The Huichol Indians, who live many hundred miles south of the Tarahumares, also have a hikuli cult, and it is a curious and interesting fact that with them the plant has even the same name, although the two tribes are neither related to nor connected with each other.  The cults, too, show many points of resemblance, though with the southern tribe the plant plays a far more important part in the tribal life, and its worship is much more elaborate.  On the other hand, the Huichols use only the species and variety shown in the illustration, while the Tarahumares have several.  Major J. B. Pond, of New York, informs me that in Texas, during the Civil War, the so-called Texas Rangers, when taken prisoners and deprived of all other stimulating drinks, used mescal buttons, or “white mule,” as they called them.  They soaked the plants in water and became intoxicated with the liquid.

The plant, when taken, exhilarates the human system, and allays all feeling of hunger and thirst.  It also produces colour-visions.  When fresh, it has a nauseating, slightly sour taste, but it is wonderfully refreshing when one has been exposed to great fatigue.  Not only does it do away with all exhaustion, but one feels actually pushed on, as I can testify from personal experience.  In this respect it resembles the Peruvian coca; but unlike the latter, it leaves a certain depression, as well as a headache.  Although an Indian feels as if drunk after eating a quantity of hikuli, and the trees dance before his eyes, he maintains the balance of his body even better than under normal conditions, and he will walk along the edge of precipices without becoming dizzy.  At their nocturnal feasts, when drinking heavily of both tesvino and hikuli, many persons may be seen to weep and laugh alternately.  Another marked effect of the plant is to take away temporarily all sexual desire.  This fact, no doubt, is the reason why the Indians, by a curious aboriginal mode of reasoning, impose abstinence from sexual intercourse as a necessary part of the hikuli cult.

The effect of the plant is so much enjoyed by the Tarahumares that they attribute to it power to give health and long life and to purify body and soul.  The little cacti, either fresh or dried, are ground on the metate, while being mixed with water; and this liquor is the usual form in which hikuli is consumed.

Hikuli is also applied externally for snake-bites, burns, wounds, and rheumatism; for these purposes it is chewed, or merely moistened in the mouth, and applied to the afflicted part.  Not only does it cure disease, causing it to run off, but it also so strengthens the body that it can resist illness, and is therefore much used in warding off sickness.  Though not given to the dead, since the dead are no longer in need of remedies, hikuli is always partaken of at the feasts of the dead.