Friend to the Ute
Omer C. Stewart Crusades for Indian Religious Freedom
Colorado Heritage, The Journal of the Colorado Historical Society, 1982, issue 1.
"Strange as the religion of Peyote may seem to
some people,
it is, nevertheless, their form of worship, and it should not be
banned."
OMER C. STEWART, distinguished professor emeritus of
anthropology at the university of Colorado at Boulder, is a
recognized authority on Native American cultures. Since receiving
his Ph.D. in 1939, he has devoted much of his professional career
to furthering the understanding of Ute customs, including
practice of the peyote religion.
WHILE STILL A GRADUATE STUDENT in anthropology at the
University of California at Berkeley in January 1938, I was
invited to be a participant-observer in an all-night peyote
meeting, held near Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation in
southwestern Colorado. This was my third experience with the Ute
peyote religion in a few months, experiences that were to have a
profound effect on the course of my career. Since that time my
continuing research on the Ute and on the peyote religion has
uncovered a great deal of information about this
little-understood Native American religion. Over the years I have
recorded the similarities in the ceremonies and rituals of the
peyote religion in more than twenty-seven tribes from Oklahoma to
Canada and from Wisconsin to California. Especially have I fought
to protect the religious freedom of those who practice the peyote
religion as formalized in the Native American Church.
Those early experiences in 1937-38 made me acutely aware of
the vast public misunderstanding over peyote and its use. This
prompted me to do a radio broadcast later in 1938 for a
University of California radio program over NBC in San Francisco.
I then wrote an article about the ceremony in Colorado and Utah,
which was published in a local newspaper. These were my initial
efforts at applying my discipline of anthropology to further
general public education. In the meantime I continued with my
scholarly research, writing my Ph.D. dissertation on
Washo-Northern Paiute peyotism in 1939.
Following my discharge from the army in 1945, I returned to
academic work with an appointment to the University of Colorado
in Boulder. As a professor there, I worked to inform the general
public as well as my students and fellow anthropologists about
peyote and the peyote religion. Late in 1946 I began lecturing,
and it seems like I lectured on the peyote religion in at least
twenty towns, demonstrating the ritual objects—drum, fan,
staff, and rattle—and singing several peyote songs in the
American Indian style that I had learned. The questions and
discussions that followed my demonstrations revealed that the old
prejudices against the word "peyote" remained. I became
well aware that a single lecture would probably change none of
these long-held opinions.
Throughout my professional career as an anthropologist, I
have published a number of works on the subject of the peyote
religion. In 1948 the first volume in the University of Colorado
Studies Series in Anthropology was my "Ute Peyotism: A Study
of a Cultural Complex," completed in 1938, but its
publication was delayed by World War II. Over the years I have
published extensively in the American Anthropologist,
Southwestern Lore, the Delphian Quarterly, and other
scholarly journals. My book-length, definitive study,
"History of the Peyote Religion," is being published by
the University of Utah Press.
Although my research has uncovered many documented facts on
the early use of peyote, much of what I have learned comes from
oral tradition. While it is most inexact at fixing dates and is
also limited in accuracy, I have received information from old
Southern Ute informants that supplements the early written
documents and also serves as a corrective to some of the written
reports.
Peyotism has been practiced by the two southwestern Colorado
Ute tribes—the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain
Ute—since the turn of the century. Yet peyote and its use
are not native to Colorado. The peyote cactus grows in a limited
area near Laredo in Texas and in Mexico from the Rio Grande to
the region of San Luis Potosi. While it can be documented that
peyote was widely used in ceremonies in Mexico in the sixteenth
century, the development of the rituals associated with its use
in the United States occurred near Laredo, Texas, and came from
the Lipan Apache. They invented new Apache-style ritual songs and
music and may have added some ritual elements to the Carrizo
Indian peyote ceremony they learned. The peyote ceremonies
contain Christian features and qualities. Since the religion
indigenous to the Ute contained none of these concepts or ritual
elements, the peyote religion spread to them as a cultural
complex.
The documents establish that both the Lipan and the Mescalero
Apache knew about peyote and Christianity by 1770—nearly a
century before the earliest documented evidence of peyotism in
the United States. The transmission of the peyote ceremonies were
direct from Laredo by known Lipan Apache, who were named as the
first teachers of peyotism to the Kiowa and the Comanche on their
reservation in Oklahoma in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
Buckskin Charlie, a Southern Ute chief, was one of the first
to become acquainted with the use of peyote. Oral tradition
states that he was introduced to the peyote ceremony while
visiting the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian agency in Oklahoma in
1896.1 The Kiowa and Comanche then introduced the
peyote ceremony to their neighbors, the Arapaho and Cheyenne.
The accounts differ as to when the Ute first learned the
peyote ceremony; all of them document its introduction by the
Cheyenne and Arapaho into southern Colorado. Over the years the
Southern Ute have been questioned on the early history of
peyotism. In 1948 Tony Buck, Buckskin Charlie's son, stated that
in 1900 an Arapaho came to Ignacio two or three times and stayed
for extended periods, bringing peyote and teaching the ritual.
