell off [teller uses comical gestures at this point to show drooping and falling]. The old man's circulation was poor, so he didn't feel anything was wrong.
"After midnight he asked the road man if he could go outside. As he got up to leave the boys pointed to his shoes, which were just shoe tops now. He thought they were still teasing him about his new duds and wouldn't pay any attention. Well, he walked out of the tipi and right into a patch of prickly pear. Man, you could hear his screams for miles!"
The second "vanity" joke involves more aboriginal footgear:
"Once an old man came to meeting in brand new buckskin clothes. He was particularly proud of his peyote moccasins. They had fringes at least six inches long. Every now and then he would run his fingers through the heel fringes to straighten them out and get rid of the grass and burrs they had picked up.
"Well, after midnight he went out of the tipi to defecate. He forgot about the heel fringes on his moccasins and squatted right over them. When he was finished he came back into the meeting and sat down in his place. Pretty soon he reached down to fuss with the heel fringes on his moccasins again. He grabbed something besides the fringes this time, and it made him mad—'S--t,' he said, 's--t, s--t!'"
Many peyote jokes tell of serious devotional acts being interrupted by some ludicrous occurrence. Perhaps the jokes of this type reflect an unconscious resentment of the hardship and the composure which attendance at a ceremony entails. Here is an example from the Kiowa:
"Once some young men in our tribe decided they wanted to hold a peyote meeting. None of them owned a tipi, so they just built a windbreak, about waist high, using old blankets, pieces of canvas, and sticks. The young man sitting chief [i.e., acting as the leader of the ceremony] was pretty good at peyote talk. When he prayed to the Almighty, everyone sat up and listened.
"Well, the meeting was just getting underway, and this young man was praying. There was a young drunk wandering around outside, and he came stumbling up just at that time. He stood right behind the moon [altar] and leaned over the windbreak, gaping down at the leader and breathing wine fumes on his neck. The leader didn't notice him at first, and he was praying, 'Our Father, who art in heaven—' and just then he turned a little and saw the drunk, and said, without even pausing for breath, 'What in hell are you doing here?'"
A similar joke from the Crow in Montana has the prayer interrupted by an old horse, which had been grazing outside the peyote tipi, flatulating loudly at a critical point in the prayer.
Sometimes a situation occurring during the meeting itself is later recalled and told as a joke, such as the following:
Frank D. [northern Iowa] and his wife Sue [Potawatomi] went to a Potawatomi meeting in Kansas. Frank is a good singer, but it sometimes takes him a little while to get warmed up and ready to go. While he is "waiting for the song to come," he shakes the peyote gourd and sings an introductory phrase 'He ne ne ne, he ne ne ne' over and over. He did it so long on this occasion that his companion, seated next to him, leaned over and whispered in his ear, in a tone audible to all present, "Come on Frank, sing! You sound like an old hound scratching for fleas."
Stories frequently have to do with strange happenings resulting from one or another individual suffering from "peyote effect" after eating an unusually large number of "buttons" (the dried tops of the peyote cactus). La Barre notes that "Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) laughingly told me of a meeting in Kansas where the singer's jaw became locked; the whole meeting was upset while they shook and fanned him with cedar incense until his jaw 'came back.'"
La Barre comments that this may have been the effect of the strychnine-like alkaloids in peyote. Another story concerning "peyote effect" was told by William C. (Ojibwa), about an old man he had seen at a Potawatomi meeting in Kansas. This old man wandered from group to group the morning after a peyote meeting. At each stop he would tell the first part of a peyote joke, but due to the amount of peyote he had eaten, he would always forget to finish them. After telling a part of each joke he would laugh loudly, and walk on to the next knot of people and begin again.
A classic peyote joke from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, and one told in several versions, involves the interruption of a religious procession. It was apparently the custom when peyote first reached Pine Ridge for the adherents to stage these processions, perhaps in imitation of Roman Catholic processions. Various peyotists would take the parts of biblical characters. One such procession which took place in the twenties involved many individuals still prominent in the cult of that area. A male leader took the part of Christ, swathed in a white sheet and riding a mule. Close behind was the Virgin Mary, played by a female devotee. Others were dressed to resemble shepherds, Roman soldiers, and so on. The shepherds, who followed closely behind Christ and the Virgin, had several sheep and a goat for added realism.
The procession wound impressively through the hills near Pine Ridge until it neared an Indian cabin. Just as it was passing this cabin, a large dog chased a cat directly under the mule ridden by Christ, causing it to buck the rider into the dust. Worse yet, every time the rider attempted to stand up and remount, the goat would butt him over again from behind. Soon the entire procession was in an uproar, with horses bucking, sheep bleating, and the biblical characters cursing and swearing as they attempted to bring order out of chaos.
Later an old Indian woman, scolding the owner of the dog and cat for not keeping them under control as the "holy" procession went by, commented: "It was bad enough when Christ got bucked off his mule, and the billy goat butted him in the rear end. But when the Holy Virgin tore her dress on the barbed wire fence, that was a terrible thing!"
More typical of the jokes told at the present time is one currently making the rounds. A young Indian (variously described as a Potawatomi, a Winnebago, or an Omaha) has just come into a bit of money from a land sale, and decides to go "girling" in Oklahoma. He buys himself a new suit of clothes and hops the first bus to Anadarko.
Getting off the bus, he sees an old Indian man, obviously of the old school, standing on the corner. The old man wears his hair in braids, neatly wrapped with blue and green yarn, has a dark shirt and trousers, moccasins, and a white sheet wrapped around his waist in lieu of a blanket. The young man thinks, "Aha, here is an old-timer who can help me out. These old-times know all about love medicines, and that's what I want right now."
Accordingly, he approaches the old man, introduces himself, and in Indian fashion invites the old man to a restaurant for a fine meal. "Order the biggest steak in the house, Uncle," he urges. "Way ahead!" [i.e., good], answers the old-timer, and does as suggested. After the main course the young man says, "How about pie à la mode, Uncle? Wouldn't that go good about now?" Again the old Indian gratefully accepts. Then, "Would you like a cigar on top of your meal?" Again the old man gladly accepts.
"You have been very nice to me, Nephew," he comments at last. "And I appreciate what you have done for a poor old man. Now in our Indian way that might mean that yu want me to help you out in some way."
"That's true, Uncle" the young man replies, "I do need your help> I am down here for social purposes, and I know you old people are wise in these old Indian medicines. Could you get hold of some love medicine for me?"
At this point the old man smiles, reaches under the sheet around his waist and into his trousers pocket. Pulling out four peyote "buttons" he hands them to the young man, saying, "Here, take these and love everybody!"
James H. Howard
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks
Peyote: The Comanche Ceremony
Foreword
It would be impossible to thank suitably all of the people who contributed to the present paper.
In 1940 I was a member of the summer field party in the study of language and culture, under the guidance of George Herzog, sent by the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University to the Comanche Indians at Indiahoma, Oklahoma. It was there that the recordings of Comanche peyote music were made and I have to express my gratitude not only to the Indians, especially Itovic and Tekwaki, who were our chief informants on peyote material, but also to the other members of the Columbia group who shared the results of their special investigations most generously both in the field and in numerous "Comanche sessions" subsequently.
The interest and help of Ralph Linton were of the greatest value. I am especially indebted to him for access to his field notes and for the contacts with Comanche informants upon which the work depended.
In those who wrote me concerning various aspects of peyote, I have many collaborators, especially Margot Astrov, Weston La Barre, and Erminie Voegelin. Among those who helped very considerably in personal discussions of peyote and peyote music I must mention E. Adamson Hoebel, Carling Malouf, and Willard Rhodes. Specific acknowledgments are made in the course of the paper but they represent only a fraction of my debt to the many correspondents and advisers I have had.
I must thank the Department of Anthropology of the University of California for access to the recordings of the many peyote songs collected by Omer Stewart and Jane Richardson Hanks, and I must also thank Martha Huot and Willard Rhodes for the use of their recordings, texts and translations of Fox and Dakota songs, and for permission to publish them. Thanks are due to Emma Reh and D'Arcy McNickle of the Office of Indian Affairs from whom I obtained a copy of their article, "Peyote and the Indian."
And last, and most, I owe more than I can say to George Herzog. From the time-consuming spadework of musical transcription through the welter of vision and revision, I have relied heavily upon his interest and his patience.
D. P. McA.
Introductory Statement
The peyote cult, a religious movement nativistic in nature and often combining Christian and pagan elements, is active today and is spreading among many of the surviving groups of North American Indians. The cult is distributed mainly in the western Plains area of the United States with extensions northward as far as Canada and into the Southwest as far as the pueblo of Taos and the Navajo and Apache country. Groups of individuals ranging in number from two or three to thirty or forty gather in a night-long meeting. In the course of the ceremony they make ritually prescribed gestures, listen to the prayers and exhortations of older members and the leader, consume portions of a small fleshy cactus known as "peyote," and take turns singing peyote songs.
Studies of peyote practices have been made from various points of view. The use of the cactus (lophophora williamsii—"peyote" from the Aztec "peyotl"), which contains a number of alkaloids and is capable of producing a marked narcosis, has interested botanists, organic chemists, and physiologists. The function of the ritual has been of interest to students of cultural dynamics, particularly in the areas of cultural borrowing and acculturation. Administrators of Indian affairs have been concerned as to whether the cult has deleterious effects, physiological or psychological, upon its participants. Out of these interests an impressive body of literature has grown up around the use of peyote and the peyote ritual practiced by American Indians.
An aspect of the cult which has not received the attention it deserves, however, is music. During the ceremony a drum and rattle, both of special design, are passed, with other paraphernalia, clockwise around the circle of participants. When a member receives the rattle he is expected to sing a number of songs, usually four, after which he passes the rattle on to the next man. The rattle goes ahead of the drum so that, immediately after his turn to sing, each man is the drummer for the man on his left. Four times during the course of the ceremony the leader interrupts the progression to sing special songs which are always used at these times. At other times a participant sings whatever songs he chooses from the repertory at his command, or even extemporizes on the spur of the moment.
Fully half of the participating time, usually a good deal more, of the peyotist is spent listening to or performing this music.
What is it like? Is it different from other American Indian music? What is its place in the general picture of aboriginal music in America? Is there a definable "peyote style" in vocal technique, melodic structure, or textual pattern? If there is such a style the further question must be asked: where does it come from and what do we know of its history?
Besides these questions on the formal musicological level there is the question of peyote music with relation to the people who sing it. What do they feel about the songs? Under what stimuli do they feel the urge to create this music? What do we know of value and attitude with respect to the music of the peyote cult? Insight into some of these questions was obtained in conversations with the informants. I have assembled the record in the section, Comanche Comments on the Songs, where native feelings concerning the music are set forth as nearly in the words of the informants as was possible when working through an interpreter.
On the musicological level this paper will present a comparison of eighty-four peyote songs from various groups. In addition, the peyote music, wherever possible is compared with other music for a given tribe or area.
Since they do not require as much space as musical material, I have included translations of the seventy-two peyote song texts collected from the Comanche and the twenty-one texts collected by Martha Huot from the Fox. These, together with a few texts sent to me in personal communications and the texts reported in the literature, are discussed in a section on the textual content of peyote songs.
Within the limitations of the material available it has been possible to make a comparative study of peyote music and textual material. I have found that in a number of features in peyote songs there exists in general an individuality sufficient to define a "peyote style." I have also discussed briefly under Conclusions the influence of the Ghost Dance on the peyote cult and peyote music, the difference between the musical styles, and the question of European influence in peyote music.
As background for the musical material I have begun the paper with a brief historical sketch of the spread of the peyote cult followed by the Comanche origin story for peyote and a description by our informants of the Comanche form of the ritual.
Historical Sketch
The available historical data on the origin and spread of the peyote cult have been thoroughly treated by Shonle and La Barre and I shall give no more than a brief résumé here.
The use of the cactus in Mexico was associated with rituals apparently of long standing at the time of the first Spanish contacts. In the historical period we have good evidence of a flourishing peyote cult among the Cora-Huichol in Southern Mexico and of a less viable development among the Tarahumare, where the cult has been for many years on the decline. The use of peyote has spread northward across the Rio Grande by the early 18th century. "Velasco wrote in 1716 that many of the Indians in Texas drank 'pellote' in connection with their dances." According to Opler's informants the Lipan got peyote from the Carrizo before white contact and the Mescalero in turn learned the ritual from the Lipan. The Lipan and Mescalero Apache are the traditional links between Mexican and Plains peyote.
1870 is generally accepted as the base date for the establishment of the peyote cult as we know it today on the plains of the western United States. The first known use of peyote by a Kiowa was around 1868 or 1870, and by 1880 or earlier, meetings were being held, most features of which were already standardized among the Lipan and Mescalero. The first Comanche to use peyote is said to have learned it from the Mescalero. Quanah Parker, the outstanding peyote leader, learned about the cult "in Arizona, New Mexico, and old Mexico about 1868." One of the earliest Comanche meetings was held east of Fort Sill in 1873 or 1874.
The Comanche or Kiowa were the primary authors of the rapid spread of peyote after 1880 in the plains area north of the Rio Grande. The Comanche gave peyote directly to the Wichita, 1889-1890; the Pawnee and Shawnee, 1890; the Ponca in 1902; the Kickapoo in 1906; and the Kansa in 1907.
From the Kiowa, knowledge of peyote spread to the Oto in 1876, the Southern Arapaho in 1884, the Southern Cheyenne in the following year, and recently, in 1931, to the Creek.
From the Oto, Southern Arapaho, and Southern Cheyenne, the diffusion of the cult continued, reaching the Winnebago over the period 1893-1901, the Northern Cheyenne before 1900, the Northern Arapaho in 1903, the Omaha in 1906-1907, and Taos in 1907. These recipients in turn handed peyote on to the Crow, the Iowa, the Menomini, the Potawatomi, the Dakota, and the Southern Ute between 1908 and 1914.
This line of diffusion started by the Kiowa continued after 1914, reaching the Blackfoot, the Chippewa of Minnesota, the Gosiute, the Paiute, the Northern Ute, and others. The reader is referred to La Barre, to Newberne and Burke, and to Shonle for particulars.
That the spread of peyote has by no means come to an end is shown by its recent acquisition by some groups of the Navaho who have taken over the Ute version of the ceremony. Other newcomers to the cult are the Blood who acquired it in 1936 from the Cheyenne, the Seminole who have learned peyote only recently from Yuchi, Caddo, and Quapaw sources, the Canadian Chippewa who are learning from the Minnesota Chippewa, and the Canadian Cree, influenced by the Blackfoot.
Special developments, such as the John Wilson "Big Moon" ceremony which spread from the Caddo to the Quapaw, Osage, and others, and the Oto Chrisitianized version which spread to the Omaha, Winnebago, and other Siouan groups, are treated in La Barre's The Peyote Cult.
Comanche Peyote
Origin Story
It was from the Karisu [i.e. Carrizo Apache] that we acquired peyote in the beginning; they were enemies of our people. There was a Comanche leader who was so brave he went on raids by himself. On one occasion, however, he went on a raid with perhaps ten others. There was a fight with the Karisu and this man's companions were all killed. He himself was wounded but he gave the enemy a hard time. He used up all his arriws. He had only his hatchet left, a long knife-like sword, his lance, and a quiver and bow-case of striped mountain lion skin.
He was riding a paint mule but they surrounded him and killed him and they took all his belongings. They killed the mule there with him.
Some time after they had killed the young man and had taken all his belongings they held a peyote meeting and brought everything that had been his. It was all placed behind the leader on the ground and the bow was used for a sort of cane, a brace. When one is singing and shaking the gourd rattle in a peyote meeting, one often uses a bow, held in the other hand, for a brace.
While the meeting was going on, about midnight, they heard a sound outside the door, as if somebody had been hurt. That young Comanche who had been killed lifted the flap. He hald his hand on his forehead: one could see that he had been scalped. He groaned again and crawled into the tipi. He placed himself in front of the fire just inside the door.
The people on his left and on his right were frightened. They moved away from him towards the back of the tipi. All the people moved away.
