wiliróva!”
standing!”
(“Beautiful lily, in bloom this morning, guard me! Drive away sorcery! Make me grow old! Let me reach the age at which I have to take up a walking-stick! I thank thee for exhaling thy fragrance there, where thou art standing!”)
High mental qualities are ascribed especially to all species of Mammilaria and Echinocactus, small cacti, for which a regular cult is instituted. The Tarahumares designate several varieties as hikuli, though the name belongs properly only to the kind most commonly used by them. These plants live for months after they have been rooted up, and the eating of them causes a state of ecstasy. They are therefore considered demi-gods, who have to be treated with great reverence, and to whom sacrifices have to be offered.
Echinocactus.
The principal kinds thus distinguished are known to science as Lophophora Williamsii and Lophophora Williamsii, var. Lewinii. In the United States they are called mescal buttons, and in Mexico peyote. The Tarahumares speak of them as the superior hikuli (hikuli wanamé), or simply hikuli, they being the hikuli par excellence.
The Huichol Indians, who live many hundred miles south of the Tarahumares, also have a hikuli cult, and it is a curious and interesting fact that with them the plant has even the same name, although the two tribes are neither related to nor connected with each other. The cults, too, show many points of resemblance, though with the southern tribe the plant plays a far more important part in the tribal life, and its worship is much more elaborate. On the other hand, the Huichols use only the species and variety shown in the illustration, while the Tarahumares have several. Major J. B. Pond, of New York, informs me that in Texas, during the Civil War, the so-called Texas Rangers, when taken prisoners and deprived of all other stimulating drinks, used mescal buttons, or “white mule,” as they called them. They soaked the plants in water and became intoxicated with the liquid.
Lophophora Williamsii, var. Lewinii. Lophophora Williamsii. Hikuli or Peyote, the principal sacred cacti. Nearly natural size.