There are numerous similarities of belief between the NAC and the Mexican tribal peyote practices. The story of how the Apache leader foresaw the approach of a Comanche war party recalls peyote's use in warfare and divination, as described in the accounts of the early Mexican tribal chroniclers. In both Mexico and the Plains, peyote is hailed as an unsurpassed 'Good Medicine' by virtue of its inherent properties and ascribed powers. La Barre cites many elements common to both Plains and Mexican peyote ritualism, including the procurement pilgrimage, the nocturnal meeting time, the fetish peyote, feathers and bird symbolism, the ceremonial fire and incensing, etc. The Tarahumara peyote rituals, with the shaman and his assistants sitting west of ceremonial fire, the central placement of the peyote button in the center of the cross and the rasping stick and other instruments seem to foreshadow similarities to the NAC ceremony. The point is that the current manifestation of NAC Peyote Ceremony is, itself, a syncretism of tribal beliefs that represent a large span of North American indigenous populations across both space and time. ! This rich body of beliefs endow peyote with many desirable characteristics that make it such a culturally important plant sacrament. Peyote is seen to have a sentience and an agency that allows it to guard its own interests, and reward or punish its follower, it can protect one from many dangers and reward one with power, knowledge, or good luck. If one does not properly heed the peyote way, there is an inherent accountability with the way that the flow of one's life will proceed. The communal nature of the peyote meeting provides its own special social incentive for attending. Sometimes public confession of sins is a feature of the meeting, an effective mechanism for the liquidation of anxieties. Peyote figures in many stories of personal conflict resolution and moral victory. However, one of the most convincing appeals to the individual lies in the very nature of the peyote intoxication which is a specifically hallucinogenic experience that is characterized by a feeling of the personal significance of external and internal stimuli. The user is prompted to ask of everything, 'What does this
mean?' and is prompted to process through the experience an answer that leads to a greater sense of wonder, awe, and sense of purpose. Peyote is a spiritually important sacrament in allowing an individual to receive solutions to personal problems in the form of personal revelations. This noetic quality of the peyote experience helps make it extremely personal and impressive to the individual.
San Pedro, Trichocereus pachanoi/peruvianus, is a cactus native to the Andes Mountains of Peru and Ecuador. It has a long history of use spanning 3,000 years in traditional Andean medicine. In South America, it is also known as Huachuma. The earliest archaeological evidence discovered is a stone carving of a Huachumero found at the Jaguar Temple of Chavín de Huantar in northern Peru, dated to 1300 BCE. Textiles from the same region and period of history depict the cactus with jaguars and hummingbirds, two of its guardian spirits, and with spiral symbols, likely representing its ability to produce a transcendent visionary experience. Huachuma ceremonies where the cactus is consumed as a tea are still carried on in