The leader said: "All you people keep your seats and behave. He has come for some reason. He would not come here without a reason. Go back to your places!"
After the people were quieted they sat for a few moments in silence. Then the newcomer spoke up:
"You people do not understand peyote power. I, a Ute, know its power."
He said to them, "You have no power, you do not understand it. After you wore me down completely you stung me to death and took everything I had and I just came to tell you that is how it happened. Now I will tell you something more. Look here, now you people. It is midnight." And he told them then:
"You people, smell the smoke—that is the smoke of Comanches coming to see you. They are coming to you. Smell their smoke. There are seven Comanche. It will be four days before they arrive here." And he instructed them:
"When those seven arrive you are to have a peyote meeting. When you have the meeting I command you to give them my bow and this peyote. They shall take these things from you with them."
One of the Karisu spoke up in good Comanche and answered him. "Yes, we will do for your people what you request."
Then that young man told them he was ready to go. "After I have taken seven steps from the door I will stop and yell several times. When I have taken the seventh step I will yell four times. On my fourth yell I want you to sing."
With the fourth yell the leader made ready to sing. His rattle sounded and he said: "I am going to repeat the song and from that we can gather the answer."
Song from the peyote Origin Story
I was lost, na ne yu wanai nu-u ha na ino
he ne, etc.
My arrow, ne ne, my pipe,
hina long knife no haino
nahene, etc.
My arrow na no ha Ute,
Tina etc.
That is the song the young Ute sang to the Karisus. They were to give it, along with the paraphernalia and the peyote, to the seven Comanches who were to come after the fourth day.
The Comanche arrived in four days. A day or two after they arrived, a tipi was put in order for a meeting and the Karisu and Comanche went in together.
The Comanche took the north wall because it was the shady side. The Karisu sat around the south side. Up to this time there was never a woman in a meeting: this time there was one woman with the men. The leader spoke to her and said:
"Tell them how we are going to handle this. Tell them, our cousins."
The woman spoke up in Comanche and said, "Relatives—" The Comanche were all startled and stared at her and she went on:
"Everybody watch. We are going to perform, in a moment, the way this man, standing here, carries out his ceremonies. That is all I am telling you now. When he is ready to have me say more I will tell you more."
Then after the meeting had gone on a while, the Karisu began to roll cigarettes. The leader said to the woman, "Tell the Comanche we are going to smoke this tobacco which our Father has given to us. I want them to go through these motions: to place their hands on the ground, to extend them upwards towards the sky, towards our Father, and then to smoke with us. Then we shall become as one, because our Father has said so."
He gave out cigarettes and they smoked. They smoked towards the ground, towards the sky, and towards the peyote. The leader prayed. Then he got ready to start the real meeting. He reached near him and took some sage. He bit off some, chewed it and rubbed it over himself. It was passed around, the others did the same, around the circle sun-wise, and it came back to him. He was notified that it had been around to everybody. Then they ate peyote. Some took two at first, but mostly they started with four. After he had taken four the leader said to the girl:
"Ask the Comanche whether they might not sing. If they do not know the songs and can not sing they may sit quietly. If they can catch the songs they are to sing along with the others."
The Karisu started in. They sang and ate peyote and sang again, and the Comanche did so too. The meeting went along through the night and the leader spoke up and said to his people:
"Before I have eaten too much, I want to tell them what I want them to know."
He told the girl about the young Comanche and his instructions and the girl told the Comanches. She said, "That leader there said this young man from your people came and told of your coming and gave us these instructions. Now you have arrived. He wants to tell you now. We might not all be together tomorrow and he wants to have you all know it. After we get through you are to take this bow and peyote and the songs, and go back home. From this time on all the Indian tribes to the north and the northeast will use this peyote."
This is the way peyote came to us. It is also how we have that song. When it was midnight the song of the young Comanche was sung and given. The leader said, "That is the song the young Comanche sang, the song you are to take from us when you leave."
When morning came the woman was told to tell them: "Now the leader will instruct you as to how peyote meetings should be held. This is what peyote says: 'When our Father made you he made me here on earth to grow with you.'"
The leader said, "Now where you are sitting here watching it, no matter what it looks like now, when it takes on power there is no knowing how it will look. Peyote says: 'I am the power of our Father. Here on earth I do as I please because of my power. I am a man. That is how I do anything that is asked of me and this here is a part of me. Even if I am in the shape of a woman she is only part of me. Take notice of the ground, of the grass that is growing on the ground, of the roots of the grass. I am like the grass. My roots are my children. They increase with me. When it is cut the peyote grows back in the same place. It is the same with grass on its roots.'"
Then the leader said, "Now tell them I am through, but they must remember that wherever they may carry it peyote must come back to us."
That is the female part of peyote. It stands for regrowth. The girl who spoke for the leader was a Comanche who had been captured by the Karisu. That is why in stories about the happenings of peyote a woman can appear. This woman brought us our knowledge of peyote. This happened a long time ago. I know this because I heard people talking about it.
It is clear that the origin story of peyote is, despite certain supernatural elements, more of an historical account than a myth. This marks a difference from certain of the other important rituals in the Plains area. The origin myths of the Sun Dance and of the Winnebago Medicine Dance, for example, both begin with the flood and the creation of the earth and go on to tell how the rituals were given at the beginning of the tribal history and are a necessity for harmonious relations with the universe. The peyote story begins, like a typical Plains Indian life history, with an account of a battle. Part, at least, of the peyote paraphernalia derives from weapons of war: the young Comanche's bow has become the brace used by each singer in turn during the ceremony. However, the conciliatory content of the peyote philosophy is foreshadowed by the suspension of hostilities between the Carrizo Apache and the seven Comanche who arrive as predicted, and our informant assumes that the prayers which begin the ceremony must include a prayer for peace.
A curious feature of the story is that, thought peyote is ascribed to the Apache, still the Comanches manage to receive a good deal of credit for the acquisition of the ritual. The transferral is at the command of the young Comanche who had been killed. And looking large in the story is the Comanche girl captive whose ability as an interpreter is essential to the transfer and whose femininity stands for the female aspect of peyote and for regrowth.
Boas noted the difference in the minds of native informants between "historical" accounts and myths which dealt with happenings lost in the distant past when the world "had not yet assumed its present form, and when mankind was not yet in possession of all the customs and arts that belong to our period." In the peyote story none of the familiar Plains themes, such as Blood Clot Boy, the rolling skull, the ladder of arrows, the star husband, the flood, and the making of the earth, are present. The transition from a mythological period to the age of modern man and modern ways, another feature of most origin myths, is also lacking in the peyote origin story. Though not a myth, the story is, however, in the Plains genre. Such elements as initiation, the transfer of power and the special power to be gained through association with the dead are familiar in Comanche tradition and in the tradition of other Plains groups.
Comanche Ceremony
The Comanche peyote ceremonies are held periodically either for curing, or when an individual or a group of individuals have the money and inclination to sponsor a general gathering. The latter, being the more usual type of meeting will be described first.
A peyote leader, a man known to be particularly well-versed in the ritual, is chosen by the sponsors. Certain individuals among those qualified become favorite leaders and such men often have enough of a following to support regular meetings called weekly at the initiative of the leader. The cost, for peyote "buttons" and food for the breakfast after the meeting, was about thirty-five dollars in 1940.
Some members of the peyote group make two or three trips a year by automobile to Texas or even across the border into Mexico where peyote may be gathered. Salt is tabu on the trip but no special behavior is prescribed on the way down. Sexual intercourse is not allowed during the trip but there is no tabu on intercourse before the journey starts. A woman may go along even if she is not a peyote eater, provided she is not menstruating.
Upon arrival the group appoints a leader who may, in turn, select an assistant. These two make cigarettes, smoke, and address prayers to Father Peyote. If they see an uncut peyote plant while preparing the smokes, the ritual will be addressed to this plant.
No peyote is gathered on the first day at the peyote fields. In the evening the group forms a circle in the open around a small fire and an abbreviated version of the regular ceremony, as described in the following pages, takes place. The group sleeps in the open this night and during the rest of the expedition. On the second day two men or two women gather enough fresh peyote for another short ceremony that evening. They are supposed to cut only enough for this purpose, but if any is left over it will be brought back with the rest of the newly gathered supply.
On the third day the general gathering begins. Each person is on his own, gathering for himself. It is customary to sing while cutting peyote; no special songs are required, not even peyote songs. The plant is cut with a knife, close to the ground, and thereafter no knife is supposed to touch the peyote button. When the button is eaten fresh, the tough outer skin is peeled off with the fingers. In a year or two a new plant will grow on the root of a peyote plant that has been harvested.
An expedition to the peyote fields may take a week or longer; there is no set time.
The usual night for a regular Comanche peyote meeting is Saturday night. It is convenient for the "morning after" to fall on Sunday since the social aftermath of the ceremony often takes all morning following the ritual and a period of rest is welcome after the night-long exercises. There is a suggestion that Saturday night meetings are an adaption to the modern working week in Tekwakï's remark, "When I was raised we did not know when it was Saturday. One day was just like the others."
A special tipi is used for the peyote ceremony; neither the tipi cover nor the poles are allowed to lie on the ground. When not in use, the latter are stacked on a special rack. During the day, before the ceremony, this tipi is set up with the door facing east. Inside the tipi an altar is constructed of earth or clay in the shape of a crescent, the open ends pointing toward the east.
The usual time for a meeting to begin is "at about sundown," or between seven or eight o'clock in the evening, though of course this varies with the time of year. After the leader, and his assistant, the members and visitors file into the tipi. The leader sits opposite the door on the west side, his assistant sits on his right. The other members are ranged about the tipi, friends often sitting together, and the fire-tender, who like the assistant has been appointed for the occasion by the leader, sits just north of the door. Women attend meetings but do not participate very actively. They eat peyote and help with some of the songs sung by the men, but do not sing songs of their own when it would be their turn.
There are women who sing very well. They never lead a song, though they sing with the men. I have never seen a woman beat the drum for some one. It is not customary. I heard of one case where a woman did that: she and her husband were alone having a peyote meeting just for the two of them. A woman does not sing at a peyote meeting. She sits in the circle and passes the rattle but she does not use the rattle. She may join in and help sing a song (Tekwakï).
When the members enter the tipi they turn south and move clockwise ("in the direction of the sun") about the circle until they find seats. They peyotists sit in various ways. Young people tend to sit cross-legged, old people often adopt a kneeling posture, sitting back on the heels. It is usual to rise up on the right knee when singing, the left foot being moved out in front for support.
The leader begins the singing with the opening song and three others to make a set of four. Like the other singers he holds the rattle in his right hand and accompanies his own songs. In his left hand together with four twigs of sage and an eagle feather fan, is held the brace, a decorated wooden staff four or five feet long. This is used as a support while the singer is in the upright kneeling position. His assistant, sitting on his right does the drumming. At the end of the leader's four songs he exchanges instruments with his assistant and drums while the latter sings. The rattle and drum then move on about the circle in the usual sunwise direction, the rattle always moving one step ahead of the drum. Before the instruments and paraphernalia are passed, they are held out toward the fire and a circular sunwise motion is made with them. "Everything in the tipi is handled that way." If other members want to join in on songs, they know they may do so but are expected to sing quietly.
The singing continues around the circle until midnight; throughout this period peyote buttons are consumed. Members are not supposed to leave the tipi for any purpose until the break at midnight but in an emergency the proper etiquette is to get permission from the leader, rise, turn clockwise in one's place, then move around the tipi clockwise until the door is reached. Some members, instead of turning the entire body after rising, may make a circular motion on the ground with the right foot.
If on the way out one comes to another member who is in the act of eating a peyote button, it is proper to stop and wait for him to finish. The feeling is that it is wrong to pass between the fire and a person engaged in this religious act. A person sitting on the south side of the tipi may leave in a counter-clockwise direction if a member is eating peyote in the path of his ritually proper route, but if he crosses the west point (where the leader is sitting), and then discovers that his way is blocked he must stand and wait. At midnight, during the general break in the ceremony, this problem is solved by a cessation in the eating of peyote buttons.
An emphasis is laid on human understanding in the observance of the formalities just described. Thus if a member is nauseated or needs to urinate or is dizzy from the effects of the peyote, others will keep him from making aux pas. "Everybody else is watching and will let you know if you don't see a man eating peyote. They just tell you: 'This man is eating, you'd better wait.'"
Often the request to the leader for permission to leave is in sign language. The advantage of speech by gesture is obvious in a ceremony where singing is often almost continuous. Here again, if the leader does not happen to notice a signal of distress, others will call it to his attention. Sign language is not necessary if one is sitting close to the leader.
During the ceremony a small fire is kept burning in the center of the tipi, between the altar and the door. The fire tender or "fire-chief" keeps the blaze burning steadily; he is free to step outside for firewood whenever it is needed. Elm and willow are favorites for fuel since they burn with a minimum of smoke and sparks. The fire tender is also the official time-keeper. He is asked the time, by the peyote leader, at four intervals, the first soon after the meeting is seated and the fourth at about midnight. He can tell when it is midnight by the position of the stars; one is also supposed to hear coyotes howling at midnight and at dawn. The position of the Corona Borealis (PamudyïKWIkaTï "they are sitting down for a smoke") is sometimes used for an indication of the time. Each time the fire-tender is asked the time he is supposed to step outside the tipi and look.
At midnight the leader interrupts the round of songs for prayer and the drinking of water. This is done even if some member is in the midst of his group of songs at the time. The leader prays and then calls the drum, rattle and other paraphernalia back to himself, and with his assistant drumming, sings the midnight song. He then prays again, after which the fire tender brings in the pail of water and sits at the door with the water before him and waits for orders from the leader. When he receives word, the fire tender carries the pail around the tipi in the usual sunrise direction until it comes to the leader's assistant. The assistant drinks, then the leader, after which the pail is passed from person to person around the tipi. Occasionally the pail is passed to the leader instead of being carried and some leaders drink first. By allowing the assistant precedence the pail can go sunwise without interruption. Rarely, the water may skip the assistant and finally reach him at the end of the entire circuit.
The period during which the water is being passed seems to be the most informal part of the midnight break. It is during this time that members feel free to go outside, stretch their legs and attend to body functions.
The fire tender has two stakes on which this water pail may be hung. These are fifteen or twenty yards from the tipi, one on either side, so that the water may be hung upwind from the tipi no matter what the wind's direction may be. This is apparently to safeguard the ritual purity of the water. Similarly a menstruating woman is not supposed to pass between a man and the wind. At a doctoring meeting the water is not supposed to be downwind from the patient. In most meetings this avoidance is "done anyway to guard against accidents." There is no special name for these stakes and a convenient tree in the right direction makes an equally fitting place to hang the water pail.
When the water has gone the rounds and all the members are back in their places, the fire tender takes the bucket back to its place and returns to the tipi. The leader now goes outside, taking with him a special reed whistle, or, if a reed whistle is not available, one made of an eagle bone. Outside the tipi the leader faces to the east and blows a sharp blast on the whistle. Then he walks to the south, to the west, and to the north of the tipi, stopping at each quarter of the compass to face in that direction and blow the whistle. He then enters the tipi, takes his seat, and a period of smoking and praying ensues.
The leader produces tobacco and asks the fire tender to roll a cigarette. For cigarette papers the Comanche prefer the dried leaf of the blackjack oak. When the cigarette has been prepared, the fire tender is ordered to light it and pray. A live coal is used for the light, two sticks being used to lift the coal from the fire. The cigarette is then brought to the leader, the fire tender returns to his seat, and the leader begins his prayer. He blows smoke to Mother Earth, the Sun, the Beings above the clouds, to "what is below the earth," peyote, to "what may be in the air," and to the eagle, the principal sacred bird in peyote. The following is a prayer that Tekwakï has often used:
Well! you, great Earth, may we live upon you in blessing. Well! You, Sun-bird, receive this smoke! May we live beneath you in blessing. Bless us, you our master, bless us! May we live in blessing. You also White Peyote, receive this smoke. May we continue living in blessing under you! And you also our Father, who created us, the earth, and everything that is on it.