Tony also said that he had attended ceremonies for forty-eight
years and that his father was an early leader. In 1949 it was
again stated that peyotism began among the Southern Ute in the
Ignacio area and spread to the Ute Mountain Ute at Towaoc,
reiterating that the first leader was Buckskin Charlie, who had
been visited by Cheyenne Indians who taught him its use.
In 1948 Isaac Cloud was recognized as the leader of the
peyote religion among the Southern Ute. In an interview he stated
that he commenced directing services in 1915, having learned the
ritual from Buckskin Charlie and his wife Emma Buck. Emma had
obtained a supply of peyote from Sam Lone Bear, the notorious
Sioux peyote supplier and missionary who had settled among the
Uncompaghre Ute at Dragon, Utah, in early 1914.
During these early years of peyote use, the Ute must have
been very secretive or the officials of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA) were very nonobservant In 1916, and again in 1919,
the Bureau of Indian Affairs agents of both the Southern Ute and
the Ute Mountain Ute denied its existence on these reservations.2
It is indeed surprising, then, that in 1917 the Colorado
state legislature would pass the Crowley Bill, prohibiting the
use of peyote in the state. This law, of course, did not effect
peyote use on the reservation, where the Ute were subject only to
federal laws, but did prohibit its transfer through the United
States mails and use outside reservation boundaries. Colorado
became the first state to pass an antipeyote law. The year
before, federal legislation in the form of the Gandy Bill had
failed to pass the United States Congress. The campaign against
peyote in Colorado was led by women's organizations such as the
Parent Teacher Associations and the Women's Christian Temperance
Union. The precipitating force for the final passage of the
Crowley Bill, however. was Gertrude Bonnin, a Yankton Sioux who
had worked for fourteen years as a social worker among the Ute of
Utah. While in Utah, she became an opponent of the Sioux peyote
proselytizer, Sam Lone Bear, who appears to have been a peyote
supplier also to the Southern Ute. Bonnin lobbied to have the
Gandy Bill passed in Washington, D.C., in 1916, and following its
defeat, transferred her efforts to Colorado, where she met with
success.
The passage of the law did not, however, prevent the practice
of the peyote religion among the Ute. In fact, in a 1926 letter
to the BIA, Mrs. C.W. Wiegel, who was chairman of the committee
on Indian welfare of the Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs in
Denver, stated that "it has been reported to me that during
the past winter the practice of using Piota (sic) medicine and
the form of worship that goes with it has been introduced to the
Ute Indian Reservation at Ignacio and is spreading rapidly among
them. The better class of Indians are filled with consternation
and are appealing for help to stamp it out before it ruins all
the young people."3 In answering the accusations
to the BIA, E. E. McKean, the superintendent at Ignacio, defended
peyotism, stating that "it is very clear that her
information is indefinite and exaggerated. It is true that there
has been a small amount of peyote coming at different times to a
few of the Indians on this reservation. I would also add that
these Indians are among the better class, both from the point of
industry and abiding by the law.... There is small grounds for
alarm of its spreading among these Indians. "4
Many years later, while testifying in 1953, Isaac Cloud used
the period of 1919 to 1928 when E. E. McKean was in charge of the
BIA in Ignacio, as a time marker. Isaac said that about that time
Sam Lone Bear brought peyote and ran meetings three times in
Ignacio, but he knew that Sam had been convicted and had spent
time in prison. Isaac also named men from Oklahoma who came to
Ignacio for meetings: Sam Buffalo, Claude Hill, George Hill,
Albert Hofman, Brown Flocko, and John Peak Heart. In addition to
being the first important and continuous peyote proselytizer to
the Ute Mountain Ute, John Peak Heart had attended the well-known
Indian school at Carlisle in 1886-87 and was a peyote leader
among the Cheyenne. Although Sam Lone Bear had visited the Ute at
Ignacio and at Towaoc about 1915 or 1916, it was Heart who,
repeatedly each summer, brought peyote to the Ute Mountain Ute
and remained with them for weeks to teach them how to conduct the
peyote ritual.
The first local peyote leader at Towaoc appears to have been
James Mills, a twenty-seven-year-old Ute Mountain Ute. He had
impressed Heart sufficiently to be invited to return to Oklahoma
with him and to be an apprentice in peyotism. Beginning in 1918,
Mills was Heart's assistant in Colorado each summer and remained
as the resident peyote leader between his visits, which continued
until the early 1950s.5
While peyote ceremonies continued to be held, subsequently
formalized in the incorporation in various states as the Native
American Church, such rituals, dependent upon the use of peyote,
were illegal in Colorado and in several other states. In 1962 the
antipeyote law was challenged in California, and although my
testimony was stricken from the record, it was restored by the
California Supreme Court in 1964 and was used when that court
ruled that the state had an obligation to protect the religious
freedom of the Native American. The 1917 law in Colorado was then
challenged in 1967 following the arrest of Mana Pardeahtan for
possession of peyote. I also testified in this case. Citing the
precedent of the California case along with the other evidence
and documents provided, the Colorado court declared the 1917 law
unconstitutional.6
Bringing the First Amendment fight to an end, this 1967
ruling greatly influenced the Colorado state legislature to amend
its narcotic law in 1969 to permit the use of peyote in the
religious services of the Native American Church. After fifty
years, the right of a people to practice their religion in
freedom had been upheld. The struggle to educate and to inform
people about cultural practices that are different from their
own, however, continues.
