peyoten.

1849 J. W. Audubon Western Jrnl. (1906) 186 Out of these acorns the Indians make their ‘payote’, a kind of paste.

1913 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. 40 427 We endeavoured further to extend knowledge of pathological mental states by producing mental conditions nearly allied to generally recognized types of insanity... For this purpose we used the Mexican drug [printed drag] pelotte—the mescal button.

1915 Jrnl. Heredity 6 295/2 The majority from the peyote and the wine were unable to utilize their legs.

1953 W. S. Burroughs Junkie xv. 145 Finally, the peyote came up solid like a ball of hair,..clogging my throat. As horrible a sensation as I ever stood still for.

1993 Santa Fe (New Mexico) Jrnl. Reporter 3 Feb. 19/1 Like more than 300,000 other people from 70 tribes, Wood is a member of the Native American Church, which uses peyote, an illegal drug, in its sacred ceremonies.

2004 Uncut Mar. 34/1 I was taking peyote with the Indians all day.

1859 J. R. Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (ed. 2) 509 Whiskey-root, a plant of the Cactus species possessing intoxicating properties, which is thus described by a correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune: ‘It is what the Indians call Pie-o-ke.’]

1885 Proc. U.S. National Mus. 8 521 It is principally as an intoxicant that the Peyote has become noted, being often added to ‘tizwin’ or other mild fermented native drink to render it more inebriating.

1898 J. Mooney in 17th Ann. Rep. Bureau Amer. Ethnol. 1895–6 i. 238 The worship of the peyote..is comparatively modern with the Kiowa.

1920 Sci. Amer. 14 Feb. 157 The peyote, often popularly miscalled ‘mescal’ through confusion with the maguey cactus from which a fiery intoxicant is prepared, is a species of small cactus widely used for both medicinal and ceremonial purposes by the Indian tribes of the southwestern U.S.

1966 Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) 10 Apr. 3 a/4 Others [i.e. drugs used at college parties] are psilocybin, an extract from a Mexican mushroom, and mescaline, an extract from payote, a small cactus.

1977 W. H. Lewis & M. P. F. Elvin-Lewis Med. Bot. xviii. 405/2 Peyote is usually eaten as mescal buttons, the dried, brown pieces of the above-ground part of the cactus. Occasionally fresh green pieces are used.

2001 S. Walton Out of It (2002) iv. 144 Peyote is a natural plant source of the hallucinogenic alkaloid mescaline, a potent intoxicant somewhat similar to LSD in its effects.

1938 Amer. Anthropologist 40 698 For more than two centuries, the use of the peyote-cactus as a religious sacrament has been slowly diffusing northward among the southern Plains tribes of the United States.

2001 S. Walton Out of It (2002) iv. 143 The use of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) among the Huichol, Toltec and Chichimeca Amerindian peoples of Mexico was first on the list because that is where the conquest began.

1953 W. S. Burroughs Junkie xv. 145 The high came on slow. Peyote high is something like benzedrine high.

1921 M. R. Harrington Relig. & Ceremonies of Lenape viii. 185 (caption) Peyote ‘Button’. Diameter 1·9 in.

1975 ‘S. Marlowe’ Cawthorn Jrnls. (1976) ii. xi. 88 Have you ever eaten peyote buttons?

2001 Adrenalin No. 9. 64/3 About 10 cm high and 5 cm in diameter, the Peyote button that I would crop from it would be enough for one hit.

1920 P. Radin Autobiogr. Winnebago Indian 437 It was quite customary to eat peyote during the day in the early days of the peyote cult.

1960 Current Anthropol. 1 56/2 The Menomini peyote cult was originally for males only, and at present all important positions except one are held by males.

1993 V. E. Mitchell Windows on Lost World xiv. 168 The colonists had used such diverse models as the Australian aborigines and the Amerind peyote cult for their society.