The prayer is for guidance in this life on earth, for safety, for protection against enemies and disease. Recently a few leaders have included prayers to Jesus.
After the leader, other members smoke and pray. Those who do not wish to pray smoke in silence and meditate on the deity. During this midnight period green cedar twigs are put on the fire and the peyote members breathe in the fragrant smoke and purify themselves with it. After the prayers and purification the meeting goes on with singing as before until dawn.
"It seems everyone inside can tell dawn is coming even though the tipi door-flap is closed." As the members begin to sense the approach of daylight, the songs reflect this feeling. Although these are not formal dawn or morning songs, references are working into the texts concerning daylight, the rays of the rising sun, awakening, and getting up. Admonitions are heard in the songs to "sit straight," and "to arise." These are addressed to members who seem to be dozing. Herman Asenap, who was interpreting for Tekwakï said, "It is an awful sleepy ordeal to go through one of the meetings."
When the gray streak of dawn appears in the east, water is brought in again, this time by a specially appointed woman, often the wife of the sponsor of the meeting. Whether or not she is the sponsor's wife, the water woman is chosen on the basis of "respectability." She leaves the tipi to get water when told to do so by the leader who then tells the fire tender to clean up around the fire. The fire is replenished and the fire tender tells the leader when this task has been accomplished. The leader now calls for the drum, rattle, and other paraphernalia and tells the group, "We are going to sing the morning song." The woman returns to the tipi with the water and calls that she is outside. The leader replies and starts the morning song with the other members helping. At the conclusion of the song the woman steps inside and sits at the entrance, placing the water, in a bucket covered with a white cloth, directly before her.
Three more of the regular peyote songs are now sung by the leader and his assistant after which the woman rolls a blackjack cigarette. She puffs ceremonially and prays. When she indicates to the leader that she is through he requests the assistant to bring her cigarette to him. The assistant does so and the leader likewise smokes and prays. Then the butt of the cigarette is placed by the altar mound back of the fire and the water is passed. The water woman drinks first and the bucket is then passed around the circle. When it returns to the woman she takes it, makes a circuit of the entire tipi, and goes out.
By this time a frugal meal, the "peyote breakfast," has been prepared by the women of the sponsor's family. It is brought to the tipi and the leader is notified. He then sings a final group of four songs, the last of which is the closing song or "crow song." The sill pins of the tipi are loosened and the food pushed inside. The fire tender receives it and starts it around the circle, he being the last person to have any. A less common procedure is for the fire-tender to carry the food around to the leader, the eating thus starting at the west point in the tipi.
Roasted corn, corn mush, plums, and dried and pounded meat are the main fare of the breakfast. European food is avoided, particularly salt, but an exception is sugar which is used copiously. Fat and sugar are added to the pounded meat. Water and a towel accompany the food around the circle and each member washes before eating.
We do not eat breakfast until the close of the meeting. The food is always the end of the thing. Our closing song is an Apache song. Kayate is an Apache word. Then the ropes are taken off the drum, it is taken all apart. We all quit by that song.
The meeting is thus customarily over after the peyote breakfast, but Itovic added that here again the practice depends upon the leader. Occasionally a meeting continues until noon, about time for the singing to go around the circle twice more after breakfast. When the meeting does close with the meal, the members very often remain lying around in the tipi or under arbors made of brush. They chat informally, practice peyote songs, (it is at this time that novices do a good deal of their learning), or simply doze, making up for the sleep lost during the ceremony.
The Curing Ceremony
In certain ways the Comanche peyote meeting for curing differs from the regular meeting. It is usually smaller, consisting of the patient or patients, the family and a few close friends may be present even though they may not all be members of the peyote cult. The usual prayers for general welfare, long life, etc., are made, and in addition there are prayers specific to the needs of a particular patient. If the sick man is ambulatory he comes to a special tipi owned by the peyote leader but the meeting may take place in a sick man's home. Though curing meetings are often held on Saturday night they may be held on any evening in an emergency.
As stated above, the water, tipi cover and tipi poles are all handled with extreme care in a curing meeting.
The Officers
Rather than overload the running account of the regular peyote ceremony with too much detail, additional material has been reserved for the following pages concerning officers and paraphernalia.
The leader (Ka'PanaKarïgwapl: "west side sitting chief") is the central figure of the ceremony. Our informants considered that there were perhaps eight or ten men whose standing in the peyote group qualified them for leadership. Certain of these men are more popular than others.
Nearly every move, except for the regular progression of songs, the prayers, and the eating of peyote, is made at the request of the leader or only after his permission has been obtained. The steps of the ritual may vary according to the leader's own particular way of handling it, for example, as mentioned above, the ceremonial breakfast usually begins with the serving of the man just south of the door but may begin with the leader if he wishes it. The meeting may end with the breakfast or it may be continued until noon. Tekwakï attended a meeting that continued for four nights and three days. No meeting can be held without a leader; among the Comanche there is always a high degree of dependence upon his instructions.
The fire tender (Ko'Towapl, "fire chief") must see that the fire is in order, watch the passage of time, carry in water at midnight and help in the distribution of food and water at dawn.
The fire tender must not let the coals scatter out, he coaxes the coals close together. There is a special man just for that. He knows how to do this, he does not have to be told and he takes part in the rest of the meeting just like all the others. (Itovic)
He makes frequent trips outside the tipi to the wood supply which is stacked just south of the door, "towards the sun." When not engaged in his duties he sits in the first place north of the door.
The assistant (TïroyawapI, "cedar chief") like the other officers is chosen by the leader. He acts as the leader's drummer and assists in handling the paraphernalia.
It is interesting to note that both informants say the cedar chief or assistant acts throughout as the drummer for the leader and is seated on his right. They give the somewhat elaborate procedure for handling the water bucket with him in this position. In La Barre's account of the Kiowa-Comanche rite the leader's drummer is on his right and his cedar man, if there is one, is on his left.
The water woman who brings the drinking water in the morning is the fourth person who has an assigned function in the course of the peyote ceremony. Elderly female relatives are often chosen for this function, post-climacteric women being preferred.
The Paraphernalia
The drum in peyote is ideally a small iron kettle partially filled with water and with a canvas diaphragm. Small stones are placed under the covering material at intervals below the rim of the kettle, and around the knobs thus formed a rope is twisted. This rope is secured by strands passing under the kettle and the whole thing can be tightened by torsion of the vertical strands, using short pieces of sticks for the purpose. A pin—hole is usually made in the canvas, "so it will sound better."
A rubber diaphragm is sometimes made by stretching a piece of inner-tubing over the kettle and securing it with twine wrapped just below the rim. Some of our informants made serviceable and resonant drums with inner-tubing stretched over a #10 tin can. Here too the container was partially filled with water and a pin-hole was made in the diaphragm. Still another type of container used is an ordinary medium-sized earthenware bean pot. A small unpadded stick was used in all cases for a drumstick.
The rattle is made of a small round gourd on a straight handle, about eighteen inches long, which passes through the gourd and projects a little more than an inch beyond the top. The handle is usually beaded over its entire length and the distal end tufted with horsehair dyed red, yellow, or a pale pink. In beading the handle a favorite design is an alternation of dark and light color in twelve bands. Small stones inside the gourd sound against its dry shell when the instrument is shaken. It is smaller in the bowl and longer in the handle than the usual gourd rattle.
The brace, according to the Comanche origin story for the peyote ceremony, derives from the bow of the scalped Comanche warrior. It is a staff by which a singer supports himself when he rises on one knee to sing. In the early days of Comanche peyote any stick could be used for this purpose:
…it did not make any difference what kind of stick it was. It was just for comfort in singing. For a long time we used just any straight stick too, in imitation of the old people. Now we prefer a bow of bow d'arc (bois d'arc—osage orange). These bows are not quite the same as a bow that would be used for hunting. There are no notches and no string. They are straight and there is just a little decoration above the grip (Tekwakï).
The Comanche word for the brace is náci•'To (cane). The word "bow" (é•to) is never applied to the ritual implement.
Sage and feathers are also part of the paraphernalia that is passed around the tipi from singer to singer as the meeting goes on and the members take their turns drumming and singing. Four twigs of sage and a feather fan are held with the brace in the left hand by each member as he sings. Peyote buttons to be consumed during the meeting are kept on a bed of sage twigs and sage is chewed and smeared over the body as one of the rituals of purification. Tekwakï mentioned that sage is much used in curing ceremonies.
The whistle used by the leader at midnight is called hú•Kumudyake (tree cry). It is made from a bamboo-like reed. When the reed whistle cannot be obtained an eagle-bone whistle may be used. In either case it is a simple one-block whistle with no stops.
It is not my intention to make a detailed comparison of the peyote ritual with other ceremonies in the Plains area but I should like to point out here that although the peyote ceremony has a distinct flavor of its own, many of its components may be found in other Plains rituals. There are a few features which are not at least approximated in the major ceremonies of long standing. The punctilio with respect to direction of motion and the use of the number four is familiar to anyone acquainted with Plains religion. Other similarities are listed below.
The Hako, for example, had special songs for dawn, elaborate care with water, a sacred journey, invocation of a plant, the eagle bone whistle and ritual circuits of the lodge. Nearly all of these features were much more highly formalized than in peyote but the familiar ideas were there.
The Sun Dance had a somewhat different roster of features reminiscent of parts of peyote practice and paraphernalia. The preparation of an altar, often with a dry painting, is an example. The use of eagle bone whistles blown in ceremonially prescribed directions, of sage as a ceremonial carpet and also carried by participants, and of cedar incense, may also be cited.
The Ghost Dance had the clockwise motion of participants, singing in connection with trance, stress on vision, and an ethical content in its teachings, again all features which may be found in peyote.
However, the particular form and combination of these elements is unique for peyote. Though there is singing in all three of the older Plains ceremonies mentioned above, it is nowhere else done in the peyote manner. In the Ghost Dance songs are unaccompanied and are first sung by the leaders, then by the entire assemblage of dancers. There are opening and closing songs; it is interesting that the latter are called "crow" songs and refer to this bird in the Ghost Dance and also in the Comanche peyote ceremony, but in the Ghost Dance we do not find solo singing by turns, the use of song cycles, the extemporization of songs during the ritual and the constant creation of new songs, often through visions.
In the Hako there is a great deal of singing as the ritual develops but each song, and in fact each stanza of each song, precedes some ceremonial act and is intimately connected with it. This is true for only four of the songs in peyote. In the Winnebago Medicine Dance there is singing by turns but it is the participating bands, not individuals, that alternate.
No other type of Plains ceremony uses the type of drum and rattle prescribed for peyote. The eagle bone whistles in the Sun Dance were used by all the dancers, not by a leader as at the midnight break in the peyote ritual. Though plants are revered and obtained in a ceremonial manner in the Sun Dance, and though corn is addressed by a kinship term in the Hako, no other major ceremony of the Plains carried the role of a plant quite so far as the peyote ritual where the cactus is a drug, a sacrament and a deity.
Comanche Peyote Songs
Perhaps the best evaluation of the nature of the material may be made from a description of the field situation. The trip was oriented primarily around the study of linguistics. Because of other interests we did not press the issue when then occasion to attend a peyote ceremony did not arise.
Itovic, a man of about fifty and the first informant on peyote, was a good member of the Post Oak (Lutheran) Mission and had been since he withdrew from the peyote group some thirty years before. Although he came to us as a linguistic informant, we discovered that he was willing to talk about peyote and that he had a remarkably fresh memory for a considerable number of the songs. He explained that for many years he had been teaching them to boys who came to him for this purpose. We recorded all the peyote songs he knew.
Naya, a man somewhat older than Itovic, who was sometimes a Lutheran and sometimes a peyotist, rendered the midnight song.
We were eager to check the information and song material with an actively participating peyote member and for one day we had the help of Pïcïa, also in his fifties, who fulfilled this condition. At the time Pïcïa was making pilgrimages to the peyote fields in Texas two or three times a year and bringing back "peyote buttons" for Comanche use.
Itovic often mentioned Tekwakï, a man of about Naya's age who was a well known peyote leader in the Indiahoma region, and we finally had the good fortune to engage Tekwakï's services as a regular informant concerning peyote usage and the music. All of our interviews and discussions with the four informants took place in the Indiahoma schoolhouse where there was a source of electricity for the recording machine.
Most of our information came from Itovic and Tekwakï. It is interesting that none of the songs recorded by Itovic were of his own composition. He himself stated that this was rather odd, that peyote members often do think of songs themselves or learn them from peyote, or seek them in a vision by going to some lonely place and fasting. Most of the songs he sang were, as he said, "handed down," and a large percentage of them he identified as Apache. "They came from the Apache, from whom peyote came to the Comanche." In most cases he was unable to give translations of the song texts.
The great majority of Tekwakï's songs were Comanche. Of a total of sixty-three songs, fifty-two were sung in the Comanche language and twenty-nine of these were designated by him as his own compositions. Eleven of his songs seem to have been Apache in origin; seven of these were explicitly identified as such.
It was Tekwakï who gave us, besides a wealth of song material, an unusual insight into the process of native song-making. And in telling us what he did of his feelings with respect to peyote and peyote songs, Tekwakï revealed himself to us as an admirable as well as devout person.
Instrumental and Vocal Technique
Detailed information was collected concerning instrumental and vocal technique among the Comanche, which is given below. Probably at most points these details hold for the performance of peyote songs in other tribes, but data are scarce. Where available they are mentioned under the tribal headings.
The Rattle
The rattle is held upright in front of the body, the elbow bent, and lower and closer to the body than the hand. The rattle is shaken from the wrist with comparatively little action of the shoulder and elbow. Violent action is to be avoided: if one moves the arm from the elbow when shaking the rattle, the saying goes, one may be struck by lightening.
According to Tekwakï some singers shake the rattle away from the body, some towards the body, and some across and downwards at each beat. It is not unusual for a singer to extend his arm gradually in the course of a song and to draw it back towards the body at the end. Although Tekwakï does not do this he mentioned it as a stylistic feature in the rattle technique of some singers.
The singer sets the pace of the song and may signal with the little rattle to indicate the end. Tekwakï sometimes slowed his tempo in the course of a song, listening for some word from peyote. "When I slow up I listen so that maybe I hear something. When I speed up it is because I have heard it." In a case like this the drummer must follow the lead of the singer.
Since a song may be sung through once or repeated as many as three or four times, the singer may indicate which is the last time by raising the rattle at the end. "Sometimes, when two men haven't been to a meeting for quite a while, and one likes a song, and wants to make sure the other is coming along, he signals for the end by raising the rattle." This practice is a stylistic constant with some players and may be done rarely or not at all by others. Itovic stated explicitly that there is no symbolism involved, such as a reference to the eagle, or the sun, in raising the rattle. The idea of such symbolism was suggested by Herman Asenap, the interpreter.
Singers are particular about the rattle. The one provided by the peyote leader for the ceremony should not be too heavy to allow quick sensitive beating. Too much weight in the bowl made Itovic unhappy on one occasion. In song 10 he missed several beats in the course of the song and complained that the rattle was not satisfactory for this reason.
Drumming
T.: Even though you say that, if some one would beat the drum for you, you would go about from place to place singing.
I.: With drumming it is only good when a good sound is heard. It comes not from hard beating but from a putting sound like this (he shows it on the table). Then it catches the stride well. (Fragment of conversation between Tekwakï and Itovic, accidentally recorded at the beginning of a song.)
Before playing, the drummer shakes his instrument so that the diaphragm is thoroughly moistened by the water in the body of the drum. In the case of the canvas diaphragm this treatment undoubtedly increases the tension and improves the tone. Moisture invades and thickens, thereby shortening, vegetable fiber. However, the unusual pinhole is made in a rubber drum head as well, and the instrument is shaken until a small amount of water appears on the outside. Albert Asenap, Herman's son, who was drumming for Tekwakï, maintained that this procedure improved the tone here too. Either type of drum is played with a rapid sustained beat; droplets of water are thrown off in a fine haze by the vibrating drumhead.
