Button, Button . . .

At many a sun-drenched trading post around Arizona and New Mexico's 16 million-acre Navajo Reservation, Indians were trooping in last week to buy such sweets as canned peaches or candy. To the experienced trader, these innocent purchases meant only one thing: a peyote party was in the making. Soon, at some secret hideaway far out in the desert, men, women & children would be enjoying the transitory delights of a powerful drug. After the party they would have a dismal hangover. The sweets were to help straighten them out.

Peyote is the fruit of the mescal cactus (Lophophora williamsii), which grows abundantly in Mexico and in parts of Texas. Dried, the fruits look like buttons of half-dollar size, brown with a pale center. For 15 years the peyote habit has spread. Alarmed as early as 1940, the Navajo Tribal Council outlawed peyote, but the ban could not be enforced. The peyote button had been adopted as a Communion host by the Native American Church, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, wary of a "religious freedom" issue, refused to interfere.

Easy Prey. The Navajos, already wretched in their poverty and disease (TIME, Nov. 3, 1947), were easy prey for peyote peddlers. The stuff offered them escape from their troubles. After a twinge of nausea (felt only by beginners), the peyote-chewer gets an otherworldly sensation of being in two parts. Then come visions and hallucinations, always involving bright colors and lights--"dreams in Technicolor." The medical aftereffects, still in dispute, apparently include impairment of the heart and kidneys.

One "peyote hassle" has been described by a paleface intruder. Navajos of all ages and both sexes sat around a fire with a crude sand-painting of the moon beside it. While the "peyote priest" fussed with the sand-painting, a tin tub full of water was boiling. Peyote buttons were dumped into it. After they had softened, they were fished out and passed around to be chewed. The liquid was doled out in cups. After that, said the observer, it was "every man for himself." Men hopped up with peyote, he reported, "are likely to grab the closest female, whatever age, kinfolk or not."

Plentiful Supply. There have been many reports of sex crimes, some against children, committed under the influence of peyote. Last week Dr. Clarence G. Salsbury, longtime medical missionary among the Navajos (and longtime foe of the Indian Bureau), reported that he had just heard of two cases of infanticide and one of fatal child neglect caused by peyote. At Flagstaff's Navajo Ordnance Depot many Indians were unable to work for days at a time after peyote jags. At least one-third of the 61,000 Navajos are estimated to be addicts.

Peyote is not on the federal list of narcotics (neither was marijuana until it became dangerously popular) and is under no federal control. Some states, notably Texas, have tried to curb the peyote traffic, but Mexico has a plentiful supply. In Washington the Bureau of Indian Affairs is waiting for the results of two elaborate studies into the physical and social effects of peyote. Until proof to the contrary is received, the bureau is committed to the view that peyote is harmless. The men on the spot in the desert think they know better.

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