A Peyote Ceremony
(Text is excerpted and edited from Stewart, "Ute
Peyotism," pp 8-18.)
The meeting place is a tipi with its entrance to the east. A
crescent-shaped altar and fire are prepared according to custom.
A drum, feather fan, eagle humerus whistle, gourd rattle, Bull
Durham tobacco, and sagebrush complete the necessary ritual
equipment. The chief or leader usually supplies the peyote for
the meeting. Members bathe before the meeting, and about
nightfall they gather in small groups outside the tipi—first
the chief, then the chief-drummer, the cedarman, next the men,
then the women and children with the fire-chief last—all
making their way into the tipi.
The leader places the "chief peyote" upon some
sagebrush leaves on the top of the altar and prays. Everyone is
invited to speak of their ills and struggles, so that prayers may
be voiced in their behalf. The Bull Durham tobacco is passed and
cigarettes are made and lit from the glowing firestick. Each
person blows the first four puffs of smoke toward the "chief
peyote" on the altar and prays. The cigarette butts are then
placed at the base of the altar.
Next sprigs of sagebrush are passed and the leaves are rubbed
between the hands, sniffed rubbed over the limbs, and beaten four
times against the chest to purify the body. A sack of peyote
follows the sage, and each adult takes four buttons. Since the
peyote is extremely bitter and nauseous, coughing and spitting
often succeed the arduous swallowing. Everyone sits as still as
possible until all have finished eating the medicine, because the
partaking of the divine plant during meetings is a sacred
procedure and supposed to be accompanied by silent prayer.
After the eating, the chief holds the staff and fan, shakes
the rattle, and sings the Opening Song, accompanied by the
chief-drummer's rapid drum beats. Only four songs have to be sung
at fixed times: the Opening Song, the Midnight Water Call, the
Morning Water Call, and the Closing Song. During the remainder of
the ritual each man sings any song he wishes when it is his turn
to lead, holding the staff and fan in one hand and shaking the
rattle with the other. Women neither hold the staff to lead the
singing nor beat the drum.
With midnight and the Midnight Water Call, the fire-chief
replenishes the fire, the Midnight Song is sung, and prayers are
offered through four puffs of smoke. All drink water. Singing
then continues with renewed vigor each using their own equipment.
Personal supplies of peyote may be consumed after midnight, and
prayers continue to be offered.
A special morning ritual duplicates some features of the
Midnight Water Call; the fire is refueled and the central altar
area cleaned. The chief then sings the Morning Water Call, and
following the four blasts on the whistle, a woman, usually the
chiefs wife, brings in the water and kneels. After ceremonial
duties, the water is again spilled on the ground, a breakfast
follows, and the Closing Song is sung, followed by more lengthy
prayers and blessings. All equipment is dismantled and put away,
and then the fire-chief leads the exit, followed by the chief.
Once the ritual is over, the women leave to prepare the noon
feast and the men to rest, relating their spiritual experiences
and visions.
References
1. Woodson, Darlington, Oklahoma, to Day, Ignacio, Colorado
13 July 1896. Federal Records Center, Denver.
2. West to Larsen, 2 November 1916, from Ignacio; also denied
by Simons to Larsen, 14 November 1916, from Towaoc; McKean to
BIA, 14 April 1919; Johnson to BIA, 15 April 1919, Federal
Records Center, Denver.
3. In 1926 Sioux antipeyotist Gertrude Bonnin was a national
lecturer for the National Federation of Women's Clubs and may be
suspected of having been the "better class of Indian"
who spurred Mrs. Wiegel to action. Wiegel to Burke, 19 May 1926
Federal Records Center. Denver.
4. McKean to BIA, 9 June, 1926. Federal Records Center,
Denver.
5. David F. Aberle and Omer C. Stewart, Navaho and Ute
Peyotism: A Chronological and Distributional Study,
University of Colorado Studies, Series in Anthropology, No. 6,
1957.
6. In the County Court in and for the City and County of
Denver and State of Colorado, Criminal Action No. 9454, The
People v. Mana Pardeahtan, finding of June 27, 1967, Judge
William Conley. Reported, with photo of Judge Conley and
attorneys Deikman and Cook, Denver Rocky Mountain News, 28
June, 1967.