Occasionally, while playing, the drummer may alter the pitch of his instrument by the pressure of the thumb of his free hand on the diaphragm. As the pressure is increased the pitch of the drum tone rises. The new tone is held for a few beats, then the pressure is relaxed and the tone drops back to its original level. This variation in playing is employed when trying out a newly assembled drum; it does not occur during the accompaniment of the peyote songs.
The drum beat is usually in time with the rhythm of the vocal melody, the great majority of which are in duple meter. Occasionally the drum runs ahead of the singer, evenly and by intention. Tekwakï in singing sometimes slowed his tempo markedly and at such times the drummer is supposed to adjust his beat to that of the singer.
Because signals are given with the rattle for song endings and for variations in tempo such as the one noted above, Tekwakï ceased to act as drummer for other singers when he became blind. He now asks his assistant to move from his right to his left side and substitute for him in drumming for the next man. At the close of this man's four songs the assistant goes around the tipi sunwise until he is back in his original position on Tekwakï's right.
All exchanging of drummers is made with the leader's permission. A man who is a poor drummer is glad to be relieved of his turn; after he has sung, he hands the rattle and singer's paraphernalia on to the next man and moves over to make room for a substitute drummer. Usually the substitute is directed by the leader to make the sunwise circuit of the tipi until he comes to his place on the right of the singer. Sometimes, however, two members who like to sing and drum for each other sit side by side and hand the instruments back and forth. In this case the man on the right sings first after handing the drum across to his partner. Then the drum moves back one step; the first man drums while the man on the left sings. When he has finished singing, he will be drummer again as the singing moves on in the usual manner.
The drumming is felt to have more effect than a mere statement of rhythm. Itovic said:
It seems the drum just raises the voice up in the air.... What I want when I sing is to go up high with my voice and come down. I like to sing high but now I am old and start low, though it gets a little higher. The drum forces the voice up higher.
Singing
The usual peyote song begins with a rattle and drum introduction. After a few measures of very rapid playing during which the rattle is often shaken tremolo the instruments slow to the rhythm which will be maintained throughout the song. At this point Tekwakï sometimes makes a short announcement, saying something about the song. When he sang the opening song even in the informal recording situation, Tekwakï made the announcement that he felt should always precede this particular melody: "Now this day, that one (Tekwakï), is going to sing the song that has helped bring him through life so far."
There were differences of voice production among our four informants. Naya, Pïcïa, and Tekwakï sang in a buoyant, lusty, somewhat rubato manner. Itovic sang much more quickly and sometimes, as an ornamental technique, with his throat constricted so that for a few notes the tone was decidedly fricative. These were always repeated notes somewhere in the middle of phrases and pitched low in the range of the song.
Other characteristics of the Comanche singing of peyote songs were the frequent fairly strong accents, the occasional break of the voice into the falsetto register, and the use of vocal pulsations particularly on the notes held for two or more beats. These ornamental devices were used more frequently in the songs of widest range.
The accents are used more often, as in European singing, to mark the beginning of rhythmic units or "measures." It is a stylistic feature in Comanche peyote singing that the attack is almost always strong and is sometimes very strong. The "robust" quality of the songs owes much to this feature: even in the milder singing of Itovic the attacca is often more pronounced than in most European singing. These accents occur characteristically at the beginning of a downward movement in the melodic line.
The break into falsetto occurs in a few songs in the cases of both Tekwakï and Itovic. As with the accent, the break comes before a descent in pitch; it is very brief in duration and is best written as an appogiatura connected with either the preceding or the following note depending on the stress.
A mildly pulsating tone is a common feature in these songs. Pulsations beyond the ordinary vibrato of the voice are given most frequently to the longer notes in the melody, especially when these notes follow one another on the same tone as in the he ne ne ne of an introduction or coda.
A feature that should be mentioned in connection with Comanche singing is throat clearing. In a large number of the songs both Itovic and Tekwakï cleared their throats during the drum introduction or, often, after the vocal introduction had begun. In nearly all cases the singer goes right on singing noisily clearing his throat at the same time. The tempo is not interrupted. Less frequently our informant cleared their throats in the course of the main body of the song. It was done in the same way, the tone of the melody being interrupted but not the rhythm.
A word change at the end of a stanza may be another cue for the drummer that a song will repeat. Thus in one song the phrase háyaKimayó is repeated with only slight variations until the end of a musical phrase is reached. But four times in the song the text changes to háyakiniyá followed by the vocables he no yo wa. This, Tekwaki said, was a sign for a repetition.
The Melodies
Within the group of thirty Comanche examples comparisons may be made. It happened that those rendered by Itovic represented older songs dating from at least as far back as 1910 when he left the peyote movement. He remarked himself that he did not know the later songs. Tekwaki, on the other hand, currently active in the cult, was not only familiar with the old songs still in use but was still learning and composing songs. He had considerable pride in not repeating himself or other singers in a ceremony
There are differences between these two groups of Comanche songs that become apparent at once. One of the most noticeable differences is in the textural pattern. The songs of Itovic tend to ramble on with rather long, full content while those of Tekwakï are more choppy. In twelve songs out of fourteen the text consists of short phrases as "It is coming," or "Wings beating," repeated over and over. Of songs of this type, Itovic sang five in a total of thirteen melodies.
In the melodies collected from the two singers the range provides another contrast.
In Tekwakï's songs the range is usually small, often over a distance of only a fifth while the scale frequently consists of but three notes. Itovic also sings songs of this pattern but more often sings songs ranging from an octave to an octave and a half. All of the songs are sung with at least one complete repetition, and often more. An analysis of the melodic phrase pattern usually reveals before the first full repetition a sequence such as |ABCD|BCD|. Variations of this are |ABC|BC|; |AABCD|-BCD|. The full song would then be |ABCD|BCD| repeated two or more times. This is the predominant pattern in Tekwakï's songs: there are nine of this type and five with a straight |ABC| or |ABCD| and repeat. Itovic also sings five songs with straight repeats, but only four which employ the partial repeat. The other four are more complex, as |ABCDE|CDE|ABCDE|.
The use of paired patterns which is so marked in Ghost Dance melodies occurs to a lesser degree in much of the Comanche peyote music. Here another marked contrast between the songs of Itovic and Tekwakï may be noted. In three songs of the former the pairing principle is strong but in the rest it is quite absent, whereas eight of Tekwakï's songs contain more or less pairing.
There is a rhythmic difference between the songs of Itovic and those of Tekwakï. In the former a large number are irregular in the smaller divisions of the phrases, some "measures" containing two beats, others three, and still others four or five. This in a large phrase of twelve beats there may well be four measures of three, two, three, and four beats respectively. Accompanying this irregularity there is often a lively use of syncopation.
The song from the origin story and the four set songs (Opening, Midnight, Dawn, and Closing) were said to be Carrizo Apache, as were others. In addition there are two "imitation" Apache songs. Tekwakï said of one "I learned an Apache song something like this," and "I was trying to sound like an Apache."
The main difference between the straight Comanche and the "Apache-Comanche" songs is in the texts. The ranges of the "Apache" songs are intermediate on the whole and paired patterns are infrequent. However, both Tekwakï's imitation Apache songs do have paired patterns.
After a consideration of these differences one might wonder why, after all, these songs sound so similar to the ear. Of course the fact that they are all performed with a somewhat similar vocal technique accounts for some of this impression. But more significant musicologically are the many structural similarities to which we now turn.
In general all of these songs have a similar pattern of instrumental introduction and accompaniment. The drum and rattle begin quite fast, sometimes even tremolo. After a few beats they slow down and fall into a duple or undifferentiated rhythm which is maintained throughout the song. At the end, near the beginning of the final phrase, there is an interruption of several beats in the accompaniment which is then resumed accelerando and the voice and accompaniment together hurry to the end of the song.
In almost all of the songs there is a vocal introduction on vocables such as he ne ne ne ne for from six to twelve beats, a slight pause, and then the song proper is begun. This introduction is usually sung on the "tonic" or base note of the song scale and the singer then jumps up to the fifth, sixth, or octave for the beginning of the main body of the song. A jump up of a fifth is most frequent in the Comanche songs and longer intervals are common in the melodies which our informants said came from the Apache.
The tempi are always quite fast—between a metronome speed of 130 for a quarter-note and 140 for the most part, though some are slower and a few are as fast as 150.
The number of different phrases and the lengths of these phrases show further similarities in most of these songs. There are usually from three to five different phrases in a song and the lengths in general run around nine, ten, or eleven beats with a tendency to lengthen out in final phrases where coda-like vocable formulae on the tonic are often added.
Phrase compasses are similarly variable in all these songs. Phrases may be one note in compass, two, three, and on up to an octave. There is a unique example of a phrase extending in range to the fifth beyond the octave. The fifth is by far the most frequent phrase compass but there is a liberal use of octaves, sevenths, and sixths; many songs lean heavily on thirds.
An unusual feature in a number of these songs is that they are constructed on a scale of a "broken triad." Thus the scales of songs if transposed to the key of C would all be either C-E-G or C-E-flat-G, the major or minor triad. It is no accident when it is found in approximately a third of the examples.
The melodic line shows a general similarity in all the songs considered. After the introduction it begins high and moves down to a base note which has a strong feeling of the tonic.
The melodic movement is active with strong accents and pulsations. The movement downward tends to be smoother, with shorter jumps, then the movement upward. There is much more movement downward in steps of seconds or, particularly, thirds. Intervals of fifths, sixths, or octaves occur in jumps upward between phrases before the downward movement begins again.
The tabulation of the final notes in each phrase of a melody gives the analyst a pattern which reveals much of the inner structure of the song. Thus a numerical series such as 8, 5, 3, 1 indicates that in each of the four phrases of the melody the final note is on a successively lower pitch, moving from the eighth to the tonic or base note.
In the Comanche examples the pattern of "finals" varies from a formula indicating gradual descent such as 10, 8, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1 to a pattern which shows that all phrases, from the first to the last, end on the tonic: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. The latter type, which is frequently associated with songs of limited range, indicates a "collapsing" type of melodic descent.
The prevalence of the collapsing type of phrase pattern is clear for the Comanche melodies. Only one song reserves the tonic for the last phrase. Moreover, the fact that this pattern appears in songs of wider range indicates that this feature may often be independent of considerations of compass. There is virtually no transposition of phrases in these songs nor is there a great deal of variation.
Another similarity throughout these songs is in the syllabification. There is one syllable to a note for the most part, though in perhaps half the songs an occasional "yo" or "ne" or "na" may be sung on two eighth notes, almost always on a descending third.
And lastly, the notes themselves are almost always either eighth or quarter notes. This feature does much to give all of these songs a feeling of regularity even though there is syncopation and considerable variation in measure lengths. The absence of dotted notes and notes held for two or more beats is striking to any one who is accustomed to Western European musical tradition.
The overall effect of these similarities is to create in the listener an impression of a unity in style for these Comanche songs in spite of the differences given above. Whether this "style" may be observed in the peyote songs of other groups will be the subject of the following pages.
David P. McAllester
Peyote Music, 1949
The Comanche and His Tribe
The plains area of Central North America includes the greater portion of Central Canada, the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Western Texas. This great area was entirely devoid of trees, except for a few cottonwoods along the streams, and was covered by grass in the eastern section and by semidesert vegetation in the west. The life of the plains was adapted to the open country, for speed and endurance were developed to a surprising degree. The fauna was made up of such species as jack rabbit, coyote, antelope, deer in the hilly regions; birds, such as prairie chicken, quail, eagle, and Mexican pheasant, besides the chaparral hen, but the principal form of plains life was the bison. From the northern most part of Canada to the Rio Grande, these animals moved in large herds, sometimes numbering up in the thousands. The life of the carnivorous animals, such as the lobo wolves and coyotes was conditioned upon the hunting of these herds. Much more was the life of the Plains Indians conditioned and dictated by the movements, habits, and abundance of the bison.
When one speaks of a people's life being conditioned by environment, the problem of cultural areas at once arises. According to archeological data, the continent is divided up according to the life habits of the inhabitants. There is the Atlantic Coast, or fishing area; the Gulf Coast or timber, basket-making and reed area; the Mississippi Valley area, the Plains area, the Rocky Mountain and Plateau area, the Pacific Coast area, the Northwest area, the Aztec culture area, etc. These areas are not sharply defined, but the Indians, according to Wissler, in each area have a center where characteristics peculiar to the region develop and spread to the edges where they blend with those fusing from other centers of development. For example, the Pueblos wove cotton, made pottery, cultivated the soil, and maintained a highly ritualistic religion; the Apaches made some pottery of a poor sort, had a rather ritualistic religion, but they did not weave. In common with all other plains tribes, they wore skins and were hunters and nomads. Here, the essentially pueblo culture blended with the truly plains culture to form a sort of hybrid neither one nor the other, but partaking of both. It is necessary, therefore, to keep this fusing process in mind if we are to explain the varying customs of the Comanches.
One element which aided the development of the peculiarly plains life was the early mode of transportation. The rivers were, in most places, too shallow to be navigable for any distance. The Indians had no beasts of burden until the advent of the Spanish pony; hence they kept close to the flanks of the bison herds, living on them constantly. The Indian had domesticated the dog and used the travois, but the travois was, apparently, introduced from the Mississippi Dakotas. The dog was harnessed to two poles and the ends dragging behind him like a V with a cross bar in the middle for the burden. Such a method of carrying burdens necessitated slow movements, and thus the plains Indians were not much modified by outside cultures until comparatively recent time. At least, the modification was so slow that it is difficult to trace.
Besides the dependence on the bison and use of the travois, the plains area is significant for its stone and bone works. The Indians did not polish stone in many cases, merely chipping it by concussion and retouching by pressure. In the eastern portion, however, some polishing was done. The bow and arrow, of course, formed the basis of their hunting life; the lance and tomahawk were also extensively used. Ornaments and chipping tools as well as needles, so says one of Coronado's men, were used all over the plains.
The architecture of the plains area, in one form or another, was generally based upon the tipi, a tent made of sticks drawn over poles stuck in a circle and the tops fastened together. Some of the Dakotas used a kind of sod house, but the tipi was practically general.
Plains art took two principal forms, namely, the dressing of skins, and the decorating of them with beadwork. In most of the plains tribes, the beadwork was symbolic of religious ideas or of totemic significance. The skins were sometimes painted for this purpose with totemic symbols. The plains designs were geometric from the Canadian Indians to the Comanches and Navajos who were not plains Indians at all. This transfer of the geometric design is, probably, another example of the transfer of customs by transfusion.
The religious concepts of the plains present a mixture of animism, fetishism and worship of the Great Spirit. They believed in spirits in nearly everything animate and inanimate; they believed in carrying charmed objects about with them to protect them, and lastly they worshipped the Great Spirit, ruler of the world.
The Comanches were one of these great plains tribes, but they had many distinct characteristics which distinguish them from all the others.
The earliest authentic reports of the Comanche region are found in the reports of Don Coronado to the viceroy of Mexico City. The documents describe the territory occupied by the Comanches as the land lying between the height of land which divides the rivers which run down to the south sea from the rivers which run down into the north sea, meaning the Colorado of the West, etc., and Rio Grande, Pecos, Colorado, Trinity and Red. The expedition first passed through the land of the Pueblos, for the documents tell of Indians who wove cotton, made pottery, and tilled the soil. When the Spaniards came out upon the plain, in eastern New Mexico and western Texas, the character of the Indians changed. Here the Indians lived with the cows as the Spaniards called the bison. They described the Indians as speaking a deep, rough language, having no beauty but very sonorous. The Indians, who might or might not have been Comanches, stalked the buffalo on foot. The warriors would cover themselves with the skins of the buffalo, two men to a skin, and secrete themselves among the herd. Then, they would proceed to kill all the buffalo they wished, often without the other members of the herd knowing what was taking place. The houses of the Indians of this section were of the time-honored tipi. The structures were very crude, but they were portable and in harmony with the life of the people.
