The peyote ceremony is an all-night ritual centered on the sacramental ingestion of the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, which contains the psychoactive alkaloid mescaline, practiced originally by Indigenous peoples of northern Mexico including the Huichol and Tarahumara and, from the nineteenth century onward, adopted and adapted by many Native American peoples of the United States and Canada as the central rite of the pan-tribal Native American Church. A typical ceremony runs from evening to sunrise around a crescent-shaped earthen altar, led by a roadman who guides participants through prescribed songs, prayers, ingestion of peyote, and periods of quiet reflection intended to promote healing, moral guidance, and communion with the divine, and the ceremony is understood by practitioners as a deeply spiritual, disciplined religious practice rather than recreational drug use. The Native American Church's peyote ceremony has a distinctive legal history in the United States, where its sacramental use of peyote is protected under specific federal and state religious-freedom exemptions after decades of legal conflict, making it one of the most closely studied cases in the anthropology and law of Indigenous religious practice and psychoactive sacrament use.
Facts
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountUsed by the Huichol of northern Mexico and by Native American tribes of the Southern Plains states, later carried into wider religious practice through the Native American Church. 1 Documented YearSourced to the subject's own account Connections
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The peyote-centered Native American Church has drawn substantial Navajo membership since the early twentieth century; ethnographic estimates have placed Navajo peyotist participation as high as half of the Navajo Nation.
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Source Wikipedia: Peyoteopening history sectiontier 3Quote, opening history section
From earliest recorded time, peyote has been used by indigenous peoples, such as the Huichol of northern Mexico and by various Native American tribes, native to or relocated to the Southern Plains states of present-day Oklahoma and Texas.
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Source Wikipedia: Peyoteopening history sectiontier 3Quote, opening history section
From earliest recorded time, peyote has been used by indigenous peoples, such as the Huichol of northern Mexico and by various Native American tribes, native to or relocated to the Southern Plains states of present-day Oklahoma and Texas.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Peyote
Wikipediahistory/early description section
Peyote was first described in the literature by Bernardino de Sahagún in 1560.
opening history section
From earliest recorded time, peyote has been used by indigenous peoples, such as the Huichol of northern Mexico and by various Native American tribes, native to or relocated to the Southern Plains states of present-day Oklahoma and Texas.
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