The Missihuasca Hypothesis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While it has been established that the Natives of the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere employed a number of magical plants toward entheogenic ends (Barrier 2020; Rafferty 2021; Simon and Parker 2018), e.g., Nicotiana spp., Datura spp., Ipomoea spp., etc., the general consensus has been that the use of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, in the forms of jurema, ayahuasca, yopo, vihó, etc., is limited to certain Indigenous peoples of South America. Based on ethnographic reports, however, there is evidence that the Cherokee in particular may have had access to N,N-DMT via Gleditsia triacanthos or honey-locust—a deciduous tree in the family Fabaceae that contains the compound in its roots and holds a prominent place in Cherokee mythology. Moreover, the presence of β-carbolines in other plants utilized by Native Americans of the Southeast, e.g., N. rustica, Passiflora incarnata, and possibly Ilex vomitoria, suggests that G. triacanthos could have been combined with a number of MAO modulating plants, resulting in a concoction chemically similar to the South American tea, ayahuasca.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38432.0