The agriculture of the early Indians of the section was, apparently, in a very backward state. Most of the tribes did not cultivate the soil, for the climate was too arid, and the abundance of the bison herds made farming by irrigation unnecessary. Upon the lower and southern levels, the Indians grew small patches of corn. The corn growing may have been borrowed from the Indians of East Texas. Likewise, I find one mention of the cultivation of the tobacco plant by the central and southern tribes. This culture was not certain, for there is no general mention of it. The Indians had tobacco, that is certain, but they might easily have obtained it from East Texas tribes or the Pueblos.
The organization of the early tribes is as vague. The documents describe them as having a tribal organization based upon a war lord who was elected by the soldiers, so run the documents, and his power was almost absolute, especially in time of war. There seems to have been the conventional Indian council with powers varying with the character of the military chief. Their weapons consisted of the bow and arrow, the lance, and knife. I found no mention of the knife. The stone artifacts found in this region are tantamount to an assertion that they certainly used them. At any rate, they had them, very well perfected, some time later.
The wives of the braves were, of course, private property of their husbands, but there does not seem to have been any polygamy. As the families were usually small, the fact of the absence of polygamy is striking. There is no record, however, one instance of a chieftain who had three wives. I presume it depended upon the wealth of the man as to how many wives he could have.
The extent of the Comanche range, authoritatively known since 1700, was from the headwaters of the Guadalupe, Colorado, Trinity, Red, and Arkansas westward thence to the Rocky Mountains, and southward to the Bolson de Mapimi across the Mexican border. They were still hunters in Coronado's time, but their entire culture had undergone a radical change with the introduction of the horse.
With the exception of one or two tribes, the Comanches were very tall men. This belief is contrary to general opinion, but the Patagonians were the tallest men in the world; the Comanche and Iroquois came next. They were well built and inclined to be corpulent at times. The tribes living nearer the Rocky Mountains, however, were rather short of stature, with very broad chests. This condition was due, probably, to the excessive rarity of the atmosphere. Their heads were long and narrow, their faces well-formed, having rather high foreheads. Finally, they were a very splendid race physically.
To such a people, the introduction of the horse opened up entirely new prospects. Coronado and later Spaniards sold horses to the natives. Likewise, the Spanish ponies were admirably adapted to life on the great level plains and propagated with marvelous rapidity. The horses of North and South America had died out in Pleistocene times, and no horses had been known until they were reintroduced by the Spaniards under Cortez in 1520. The ponies soon spread through the northern and central portions of Mexico and entered Texas. When the Comanches and other prairie tribes began to use them is not exactly known, but by 1700 they had become herders so far as horses were concerned. There was an immediate and sweeping change in the life of the people. The use of the horse made possible the enormous range described above. Instead of stalking on foot, the Comanches and other tribes could now, if necessary, run down and kill the bison on the open plains. The introduction of the horse produced a duel complex, a bison-horse complex. The entire life and thought of the people was organized about these two animals. The horse was a necessity after this introduction; a wife was rather a luxury. The horse carried the Comanche in battle, carried his food, house, and personal belongings. The horse was even utilized for clothing, for horse hair garments were made, not by weaving for felting, but by platting the horse hair into ropes, bridles, robes, and skirts. The horse, possibly, became as fundamental in the life of the Comanche as was the buffalo. He lived in the saddle and soon became the best horseman of the plains.
The method of securing these horses was rather unique. A body of horsemen would secret themselves in a clump of chaparella or shinnery; another group would scatter out over the plain for miles. Gradually, they would close in fanwise, driving the horses before them. When the horses drew near to the thicket, the men concealed there would burst suddenly out into the midst of the horses, lassoing and throwing instantly. If any escaped, these were pursued by riders who were mounted on the swiftest steeds. James relates a story that a band of Comanches tamed a stallion caught in this manner in two hours. It took two hours to capture him and two hours to bring him into submission. The Comanches were, undoubtedly the best wranglers in the world, but I doubt this story. At least, other stories, not quite so fanciful, prove that the Comanches understood and managed their horses in a way in which a white man never comprehended.
The Comanche was, probably, one of the greatest horsemen in the world. Many authentic statements of their endurance and skill are on record. It is said that a Comanche could ride 120 miles per day and keep it up for several days. This story is, also, an exaggeration, but there are reports from army officers that a Comanche could easily make 75 miles a day. An American cavalryman could get twenty-five or thirty miles a day; a Texas cowboy could get fifty miles a day; but a Comanche could take the same horse and ride him twice as far without killing him. The horse, therefore, was the basis of Comanche culture.
There was an accompanying improvement in the use of weapons and their construction. The typical Comanche weapons were the bow and arrow, the lance or spear, the knife, and axe. The bow and arrow were made of some hard wood; the arrows were smoked over a slow fire and straightened under pressure. The bows were boiled or steamed until they became pliant. The arrowheads, spearpoints, knives, and axes were, generally, chipped out. The beds in which good native flint was found exist near Austin, Round Rock and Gatesville. The arrows, many of them, had swallowtailed tangs on the heads. This custom was not entirely confined to the Comanche, for some East Texas tribes grooved their tangs also. Some men mentioned polished knives of some hard, black stone. This stone might have been iron pyrites or some other hard stone. Pyrite is found in the gypsum beds in the Panhandle but the Comanches were not in the habit of polishing stone.
The flint of the Comanche region was so fine in its concoidal fracture that polishing and grinding were not necessary. The axes, in common, with most Indian axes, were hafted on a groove on the outside of the blade instead the handle being put inside the axe head as was done in Europe.
The tools of the Comanches were skin dressers like an adz, buffalo horns for drinking, sharp, hard, straight, sticks for planting corn, bones for chipping, and needles. These tools are, most of them, women's tools. (He, probably, invented most of them.) Then, too, in place of making pottery for containing liquids, the Comanches made skin bags for carrying water over long journeys. This bag may represent the first canteen.
The Comanches were, relatively, highly developed and it would be natural to suppose a rather highly developed government existed among them. The gentile system seems to have been entirely unknown among them. The sign of the entire tribe, however, was the snake, made with the head turned toward the body instead of away. The Comanches had twelve fairly well defined tribes in the nation. These tribes were Kwahasi, Penateka, Detsana, Yuka, Detsakana, Widyu, Yapa, Kewat, Kewatsana, Kotsai, Kotsoteka, Motsai, Pagatsu and Pohoi. There are three others which are rather doubtful; they are Lanima, Tenawa, and Waaih. Of these groups, the Kwahasi and Penateka were the most important. The Comanche was an offshoot of the Shoshonean stock and retained a close linguistic similarity with the Shoshones. The Comanches were the only Shoshonean group living entirely on the plains. Their language was the trade language of the district, and it was characterized by its sonorous quality and an excessive rolling of the R's.
The internal government of the tribes was elective instead of hereditary. There were two chiefs, a civil chief and a war lord. The civil chief has great power during peace, but in war the war chief has almost absolute power. Connected with the chiefs was a council consisting of the warriors and the old men. The council with the civil chief, who presided, settled all disputes, disposals of personal property, heart petitions of young men for wives, and deliberated upon the movements of the tribe as to hunts, winter quarters, and war. Outside these matters, the chiefs and council had no power over the individual.
In the Comanche town, there were certain definite social groups. The civil chief had four wives, the war chief had three, the subalterns had two, and the common Indian had only one. Then, too, the houses were arranged according to rank. The town was ranged in a square with a plaza in the center. The chiefs, civil and military, the chief officers, and powerful warriors had houses facing on the square, the subordinates came next, and so the gradual rank went down until the common men lived on the outskirts of the village. There seems to have been another type of Camp arrangement, the camp circle. The tipis were placed in a circle opening to the east, for they worshipped the sun. The chief's lodge was at the extreme west end, and the fire was always burning in the center of the circle. This arrangement was not so common; these camps were smaller and not so comprehensive as were the towns laid out in squares. There was some evidence of the dog soldier system among the Comanches. The war lord controlled the young men, and although they performed the work of the dog soldiers, they did not have their separate organization.
The land system of the Comanches was very general in its provisions, but they had certain fairly defined divisions. Each tribe had a certain portion of the range for its hunting ground. Of course, there were certain hunts, like the fall buffalo hunt, the spring hunting and the like, in which the entire tribe partook, but the small daily excursions were executed in specific areas. There was no idea of personal ownership of land; the range belonged to the tribe as a whole. Then, too, the various tribes of the nation had permanent headquarters where their few crops were grown. These permanent residences were, also, the property of the entire tribe and no individual owned any of the land himself. Each squaw had a little patch in the general field of her family. These simple arrangements sufficed to regulate their occupation of the territory. The divisions were settled in a grand council of chieftains of all the twelve or fifteen tribes. The civil chief, the war chiefs and medicine men also had a seat in the council. In the absence of the civil chief, the war chief was in charge. If he also went, the best warrior or the best councilor took the civil chief's place. The grand council of the Comanche Nation decided all tribal disputes over land, tribal movements, and declarations of war and treaties of peace. The small divisions had the right to make war on their own part, but the great wars of the Nation were decided by the grand council.
The marriage regulations of the Comanches were unique and simple. The young man went to the council of his tribe or village and made application for the wife he had chosen. If her father or older brothers made no objection, the brave took his wife to his tipi. The couple were allowed to live together for one moon; if no friction developed between them, they were permitted to live together another moon. After another moon, if no trouble had arisen, the two were irrevocably wedded and the bride-price paid. The price was sometimes paid when the girl first left home and returned if she proved unsatisfactory. However, the price was usually paid when the final marriage took place. The wife, then, became the exclusive property of her husband; he could do with her as he liked. The trial marriage, so much discussed by advanced intellectuals, was quite an old device after all.
The Comanches had an odd form of the ordeal connected with the sex relations. If two braves could not compromise their differences and the mediation of the council proved useless, the decision was left to the Great Spirit. The two youths were escorted into a ring of the assembled tribesmen by their younger brother. The medicine man made a long speech describing the history of the case and the inability of the council to molify the antagonism of the two warriors. They were then lashed firmly together left arm to left arm. Each was given a knife of flint, later steel, about nine inches long with a horn handle specially prepared for the occasion. At a signal from the medicine man, the two youths cut each other to pieces. If one of the combatants survived the other, he was instantly dispatched by his brother who stood ready with drawn knife for the purpose. This represents the extreme form of belief in spirit-world. These men were supposed to go to the Great Spirit to settle their differences justly. The girl, probably, married another brave and forgot them promptly. This ceremony was a very unique form of the ordeal, for neither of the participants were allowed to survive.
As I have said, the women were the absolute property of their husbands. These women tilled the fields, dressed the skins, dyed the feathers for the men's head dresses, and did all the beadwork to trim the moccasins, shirts, and blouses. When the man killed a deer, he brought it in across his horse; but, when he killed a buffalo or antelope the squaw went out and carried it back piece by piece. The woman had practically no rights as against her husband. Apparently, they had the old Common law attitude that the two were one. Of course, the man was the one. He could beat her if she displeased him; he could sell her into slavery if he chose. The women did all the work; hence the Comanche arts save that of war and hunting, belonged to the women.
Comanche agriculture was very primitive. Mooney says that there was no agriculture, but he, probably, meant this was true of the tribes living nearer the Rocky Mountains. The planting implement consisted of a straight stick. They grew crops of tobacco and corn. There is one instance of a traveler saying that they grew beans, but if this were true, they borrowed this vegetable from East Texas tribes. The plowing was done with a stick and the seed was planted by hand. The squaw tended the crop from planting to harvest.
The next important Comanche art was that of skin-dressing. The skin was drawn over drying poles shaped something like an H. When the skin was dried it was stretched on a flattened log and fleshed. The scraper was of flint and shaped like an adz. If the skin was that of a buffalo, the portion around the neck was scraped down to a level with the rest of the skin. Then the skin was treated with a mixture of boxwood, mesquite, and deer's brains. This composition was knocked or rubbed into the hide until it became soft and pliant. The hair, being left on the outside, these soft robes were splendid substitutes for blankets. They were used in the Comanche commerce with the Spanish and American traders. The clothes and most other articles of use were made of skin.
The beadwork of the Comanches, in common with the other plains tribes, was based upon the triangle. The figures were very intricate and minutely worked out. The beads were sewn on the skin with fine strands of deer tendron. The painting on skins was crude and more or less meaningless. The designs on the skins were totemic, symbolic or merely ornamental. The totemic devices were generally confined to the snake, as that was the sign of the tribe. This beadwork was done on skin from which the hair had been removed by hot water and careful scraping.
Of this dressed skin the clothing was made. The men wore moccosins, leggings, and a hunting shirt which came to the knees, all of buffalo hide. The women wore leggings, moccasins, a skirt of soft hide or plaited hair, and a blouse of ornamented skin. The lassos, saddles, water-bags, and bowstrings were all made of this dressed skin. Part of the dress of the men consisted of a head dress of feathers. This garment was only ceremonial, however, and was not worn on the hunt. Only a few feathers were worn in daily life. These articles made up the list of the Comanche art except for their musical instruments. These consisted of a drum, a buffalo hide drawn over a wooden hoop, and castanets made of buffalo bones. The Comanche have few songs of their own; they borrowed their wit largely from other tribes as of the Kiowa.
Another of the duties of the women was in reference to the houses. The tipis were made of undressed buffalo hide with the hair turned out to shed the water. The poles were about fifteen feet long; they were thrust into the ground and their tops tied together. This arrangement gave approximately twenty-five feet of floor space. A fire burned in the middle of the tipi, and a hole was in the middle of the roof to allow the smoke to escape. These tipis were cared for by the women; they put them up when a halt was made and dug a ditch around them to shed off the water; thus the floor was kept dry. They pulled them down and packed them on the mules when the tribe was ready again to take the march. The hunting tent was a few buffalo skins sewed together. The skins were drawn over a forked stick supporting a long stick thrust in the ground. These two structures made up the entire architecture of the Comanches.
The Comanche family, like the general Indian family, was rather small. The family rarely exceeded five when a man had only one wife. The chiefs, of course, who had more than one wife had more children. The wives of the chief did not sleep in his tent; they each had a small tent opening on the main tent, and he also had a separate chamber made by a screen of hides. There was a long buckskin string attached to the buffalo hide mattress of each squaw; these strings passed under the fold of the tent into the chief's sleeping quarters. In this way he could summon any one of them without any particular exertion. The common Indian had no such elaborate arrangement, for he either shared his hair mattress with his squaw or she slept on a buffalo hide close by.
The father of the family had almost absolute power over the children. He ruled them in everything and profited by their labor. The girls were a kind of asset, for he could determine whom they should marry and what price should be paid. The girls were completely under the rule of their father until they were married; they then passed under the control of their husbands. The boys were not so absolutely dominated by the will of the father, but they too were forced to give obedience to his commands. The boys passed out of the control of their parents so soon as they married or went on the warpath for the first time. After the initiation into the warrior group and his first foray, the boy was considered to be a man and no one had any right to rule his actions. If, by any chance, the young man married before he went on a war party he was likewise considered to be a man, for the bride's family would not allow her to marry a coward or a weakling.
The care of women in child birth was relatively undeveloped among the Comanches. It is said that, when on the march, a woman often laid down by the roadside and borne her child attended only, perhaps by an old woman (and the medicine man). The child having been born, the umbilical cord was cut, the child hastily washed, and the mother would remount her mule or pony and proceed with the journey. At any rate, they had few superstitions connected with birth. Twins, if they were boys, were highly welcomed. It was thought to be an evidence of a woman's virtue and desirability. This attitude probably grew out of the paucity of numbers among the Comanches and their constant warfare with all comers. Warriors were needed, hence the honor bestowed on a woman who bore twin sons. Such a cordial welcome, however, was not accorded girls; immediate infanticide was sometimes practiced, but I could not determine that this elimination was habitual.
Infanticide was practiced regularly by the Comanches in the case of deformed, diseased, or sickly babies. The old women and the medicine man generally decided. If the child was not fit to live it was left out on the plains. If the tribe was ready to move, it was left near the campsite; perhaps this place was chosen in order that the coyotes or other carnivorous animals lurking near the camp to eat the scraps, would soon end the baby's suffering. If the tribe meant to halt for some time, the medicine man carried the child far into the plain and left it to die. Why exposure should have been chosen as a means of eliminating the unfit is not easily explained. Probably, the Comanches did not fancy killing their own children outright. In this way, the race was kept up to par, physically, and no misfits developed among them.
Turning to the purely domestic side of the Comanche family, the women, as has already been noted, did all the drudgery. This state of affairs was not so unjust or so unnatural that we should feel surprised. It was only a division of labor. The man had his work and did it; the woman had hers and did it; that was all. The Comanches ate bison, deer, antelope, small game and horses. The dog was eaten, but his flesh was only for ceremonial use. The principal delicacy was horse flesh; they prized it above all other meat. The preparation of the Comanche meal was simple. The corn was ground in a mortar or mill, and hot water poured over it. Sometimes the corn was parched before being ground up. These mortars, by the way, are the only evidence of any grinding of stone done by the Comanches. The meat was then hung on a forked stick and held over the fire. After the meat was partially cooked, it was carried into the lodge; everybody cut off a piece, the size of which was regulated by his appetite, and scooped up handfuls of the meal. With minor variations, this diet sufficed them the year round. The meat that could not be eaten was jerked. Meat-jerking consisted of thin slices of meat fastened down on pegs just off the ground. It was left to dry in the sunshine. The high altitude made this process easy. With the introduction of salt, jerking became much more common. Smoking of meat was also practiced but not so much as jerking.
Owing to the relatively small families, adoption was freely practiced. In raids, the most promising children were always spared and adopted into the tribe. In the case of children no particular ceremony was involved; they were merely taken into some family or supported by the tribe at large and taught and reared as true Comanches. There was another form of adoption in the case of adults. The person who was adopted, usually someone greatly loved or desired by the person performing the adoption, was taken into the family in place of some departed member. Ashes from a pipe were poured out on the ground after the two had smoked together. A small cake was then made of earth and spittel and patted down over the ashes with three pats. This operation was repeated three times. In this way, the dead member was symbolically buried. After the bereaved had wept or howled sufficiently, he would embrace the newly acquired brother or whatnot and all was well again. If the two were to become brothers, blood was often mixed or exchanged on such occasions. By these devices the fight force of the tribe was kept up or materially enhanced. The adoption ceremony was often used with prominent governmental officials.
Another phase of the family life of the Comanches has to do with slavery. However, the institution of slavery has to do more with their sense of property than it does with family life. Nevertheless, the slave did have a place in the Comanche lodge. There were two classes of slaves recognized by the Comanche, namely the slaves who were driven across the country from Mexico to Louisiana, or vice versa, and the few personal slaves held by blood covenant by individual warriors. The personal slave was the individual property of his master as much as his weapons, his horses, or his wife. The master presented the slave with a small stick, about six inches long by two in thickness. On this stick was crudely carved various devices, such as skulls, hatchets, and arrows. The slave opened a vein on the back of his hand and dyed the stick with the blood. If the slave was sold, the same ceremony had to be performed again with the new master, the same stick serving. The slave had the right of life, food usually, and protection from his master, for no man dared molest the property of another. The master could sell the slave to whom and whenever he chose, and the tribe had no voice in the transaction whatsoever. The personal slave represented the Comanches closest approach to a definite sense of property other than as regarded the utensils of his daily life.
The other type of slave was captured from the Mexicans or Texans and sold in gangs to the various plantation owners. These slaves were community property, and each man shared in the profit. The slave trade and slavery in general was probably introduced to the Comanches by the Spaniards or the French and American planters in Louisiana. At any rate, slaves and buffalo hides made up the bulk of the Comanche trade. They also traded in horses, but they were only incidental to the main business of skins and slaves. The enslavement of inferiors is not uncommon with a warrior people, but the deliberate capture and sale of slaves is an art rarely practiced by primitive men. I am sure that the Comanches learned it from the Mexican coffee planters and the Louisiana rice and sugar cane planters.
In common with all men, the religion of the Comanches was expressive of their general economic status. The religion was a kind of animism plus a crude sort of pantheism. They believed that every living object had two beings, one inside the other. Hence, they were keen about placating the soul of the buffalo before they killed it, and duly honored the same spirit after the beast was dead. The Comanches also believed in fetishes, for they carried all sorts of charms about on their persons to aid them in battle or protect them against harm. Anyone becomes attached to any object, such as a knife, which he carries constantly. This attachment becomes very intense if the object has some mystic power to aid and protect. The crucifixes and medals, although merely symbolic of my own church, attain the status of true fetishes if carried on the person. Hence, the fetishes of the Comanches were not so much a part of the general scheme of religion as they were merely personal relations, each man to his personal fetish. The whole thing was an evidence of magical power gained by propinquity or analogy, that is either by being close to the organ that was supposed to possess the power, or by the wearing of something that looked like the real object power.
The fundamental belief of the Comanches, however, had to do with the worship of the Great Spirit. This deity was sometimes merely a clever trickster. More often he was vague, omniscient, and all-powerful. The Indian could not come to him usually directly; he must have a mediator. The various spirits of animals, the spirits adhering in the powers of nature, and perhaps the spirits of departed ancestors might gain the ear of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit ruled and was in all. In this particular, the omnipresence of deity, the Comanche seems to have differed slightly from the other Indians. He might have borrowed this notion of the all-pervading character of the deity from the Spaniards. It is for this reason that I call their religion a kind of crude pantheism.
Like all heavens, the Happy Hunting Ground of the Comanche was modeled after the rather imperfect reality of his everyday life with all the disagreeable things omitted. The heaven was also based on the buffalo just as was the life of the Comanches. It was in a valley immeasurably large and covered with groves, streams, meadows and abundance of game. It was never too cold or too hot, and there would be no more suffering or sorrow. There would always be plenty without the necessity of expending much energy or effort to obtain it. It seems odd that a plains people would have considered their heaven to be in a valley. However, the Comanches, being a Shoshonean group, had come originally from the Rocky Mountains and hills of Eastern Colorado. This fact may explain their preference for a valley as heaven rather than a plain.
A great portion of the religion of the Comanche, like other primitive peoples, was bound up with the dance. He had dances for nearly everything. The calendar was marked off by various ceremonial dances. The year was divided into four seasons, and these were divided into moons; the moons were subdivided into sleeps. The seasons were celebrated with regular festivals. The green corn dance was a thanksgiving fiesta and ended with the roasting of green corn. The corn was laid in piles in a circle, each family making a pile. The whole tribe assembled and the medicine man made an exhortation to the people and a prayer of thanksgiving. Then he took one ear from each pile and laid them on the fire to roast. When the ceremony had been performed, everybody roasted as much corn as he could eat. The dance was purely social after the medicine man had finished. All restrictions were broken down, and the youths and maidens could associate as freely as they chose. Another of the dances was performed for the other seasons, each in keeping with the particular season. The great hunting dance in the fall and such other characteristic ceremonies are examples of these season dances. Then, there were weekly dances so to speak. At every change of the moon, a solemn dance was held. At the new moon, the medicine man made a long harangue thanking the Great Spirit for granting a new luminary even though the old one had gone. The dance, especially the green corn dance, was enacted by both men and women. At each of the other quarters a similar dance was held. At the last change, they held the feast of the roasted dog. The dogs were fatted and carried a short distance from the village, killed, and roasted by the women. After much dancing, the tribe sat down and ate dog with much jolity. The hunting dances were more pantomimes of what was to be done during the hunt. This operation was thought to produce success in the actual business of taking game. After the warriors had gone the women performed a similar dance to insure success for the men. Apparently they had the idea that they were adding their strength to that of the men. The pipe dance was a dance of welcome and friendship; it was performed only by men. The chief of the tribe would stand with a lighted pipe in his hand, the men of his tribe plus those of the visiting party would dance in a circle with its outer edge close to the chief. After he had taken several whiffs, he would hand the pipe to the visiting chief or leader of the party as he passed. The recipient would smoke the pipe around the circle and hand it back to the host. This ceremony was repeated until everybody had had a chance to smoke. The pipes were made of red sandstone, and Lee says that the Comanches made them themselves. I do not think so, for there was practically no sandstone in the Comanche territory. The other pipe ceremony was performed without motion. The pipe was lighted by the chief of the village. He gave one puff to the earth and one to the sky and two to the wind and water. The puffs given to the wind and water were given to the left and right respectively. After giving a few more puffs to the good of the smokers, he handed the pipe to the most important visitor, who went through the same procedure, handing it back to the second in importance in the host's retinue. Thus, the pipe went down the whole scale to the last man.
All such dances were accompanied by the tomtom beaten with a small paddle and the bone castinets. There was a complimentary visitor's dance which was more social than religious, but it had some religious aspects. The chief and his most important warriors would dance, fully arrayed in all their finery, to the single accompaniment of bone discs, later Spanish coins, fastened to a wand carried by the chief. At the end of the dance, which lasted as long as the dancers saw fit, the chief drove them before him out of the circle formed by the hosts or from the square of the village. This dance was purely complimentary and social. It may be compared to the "bagging" dance of the north plains Indians.
Perhaps, the religion of men may be best shown by their treatment of the dead. The Comanches laid the body in full dress, hair bracelets and all, flat on the ground with the head to the west. Posts were driven securely down around the body until a closed stockade was formed. Then, all the personal property of the dead was piled in the grave with him. The body was covered with branches and dirt and stones were heaped upon the grave and tamped down firmly over the whole. The ponies, mules, and dogs of the dead man were then taken to the grave and killed. If a squaw died, her tools were put into the grave with her, and her mule, if she had one, was killed at her grave so that she could follow her husband quickly in the next world. All these practices are indicative of a profound belief in spirits and the afterlife. As for the custom of burying the bodies with their heads to the west, they did it in order that when the Great Spirit willed, the Comanche might arise and march eastward to conquer the lands which he had lost to the white man. The relentless warfare of the Comanches is explained by this belief in an ultimate defeat of the whites. Perhaps the idea of a resurrection and a reconquest was borrowed from the Spanish missionaries, but most downtrodden peoples have some legend of a savior who will someday come to redeem his people and right their wrongs. It was only natural, therefore, that the Comanches should have developed some such notion with reference to their white enemies. Here again, they seem to differ essentially from the other plains tribes in that they believed in a day of resurrection. Whether they borrowed the idea or not, it profoundly effected their attitude toward the white man and was the principal cause for their unyielding hostility towards him for more than three hundred years.
There are two other semi-religious dances of which I am not so sure. The Comanche war dance or torture dance is described by Lee as being exceedingly horrible. For this reason, they are not to be taken too seriously. The war dance was merely a pantomime of a surprise and massacre; the child of the war dance, the scalp dance, was a similar enactment of taking a scalp. The peculiar attitude toward the scalp was that held by most Indians. The scalp was a token of great bravery and military prowess. Then too, a man who had been scalped was not likely to be allowed to enter the Happy Hunting Ground; hence many an Indian cut off a friend's head to prevent an enemy from scalping him. The body was left on the field, but the head was taken to the brave's native village and buried with due ceremony.
In the torture dance, the victims were stripped and strung up with their arms and legs stretched out and tied to upright poles. The warriors moved slowly about them. At definite intervals they stopped and gave a terrific warwhoop. The captives were ritualistically killed by slow degrees. They were first scalped, usually by the youngest members of the warrior group. Then the warriors cut them to pieces with flint knives shaped much like spearheads. I am not sure just how true is this account, but the Comanches did have a dance in which the captives were killed. These dances and festivals made up the greater part of their religious observances.
In common with nearly all the plains Indians and others in the west and northwest, the Comanches venerated the Thunder Bird. The lightning was its eyes, the black cloud its wings, and the thunder was the snapping of its beak. On the upper stretches of the Red River there was a level place destitute of all vegetation. In this spot, the Thunder Bird was supposed to have lighted. Though the Thunder Bird was worshiped by most all of the Indians, the Comanches localized it by giving it a local character and a specific spot in which to alight.
Thus nearly all of his acts were regulated with reference to the spirit world. Even the naming of the children was, in a measure, determined by omens. In ordinary times, the medicine man attended on the woman. The first significant object which he saw after the child was born became the child's sponsor so to speak, for the child was named for it. Often however, the child was named for its likeness to some natural object. The name was supposed to enhance this quality. Hence, all life was subjective and ruled by spirits.
The Comanches, from the foregoing, were much like the other plains tribes, but in other respects they differed markedly from their nearest neighbors. This situation may be explained from the Shoshonean origin and immigration from Wyoming. The pressure of the Sioux and other prairie tribes probably drove the Comanches southward while the Shoshones were pressed farther north and west. Until recently the Comanche and Shoshone kept up communication, and their tongues were much alike. The Comanches had no Indian allies except the Kiowa, with whom they were confederated since 1795. They were at war with all the tribes to the north, west, east and south. Their special enemies were the Apaches and their hostility towards these tribes never abated.
For more than two hundred years, they fought the Spaniards, and then maintained a life and death struggle with the Texans for over forty years. Their first treaty with the Texas government was made in 1835. They made the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, but it was soon broken. Later, in 1867, they made a second treaty, agreeing to accept a reservation between the Washita and Red Rivers in southwestern Oklahoma, but it was not until after the outbreak of 1875-78 that they and their allies, the Kiowa, finally settled upon it.
When first authentically encountered by the whites, the Comanches numbered about 40,000, but they have been terribly wasted by disease and their relentless war with the whites. In 1899, they had dwindled to the small number of 1,553 on their reservation in Oklahoma. Thus the most dashing, picturesque, and unafraid of the western tribes has almost passed out of existence.
Lee E. Mahoney
Frontier Times
April, 1928
The plains area of Central North America includes the greater portion of Central Canada, the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Western Texas. This great area was entirely devoid of trees, except for a few cottonwoods along the streams, and was covered by grass in the eastern section and by semidesert vegetation in the west. The life of the plains was adapted to the open country, for speed and endurance were developed to a surprising degree. The fauna was made up of such species as jack rabbit, coyote, antelope, deer in the hilly regions; birds, such as prairie chicken, quail, eagle, and Mexican pheasant, besides the chaparral hen, but the principal form of plains life was the bison. From the northern most part of Canada to the Rio Grande, these animals moved in large herds, sometimes numbering up in the thousands. The life of the carnivorous animals, such as the lobo wolves and coyotes was conditioned upon the hunting of these herds. Much more was the life of the Plains Indians conditioned and dictated by the movements, habits, and abundance of the bison.
When one speaks of a people's life being conditioned by environment, the problem of cultural areas at once arises. According to archeological data, the continent is divided up according to the life habits of the inhabitants. There is the Atlantic Coast, or fishing area; the Gulf Coast or timber, basket-making and reed area; the Mississippi Valley area, the Plains area, the Rocky Mountain and Plateau area, the Pacific Coast area, the Northwest area, the Aztec culture area, etc. These areas are not sharply defined, but the Indians, according to Wissler, in each area have a center where characteristics peculiar to the region develop and spread to the edges where they blend with those fusing from other centers of development. For example, the Pueblos wove cotton, made pottery, cultivated the soil, and maintained a highly ritualistic religion; the Apaches made some pottery of a poor sort, had a rather ritualistic religion, but they did not weave. In common with all other plains tribes, they wore skins and were hunters and nomads. Here, the essentially pueblo culture blended with the truly plains culture to form a sort of hybrid neither one nor the other, but partaking of both. It is necessary, therefore, to keep this fusing process in mind if we are to explain the varying customs of the Comanches.
One element which aided the development of the peculiarly plains life was the early mode of transportation. The rivers were, in most places, too shallow to be navigable for any distance. The Indians had no beasts of burden until the advent of the Spanish pony; hence they kept close to the flanks of the bison herds, living on them constantly. The Indian had domesticated the dog and used the travois, but the travois was, apparently, introduced from the Mississippi Dakotas. The dog was harnessed to two poles and the ends dragging behind him like a V with a cross bar in the middle for the burden. Such a method of carrying burdens necessitated slow movements, and thus the plains Indians were not much modified by outside cultures until comparatively recent time. At least, the modification was so slow that it is difficult to trace.
Besides the dependence on the bison and use of the travois, the plains area is significant for its stone and bone works. The Indians did not polish stone in many cases, merely chipping it by concussion and retouching by pressure. In the eastern portion, however, some polishing was done. The bow and arrow, of course, formed the basis of their hunting life; the lance and tomahawk were also extensively used. Ornaments and chipping tools as well as needles, so says one of Coronado's men, were used all over the plains.
The architecture of the plains area, in one form or another, was generally based upon the tipi, a tent made of sticks drawn over poles stuck in a circle and the tops fastened together. Some of the Dakotas used a kind of sod house, but the tipi was practically general.
Plains art took two principal forms, namely, the dressing of skins, and the decorating of them with beadwork. In most of the plains tribes, the beadwork was symbolic of religious ideas or of totemic significance. The skins were sometimes painted for this purpose with totemic symbols. The plains designs were geometric from the Canadian Indians to the Comanches and Navajos who were not plains Indians at all. This transfer of the geometric design is, probably, another example of the transfer of customs by transfusion.
The religious concepts of the plains present a mixture of animism, fetishism and worship of the Great Spirit. They believed in spirits in nearly everything animate and inanimate; they believed in carrying charmed objects about with them to protect them, and lastly they worshipped the Great Spirit, ruler of the world.
The Comanches were one of these great plains tribes, but they had many distinct characteristics which distinguish them from all the others.
The earliest authentic reports of the Comanche region are found in the reports of Don Coronado to the viceroy of Mexico City. The documents describe the territory occupied by the Comanches as the land lying between the height of land which divides the rivers which run down to the south sea from the rivers which run down into the north sea, meaning the Colorado of the West, etc., and Rio Grande, Pecos, Colorado, Trinity and Red. The expedition first passed through the land of the Pueblos, for the documents tell of Indians who wove cotton, made pottery, and tilled the soil. When the Spaniards came out upon the plain, in eastern New Mexico and western Texas, the character of the Indians changed. Here the Indians lived with the cows as the Spaniards called the bison. They described the Indians as speaking a deep, rough language, having no beauty but very sonorous. The Indians, who might or might not have been Comanches, stalked the buffalo on foot. The warriors would cover themselves with the skins of the buffalo, two men to a skin, and secrete themselves among the herd. Then, they would proceed to kill all the buffalo they wished, often without the other members of the herd knowing what was taking place. The houses of the Indians of this section were of the time-honored tipi. The structures were very crude, but they were portable and in harmony with the life of the people.
The agriculture of the early Indians of the section was, apparently, in a very backward state. Most of the tribes did not cultivate the soil, for the climate was too arid, and the abundance of the bison herds made farming by irrigation unnecessary. Upon the lower and southern levels, the Indians grew small patches of corn. The corn growing may have been borrowed from the Indians of East Texas. Likewise, I find one mention of the cultivation of the tobacco plant by the central and southern tribes. This culture was not certain, for there is no general mention of it. The Indians had tobacco, that is certain, but they might easily have obtained it from East Texas tribes or the Pueblos.
The organization of the early tribes is as vague. The documents describe them as having a tribal organization based upon a war lord who was elected by the soldiers, so run the documents, and his power was almost absolute, especially in time of war. There seems to have been the conventional Indian council with powers varying with the character of the military chief. Their weapons consisted of the bow and arrow, the lance, and knife. I found no mention of the knife. The stone artifacts found in this region are tantamount to an assertion that they certainly used them. At any rate, they had them, very well perfected, some time later.
The wives of the braves were, of course, private property of their husbands, but there does not seem to have been any polygamy. As the families were usually small, the fact of the absence of polygamy is striking. There is no record, however, one instance of a chieftain who had three wives. I presume it depended upon the wealth of the man as to how many wives he could have.
The extent of the Comanche range, authoritatively known since 1700, was from the headwaters of the Guadalupe, Colorado, Trinity, Red, and Arkansas westward thence to the Rocky Mountains, and southward to the Bolson de Mapimi across the Mexican border. They were still hunters in Coronado's time, but their entire culture had undergone a radical change with the introduction of the horse.
With the exception of one or two tribes, the Comanches were very tall men. This belief is contrary to general opinion, but the Patagonians were the tallest men in the world; the Comanche and Iroquois came next. They were well built and inclined to be corpulent at times. The tribes living nearer the Rocky Mountains, however, were rather short of stature, with very broad chests. This condition was due, probably, to the excessive rarity of the atmosphere. Their heads were long and narrow, their faces well-formed, having rather high foreheads. Finally, they were a very splendid race physically.
To such a people, the introduction of the horse opened up entirely new prospects. Coronado and later Spaniards sold horses to the natives. Likewise, the Spanish ponies were admirably adapted to life on the great level plains and propagated with marvelous rapidity. The horses of North and South America had died out in Pleistocene times, and no horses had been known until they were reintroduced by the Spaniards under Cortez in 1520. The ponies soon spread through the northern and central portions of Mexico and entered Texas. When the Comanches and other prairie tribes began to use them is not exactly known, but by 1700 they had become herders so far as horses were concerned. There was an immediate and sweeping change in the life of the people. The use of the horse made possible the enormous range described above. Instead of stalking on foot, the Comanches and other tribes could now, if necessary, run down and kill the bison on the open plains. The introduction of the horse produced a duel complex, a bison-horse complex. The entire life and thought of the people was organized about these two animals. The horse was a necessity after this introduction; a wife was rather a luxury. The horse carried the Comanche in battle, carried his food, house, and personal belongings. The horse was even utilized for clothing, for horse hair garments were made, not by weaving for felting, but by platting the horse hair into ropes, bridles, robes, and skirts. The horse, possibly, became as fundamental in the life of the Comanche as was the buffalo. He lived in the saddle and soon became the best horseman of the plains.
The method of securing these horses was rather unique. A body of horsemen would secret themselves in a clump of chaparella or shinnery; another group would scatter out over the plain for miles. Gradually, they would close in fanwise, driving the horses before them. When the horses drew near to the thicket, the men concealed there would burst suddenly out into the midst of the horses, lassoing and throwing instantly. If any escaped, these were pursued by riders who were mounted on the swiftest steeds. James relates a story that a band of Comanches tamed a stallion caught in this manner in two hours. It took two hours to capture him and two hours to bring him into submission. The Comanches were, undoubtedly the best wranglers in the world, but I doubt this story. At least, other stories, not quite so fanciful, prove that the Comanches understood and managed their horses in a way in which a white man never comprehended.
The Comanche was, probably, one of the greatest horsemen in the world. Many authentic statements of their endurance and skill are on record. It is said that a Comanche could ride 120 miles per day and keep it up for several days. This story is, also, an exaggeration, but there are reports from army officers that a Comanche could easily make 75 miles a day. An American cavalryman could get twenty-five or thirty miles a day; a Texas cowboy could get fifty miles a day; but a Comanche could take the same horse and ride him twice as far without killing him. The horse, therefore, was the basis of Comanche culture.
There was an accompanying improvement in the use of weapons and their construction. The typical Comanche weapons were the bow and arrow, the lance or spear, the knife, and axe. The bow and arrow were made of some hard wood; the arrows were smoked over a slow fire and straightened under pressure. The bows were boiled or steamed until they became pliant. The arrowheads, spearpoints, knives, and axes were, generally, chipped out. The beds in which good native flint was found exist near Austin, Round Rock and Gatesville. The arrows, many of them, had swallowtailed tangs on the heads. This custom was not entirely confined to the Comanche, for some East Texas tribes grooved their tangs also. Some men mentioned polished knives of some hard, black stone. This stone might have been iron pyrites or some other hard stone. Pyrite is found in the gypsum beds in the Panhandle but the Comanches were not in the habit of polishing stone.
The flint of the Comanche region was so fine in its concoidal fracture that polishing and grinding were not necessary. The axes, in common, with most Indian axes, were hafted on a groove on the outside of the blade instead the handle being put inside the axe head as was done in Europe.
The tools of the Comanches were skin dressers like an adz, buffalo horns for drinking, sharp, hard, straight, sticks for planting corn, bones for chipping, and needles. These tools are, most of them, women's tools. (He, probably, invented most of them.) Then, too, in place of making pottery for containing liquids, the Comanches made skin bags for carrying water over long journeys. This bag may represent the first canteen.
The Comanches were, relatively, highly developed and it would be natural to suppose a rather highly developed government existed among them. The gentile system seems to have been entirely unknown among them. The sign of the entire tribe, however, was the snake, made with the head turned toward the body instead of away. The Comanches had twelve fairly well defined tribes in the nation. These tribes were Kwahasi, Penateka, Detsana, Yuka, Detsakana, Widyu, Yapa, Kewat, Kewatsana, Kotsai, Kotsoteka, Motsai, Pagatsu and Pohoi. There are three others which are rather doubtful; they are Lanima, Tenawa, and Waaih. Of these groups, the Kwahasi and Penateka were the most important. The Comanche was an offshoot of the Shoshonean stock and retained a close linguistic similarity with the Shoshones. The Comanches were the only Shoshonean group living entirely on the plains. Their language was the trade language of the district, and it was characterized by its sonorous quality and an excessive rolling of the R's.
The internal government of the tribes was elective instead of hereditary. There were two chiefs, a civil chief and a war lord. The civil chief has great power during peace, but in war the war chief has almost absolute power. Connected with the chiefs was a council consisting of the warriors and the old men. The council with the civil chief, who presided, settled all disputes, disposals of personal property, heart petitions of young men for wives, and deliberated upon the movements of the tribe as to hunts, winter quarters, and war. Outside these matters, the chiefs and council had no power over the individual.
In the Comanche town, there were certain definite social groups. The civil chief had four wives, the war chief had three, the subalterns had two, and the common Indian had only one. Then, too, the houses were arranged according to rank. The town was ranged in a square with a plaza in the center. The chiefs, civil and military, the chief officers, and powerful warriors had houses facing on the square, the subordinates came next, and so the gradual rank went down until the common men lived on the outskirts of the village. There seems to have been another type of Camp arrangement, the camp circle. The tipis were placed in a circle opening to the east, for they worshipped the sun. The chief's lodge was at the extreme west end, and the fire was always burning in the center of the circle. This arrangement was not so common; these camps were smaller and not so comprehensive as were the towns laid out in squares. There was some evidence of the dog soldier system among the Comanches. The war lord controlled the young men, and although they performed the work of the dog soldiers, they did not have their separate organization.
The land system of the Comanches was very general in its provisions, but they had certain fairly defined divisions. Each tribe had a certain portion of the range for its hunting ground. Of course, there were certain hunts, like the fall buffalo hunt, the spring hunting and the like, in which the entire tribe partook, but the small daily excursions were executed in specific areas. There was no idea of personal ownership of land; the range belonged to the tribe as a whole. Then, too, the various tribes of the nation had permanent headquarters where their few crops were grown. These permanent residences were, also, the property of the entire tribe and no individual owned any of the land himself. Each squaw had a little patch in the general field of her family. These simple arrangements sufficed to regulate their occupation of the territory. The divisions were settled in a grand council of chieftains of all the twelve or fifteen tribes. The civil chief, the war chiefs and medicine men also had a seat in the council. In the absence of the civil chief, the war chief was in charge. If he also went, the best warrior or the best councilor took the civil chief's place. The grand council of the Comanche Nation decided all tribal disputes over land, tribal movements, and declarations of war and treaties of peace. The small divisions had the right to make war on their own part, but the great wars of the Nation were decided by the grand council.
The marriage regulations of the Comanches were unique and simple. The young man went to the council of his tribe or village and made application for the wife he had chosen. If her father or older brothers made no objection, the brave took his wife to his tipi. The couple were allowed to live together for one moon; if no friction developed between them, they were permitted to live together another moon. After another moon, if no trouble had arisen, the two were irrevocably wedded and the bride-price paid. The price was sometimes paid when the girl first left home and returned if she proved unsatisfactory. However, the price was usually paid when the final marriage took place. The wife, then, became the exclusive property of her husband; he could do with her as he liked. The trial marriage, so much discussed by advanced intellectuals, was quite an old device after all.
The Comanches had an odd form of the ordeal connected with the sex relations. If two braves could not compromise their differences and the mediation of the council proved useless, the decision was left to the Great Spirit. The two youths were escorted into a ring of the assembled tribesmen by their younger brother. The medicine man made a long speech describing the history of the case and the inability of the council to molify the antagonism of the two warriors. They were then lashed firmly together left arm to left arm. Each was given a knife of flint, later steel, about nine inches long with a horn handle specially prepared for the occasion. At a signal from the medicine man, the two youths cut each other to pieces. If one of the combatants survived the other, he was instantly dispatched by his brother who stood ready with drawn knife for the purpose. This represents the extreme form of belief in spirit-world. These men were supposed to go to the Great Spirit to settle their differences justly. The girl, probably, married another brave and forgot them promptly. This ceremony was a very unique form of the ordeal, for neither of the participants were allowed to survive.
As I have said, the women were the absolute property of their husbands. These women tilled the fields, dressed the skins, dyed the feathers for the men's head dresses, and did all the beadwork to trim the moccasins, shirts, and blouses. When the man killed a deer, he brought it in across his horse; but, when he killed a buffalo or antelope the squaw went out and carried it back piece by piece. The woman had practically no rights as against her husband. Apparently, they had the old Common law attitude that the two were one. Of course, the man was the one. He could beat her if she displeased him; he could sell her into slavery if he chose. The women did all the work; hence the Comanche arts save that of war and hunting, belonged to the women.
Comanche agriculture was very primitive. Mooney says that there was no agriculture, but he, probably, meant this was true of the tribes living nearer the Rocky Mountains. The planting implement consisted of a straight stick. They grew crops of tobacco and corn. There is one instance of a traveler saying that they grew beans, but if this were true, they borrowed this vegetable from East Texas tribes. The plowing was done with a stick and the seed was planted by hand. The squaw tended the crop from planting to harvest.
The next important Comanche art was that of skin-dressing. The skin was drawn over drying poles shaped something like an H. When the skin was dried it was stretched on a flattened log and fleshed. The scraper was of flint and shaped like an adz. If the skin was that of a buffalo, the portion around the neck was scraped down to a level with the rest of the skin. Then the skin was treated with a mixture of boxwood, mesquite, and deer's brains. This composition was knocked or rubbed into the hide until it became soft and pliant. The hair, being left on the outside, these soft robes were splendid substitutes for blankets. They were used in the Comanche commerce with the Spanish and American traders. The clothes and most other articles of use were made of skin.
The beadwork of the Comanches, in common with the other plains tribes, was based upon the triangle. The figures were very intricate and minutely worked out. The beads were sewn on the skin with fine strands of deer tendron. The painting on skins was crude and more or less meaningless. The designs on the skins were totemic, symbolic or merely ornamental. The totemic devices were generally confined to the snake, as that was the sign of the tribe. This beadwork was done on skin from which the hair had been removed by hot water and careful scraping.
Of this dressed skin the clothing was made. The men wore moccosins, leggings, and a hunting shirt which came to the knees, all of buffalo hide. The women wore leggings, moccasins, a skirt of soft hide or plaited hair, and a blouse of ornamented skin. The lassos, saddles, water-bags, and bowstrings were all made of this dressed skin. Part of the dress of the men consisted of a head dress of feathers. This garment was only ceremonial, however, and was not worn on the hunt. Only a few feathers were worn in daily life. These articles made up the list of the Comanche art except for their musical instruments. These consisted of a drum, a buffalo hide drawn over a wooden hoop, and castanets made of buffalo bones. The Comanche have few songs of their own; they borrowed their wit largely from other tribes as of the Kiowa.
Another of the duties of the women was in reference to the houses. The tipis were made of undressed buffalo hide with the hair turned out to shed the water. The poles were about fifteen feet long; they were thrust into the ground and their tops tied together. This arrangement gave approximately twenty-five feet of floor space. A fire burned in the middle of the tipi, and a hole was in the middle of the roof to allow the smoke to escape. These tipis were cared for by the women; they put them up when a halt was made and dug a ditch around them to shed off the water; thus the floor was kept dry. They pulled them down and packed them on the mules when the tribe was ready again to take the march. The hunting tent was a few buffalo skins sewed together. The skins were drawn over a forked stick supporting a long stick thrust in the ground. These two structures made up the entire architecture of the Comanches.
The Comanche family, like the general Indian family, was rather small. The family rarely exceeded five when a man had only one wife. The chiefs, of course, who had more than one wife had more children. The wives of the chief did not sleep in his tent; they each had a small tent opening on the main tent, and he also had a separate chamber made by a screen of hides. There was a long buckskin string attached to the buffalo hide mattress of each squaw; these strings passed under the fold of the tent into the chief's sleeping quarters. In this way he could summon any one of them without any particular exertion. The common Indian had no such elaborate arrangement, for he either shared his hair mattress with his squaw or she slept on a buffalo hide close by.
The father of the family had almost absolute power over the children. He ruled them in everything and profited by their labor. The girls were a kind of asset, for he could determine whom they should marry and what price should be paid. The girls were completely under the rule of their father until they were married; they then passed under the control of their husbands. The boys were not so absolutely dominated by the will of the father, but they too were forced to give obedience to his commands. The boys passed out of the control of their parents so soon as they married or went on the warpath for the first time. After the initiation into the warrior group and his first foray, the boy was considered to be a man and no one had any right to rule his actions. If, by any chance, the young man married before he went on a war party he was likewise considered to be a man, for the bride's family would not allow her to marry a coward or a weakling.
The care of women in child birth was relatively undeveloped among the Comanches. It is said that, when on the march, a woman often laid down by the roadside and borne her child attended only, perhaps by an old woman (and the medicine man). The child having been born, the umbilical cord was cut, the child hastily washed, and the mother would remount her mule or pony and proceed with the journey. At any rate, they had few superstitions connected with birth. Twins, if they were boys, were highly welcomed. It was thought to be an evidence of a woman's virtue and desirability. This attitude probably grew out of the paucity of numbers among the Comanches and their constant warfare with all comers. Warriors were needed, hence the honor bestowed on a woman who bore twin sons. Such a cordial welcome, however, was not accorded girls; immediate infanticide was sometimes practiced, but I could not determine that this elimination was habitual.
Infanticide was practiced regularly by the Comanches in the case of deformed, diseased, or sickly babies. The old women and the medicine man generally decided. If the child was not fit to live it was left out on the plains. If the tribe was ready to move, it was left near the campsite; perhaps this place was chosen in order that the coyotes or other carnivorous animals lurking near the camp to eat the scraps, would soon end the baby's suffering. If the tribe meant to halt for some time, the medicine man carried the child far into the plain and left it to die. Why exposure should have been chosen as a means of eliminating the unfit is not easily explained. Probably, the Comanches did not fancy killing their own children outright. In this way, the race was kept up to par, physically, and no misfits developed among them.
Turning to the purely domestic side of the Comanche family, the women, as has already been noted, did all the drudgery. This state of affairs was not so unjust or so unnatural that we should feel surprised. It was only a division of labor. The man had his work and did it; the woman had hers and did it; that was all. The Comanches ate bison, deer, antelope, small game and horses. The dog was eaten, but his flesh was only for ceremonial use. The principal delicacy was horse flesh; they prized it above all other meat. The preparation of the Comanche meal was simple. The corn was ground in a mortar or mill, and hot water poured over it. Sometimes the corn was parched before being ground up. These mortars, by the way, are the only evidence of any grinding of stone done by the Comanches. The meat was then hung on a forked stick and held over the fire. After the meat was partially cooked, it was carried into the lodge; everybody cut off a piece, the size of which was regulated by his appetite, and scooped up handfuls of the meal. With minor variations, this diet sufficed them the year round. The meat that could not be eaten was jerked. Meat-jerking consisted of thin slices of meat fastened down on pegs just off the ground. It was left to dry in the sunshine. The high altitude made this process easy. With the introduction of salt, jerking became much more common. Smoking of meat was also practiced but not so much as jerking.
Owing to the relatively small families, adoption was freely practiced. In raids, the most promising children were always spared and adopted into the tribe. In the case of children no particular ceremony was involved; they were merely taken into some family or supported by the tribe at large and taught and reared as true Comanches. There was another form of adoption in the case of adults. The person who was adopted, usually someone greatly loved or desired by the person performing the adoption, was taken into the family in place of some departed member. Ashes from a pipe were poured out on the ground after the two had smoked together. A small cake was then made of earth and spittel and patted down over the ashes with three pats. This operation was repeated three times. In this way, the dead member was symbolically buried. After the bereaved had wept or howled sufficiently, he would embrace the newly acquired brother or whatnot and all was well again. If the two were to become brothers, blood was often mixed or exchanged on such occasions. By these devices the fight force of the tribe was kept up or materially enhanced. The adoption ceremony was often used with prominent governmental officials.
Another phase of the family life of the Comanches has to do with slavery. However, the institution of slavery has to do more with their sense of property than it does with family life. Nevertheless, the slave did have a place in the Comanche lodge. There were two classes of slaves recognized by the Comanche, namely the slaves who were driven across the country from Mexico to Louisiana, or vice versa, and the few personal slaves held by blood covenant by individual warriors. The personal slave was the individual property of his master as much as his weapons, his horses, or his wife. The master presented the slave with a small stick, about six inches long by two in thickness. On this stick was crudely carved various devices, such as skulls, hatchets, and arrows. The slave opened a vein on the back of his hand and dyed the stick with the blood. If the slave was sold, the same ceremony had to be performed again with the new master, the same stick serving. The slave had the right of life, food usually, and protection from his master, for no man dared molest the property of another. The master could sell the slave to whom and whenever he chose, and the tribe had no voice in the transaction whatsoever. The personal slave represented the Comanches closest approach to a definite sense of property other than as regarded the utensils of his daily life.
The other type of slave was captured from the Mexicans or Texans and sold in gangs to the various plantation owners. These slaves were community property, and each man shared in the profit. The slave trade and slavery in general was probably introduced to the Comanches by the Spaniards or the French and American planters in Louisiana. At any rate, slaves and buffalo hides made up the bulk of the Comanche trade. They also traded in horses, but they were only incidental to the main business of skins and slaves. The enslavement of inferiors is not uncommon with a warrior people, but the deliberate capture and sale of slaves is an art rarely practiced by primitive men. I am sure that the Comanches learned it from the Mexican coffee planters and the Louisiana rice and sugar cane planters.
In common with all men, the religion of the Comanches was expressive of their general economic status. The religion was a kind of animism plus a crude sort of pantheism. They believed that every living object had two beings, one inside the other. Hence, they were keen about placating the soul of the buffalo before they killed it, and duly honored the same spirit after the beast was dead. The Comanches also believed in fetishes, for they carried all sorts of charms about on their persons to aid them in battle or protect them against harm. Anyone becomes attached to any object, such as a knife, which he carries constantly. This attachment becomes very intense if the object has some mystic power to aid and protect. The crucifixes and medals, although merely symbolic of my own church, attain the status of true fetishes if carried on the person. Hence, the fetishes of the Comanches were not so much a part of the general scheme of religion as they were merely personal relations, each man to his personal fetish. The whole thing was an evidence of magical power gained by propinquity or analogy, that is either by being close to the organ that was supposed to possess the power, or by the wearing of something that looked like the real object power.
The fundamental belief of the Comanches, however, had to do with the worship of the Great Spirit. This deity was sometimes merely a clever trickster. More often he was vague, omniscient, and all-powerful. The Indian could not come to him usually directly; he must have a mediator. The various spirits of animals, the spirits adhering in the powers of nature, and perhaps the spirits of departed ancestors might gain the ear of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit ruled and was in all. In this particular, the omnipresence of deity, the Comanche seems to have differed slightly from the other Indians. He might have borrowed this notion of the all-pervading character of the deity from the Spaniards. It is for this reason that I call their religion a kind of crude pantheism.
Like all heavens, the Happy Hunting Ground of the Comanche was modeled after the rather imperfect reality of his everyday life with all the disagreeable things omitted. The heaven was also based on the buffalo just as was the life of the Comanches. It was in a valley immeasurably large and covered with groves, streams, meadows and abundance of game. It was never too cold or too hot, and there would be no more suffering or sorrow. There would always be plenty without the necessity of expending much energy or effort to obtain it. It seems odd that a plains people would have considered their heaven to be in a valley. However, the Comanches, being a Shoshonean group, had come originally from the Rocky Mountains and hills of Eastern Colorado. This fact may explain their preference for a valley as heaven rather than a plain.
A great portion of the religion of the Comanche, like other primitive peoples, was bound up with the dance. He had dances for nearly everything. The calendar was marked off by various ceremonial dances. The year was divided into four seasons, and these were divided into moons; the moons were subdivided into sleeps. The seasons were celebrated with regular festivals. The green corn dance was a thanksgiving fiesta and ended with the roasting of green corn. The corn was laid in piles in a circle, each family making a pile. The whole tribe assembled and the medicine man made an exhortation to the people and a prayer of thanksgiving. Then he took one ear from each pile and laid them on the fire to roast. When the ceremony had been performed, everybody roasted as much corn as he could eat. The dance was purely social after the medicine man had finished. All restrictions were broken down, and the youths and maidens could associate as freely as they chose. Another of the dances was performed for the other seasons, each in keeping with the particular season. The great hunting dance in the fall and such other characteristic ceremonies are examples of these season dances. Then, there were weekly dances so to speak. At every change of the moon, a solemn dance was held. At the new moon, the medicine man made a long harangue thanking the Great Spirit for granting a new luminary even though the old one had gone. The dance, especially the green corn dance, was enacted by both men and women. At each of the other quarters a similar dance was held. At the last change, they held the feast of the roasted dog. The dogs were fatted and carried a short distance from the village, killed, and roasted by the women. After much dancing, the tribe sat down and ate dog with much jolity. The hunting dances were more pantomimes of what was to be done during the hunt. This operation was thought to produce success in the actual business of taking game. After the warriors had gone the women performed a similar dance to insure success for the men. Apparently they had the idea that they were adding their strength to that of the men. The pipe dance was a dance of welcome and friendship; it was performed only by men. The chief of the tribe would stand with a lighted pipe in his hand, the men of his tribe plus those of the visiting party would dance in a circle with its outer edge close to the chief. After he had taken several whiffs, he would hand the pipe to the visiting chief or leader of the party as he passed. The recipient would smoke the pipe around the circle and hand it back to the host. This ceremony was repeated until everybody had had a chance to smoke. The pipes were made of red sandstone, and Lee says that the Comanches made them themselves. I do not think so, for there was practically no sandstone in the Comanche territory. The other pipe ceremony was performed without motion. The pipe was lighted by the chief of the village. He gave one puff to the earth and one to the sky and two to the wind and water. The puffs given to the wind and water were given to the left and right respectively. After giving a few more puffs to the good of the smokers, he handed the pipe to the most important visitor, who went through the same procedure, handing it back to the second in importance in the host's retinue. Thus, the pipe went down the whole scale to the last man.
All such dances were accompanied by the tomtom beaten with a small paddle and the bone castinets. There was a complimentary visitor's dance which was more social than religious, but it had some religious aspects. The chief and his most important warriors would dance, fully arrayed in all their finery, to the single accompaniment of bone discs, later Spanish coins, fastened to a wand carried by the chief. At the end of the dance, which lasted as long as the dancers saw fit, the chief drove them before him out of the circle formed by the hosts or from the square of the village. This dance was purely complimentary and social. It may be compared to the "bagging" dance of the north plains Indians.
Perhaps, the religion of men may be best shown by their treatment of the dead. The Comanches laid the body in full dress, hair bracelets and all, flat on the ground with the head to the west. Posts were driven securely down around the body until a closed stockade was formed. Then, all the personal property of the dead was piled in the grave with him. The body was covered with branches and dirt and stones were heaped upon the grave and tamped down firmly over the whole. The ponies, mules, and dogs of the dead man were then taken to the grave and killed. If a squaw died, her tools were put into the grave with her, and her mule, if she had one, was killed at her grave so that she could follow her husband quickly in the next world. All these practices are indicative of a profound belief in spirits and the afterlife. As for the custom of burying the bodies with their heads to the west, they did it in order that when the Great Spirit willed, the Comanche might arise and march eastward to conquer the lands which he had lost to the white man. The relentless warfare of the Comanches is explained by this belief in an ultimate defeat of the whites. Perhaps the idea of a resurrection and a reconquest was borrowed from the Spanish missionaries, but most downtrodden peoples have some legend of a savior who will someday come to redeem his people and right their wrongs. It was only natural, therefore, that the Comanches should have developed some such notion with reference to their white enemies. Here again, they seem to differ essentially from the other plains tribes in that they believed in a day of resurrection. Whether they borrowed the idea or not, it profoundly effected their attitude toward the white man and was the principal cause for their unyielding hostility towards him for more than three hundred years.
There are two other semi-religious dances of which I am not so sure. The Comanche war dance or torture dance is described by Lee as being exceedingly horrible. For this reason, they are not to be taken too seriously. The war dance was merely a pantomime of a surprise and massacre; the child of the war dance, the scalp dance, was a similar enactment of taking a scalp. The peculiar attitude toward the scalp was that held by most Indians. The scalp was a token of great bravery and military prowess. Then too, a man who had been scalped was not likely to be allowed to enter the Happy Hunting Ground; hence many an Indian cut off a friend's head to prevent an enemy from scalping him. The body was left on the field, but the head was taken to the brave's native village and buried with due ceremony.
In the torture dance, the victims were stripped and strung up with their arms and legs stretched out and tied to upright poles. The warriors moved slowly about them. At definite intervals they stopped and gave a terrific warwhoop. The captives were ritualistically killed by slow degrees. They were first scalped, usually by the youngest members of the warrior group. Then the warriors cut them to pieces with flint knives shaped much like spearheads. I am not sure just how true is this account, but the Comanches did have a dance in which the captives were killed. These dances and festivals made up the greater part of their religious observances.
In common with nearly all the plains Indians and others in the west and northwest, the Comanches venerated the Thunder Bird. The lightning was its eyes, the black cloud its wings, and the thunder was the snapping of its beak. On the upper stretches of the Red River there was a level place destitute of all vegetation. In this spot, the Thunder Bird was supposed to have lighted. Though the Thunder Bird was worshiped by most all of the Indians, the Comanches localized it by giving it a local character and a specific spot in which to alight.
Thus nearly all of his acts were regulated with reference to the spirit world. Even the naming of the children was, in a measure, determined by omens. In ordinary times, the medicine man attended on the woman. The first significant object which he saw after the child was born became the child's sponsor so to speak, for the child was named for it. Often however, the child was named for its likeness to some natural object. The name was supposed to enhance this quality. Hence, all life was subjective and ruled by spirits.
The Comanches, from the foregoing, were much like the other plains tribes, but in other respects they differed markedly from their nearest neighbors. This situation may be explained from the Shoshonean origin and immigration from Wyoming. The pressure of the Sioux and other prairie tribes probably drove the Comanches southward while the Shoshones were pressed farther north and west. Until recently the Comanche and Shoshone kept up communication, and their tongues were much alike. The Comanches had no Indian allies except the Kiowa, with whom they were confederated since 1795. They were at war with all the tribes to the north, west, east and south. Their special enemies were the Apaches and their hostility towards these tribes never abated.
For more than two hundred years, they fought the Spaniards, and then maintained a life and death struggle with the Texans for over forty years. Their first treaty with the Texas government was made in 1835. They made the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, but it was soon broken. Later, in 1867, they made a second treaty, agreeing to accept a reservation between the Washita and Red Rivers in southwestern Oklahoma, but it was not until after the outbreak of 1875-78 that they and their allies, the Kiowa, finally settled upon it.
When first authentically encountered by the whites, the Comanches numbered about 40,000, but they have been terribly wasted by disease and their relentless war with the whites. In 1899, they had dwindled to the small number of 1,553 on their reservation in Oklahoma. Thus the most dashing, picturesque, and unafraid of the western tribes has almost passed out of existence.
Lee E. Mahoney
Frontier Times
April, 1928
