March 2025 AOM: The Missihuasca Hypothesis: Speculations on an Undocumented Ayahuasca Analogue in the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere

We warmly welcome P.D. Newman, author of Tripping the Trail of Ghosts: Psychedelics and the Afterlife Journey in Native American Mound Cultures, as our featured author this month. P.D. Newman’s book examines the role of psychoactive plants in afterlife traditions, sacred rituals, and spirit journeying by shamans of the Mississippian mound cultures. He explores in depth the Native American death journey known as the “Trail of Ghosts” or “Path of Souls”, demonstrating the similarities between the Ghost Trail afterlife journey and the well-known Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead. In his article here, P.D. Newman investigates the Cherokee “Gambler” myth and the botanical assemblages collected at a range of ancient Mississippian sites that point to a deep psychedelic tradition in Native American mound cultures that P.D. refers to as the ‘Missihuasca Hypothesis’.

Interact with P.D. on our AoM Forum here.

While tobacco and peyote will no doubt be familiar to most as important Amerindian sacramental plants, with the exception of tobacco, the Indigenous use of the majority of the entheogenic drugs discovered in and around a number of Mississippian sites may be largely unknown to the casual reader. These include: Datura spp., black nightshade, and LSD-related morning glory spp. (Parker and Simon. 2018.; Barrier. 2020.). For the most part, all of the above have been backed by strong anthropological and archaeological evidence. In the present paper, however, I’d like to discuss a subject that admittedly constitutes a speculative conjecture based largely upon ethnographical information. I tentatively refer to this speculation as ‘the Missihuasca hypothesis.’

The ‘Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere’ (MIIS) refers to a mysterious complex of mythological, ceremonial, and iconographic motifs shared by a number of different regions in Southeastern North America, from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE. Successors to the Hopewell culture, the Mississippians were responsible for creating, maintaining, and embellishing many of the enigmatic platform mounds and earthworks constructed in and around the Mississippi valley—the awe-spiring remains of which are exhibited to this day throughout the Southeastern landscape of North America. (Reilly and Garber. “Introduction.” Published in Reilly, F. Kent, III and James F. Gardner (editors). Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography. University of Texas Press. Austin, TX. 2007. Pp. 1-7.) Beginning around 1,200 BP, the Mississippian culture first emerged from the middle Mississippi River, exhibiting vibrant and creative lifeways that persisted right up to the time of the seventeenth century. The natives of this period and place are perhaps best known for their textile, artistic, and agrarian innovations, such as, for instance, their remarkably durable shell tempered pottery, their cold hammered, paper-thin copper repoussé plates, expertly carved whelk shell gorgets and cups, and a groundbreaking horticultural technique that grew out of their almost universal incorporation of maize—known as the “three sisters” method of planting. Other acceptable names for this fascinating and resourceful demographic include the ‘Mississippian Art and Ceremonial Complex’ (MACC), the somewhat outdated ‘Southeastern Ceremonial Complex’ (SECC) (Reilly and Garber. “Introduction.” Published in Reilly, F. Kent, III and James F. Gardner (editors). Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography. University of Texas Press. Austin, TX. 2007. Pp. 1-7.), and the admittedly inappropriate ‘Southern Death Cult.’ None of these titles, however, live up to the beauty, grandeur, and sheer mystique of which many of the Mississippian sites and artifacts are possessed.

Central to the MIIS was this puzzling set of iconographic symbols, many of which were shared with the preceding Hopewell, Adena, and Poverty Point cultures—the hand and the raptor, for instance, were known to the Hopewell. Conversely, a number of these images appear to be completely unknown to those archaic cultures that arrived before the MIIS. Executed in a number of regional stylistic variations, the set of symbols comprising the Path of Souls cycle functioned in a manner analogous to that of books of the dead in other cultures. (Lankford. Reachable Stars. P. 204.) According to American anthropologist, F. Kent Reilly III,

Hemphill engraved pottery excavated at Moundville shows signs of use, which strongly suggests that these vessels were not solely intended as grave goods. Perhaps containing sacred medicine, they were used in a variety of rituals that emphasized the ideology of the Path of Souls. Indeed, at Moundville Hemphill pottery with its engraved motifs may have functioned as an analog to the Book of the Dead in other cultures. In this hypothesis, each Hemphill vessel contained powerful medicine that would assist the soul of the deceased on the path to overcome the tribulations that the supernatural entity engraved on the bottle represents. (Reilly. “The Great Serpent in the Lower Mississippi Valley.” Published in Lankford, George E., F. Kent Reilly III, and James F. Garber (editors). Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World. University of Texas Press. Austin, TX. 2011. Pp. 118-134.)

Although, Mississippian iconography differed from standard mortuary texts in that some of the Path of Souls artifacts—namely, the pipes, pots, and drinking vessels—were both practical and virtually interactive. Indeed, by virtue of their consecrated contents, these pieces were possessed of the power to invoke the supernatural depicted on the pot or pipe, projecting their smoker(s) and drinker(s) directly into these particular Powers’ precincts—those domains being various important points plotted along the Path of Souls. (Reilly. “Foundational and Cosmological Themes in Braden-Style Art.” Published in Singleton, Eric D. and F. Kent Reilly III (editors). Recovering Ancient Spiro: Native American Art, Ritual, and Cosmic Renewal. National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Oklahoma City, OK. 2020. Pp. 220-233.). Reilly continues,

[The] placement of the Great Serpent imagery on specific vessel forms (often bottles in the [Lower Mississippi Valley]) assuredly functioned to manifest a supernatural power that otherwise could not be seen. Imagery could, for example, have identified a vessel as containing special substances, sacred contents, or perhaps ritual “medicine” used in ceremonies in which the Great Serpent acted as the major supernatural. These symbols would have triggered memory on a cosmic scale, much as on a more pedestrian level the “Rx” symbol and instructions on the label of a prescribed medication alert a patient today to the contents of a small orange plastic bottle. The image of the Great Serpent on a pottery vessel very well may have identified the medicine it contained, while linking it with specific rituals that this supernatural controlled. (Reilly. “The Great Serpent in the Lower Mississippi Valley.” Published in Lankford, George E., F. Kent Reilly III, and James F. Garber (editors). Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World. University of Texas Press. Austin, TX. 2011. Pp. 118-134.)

In a number of cases, it has been shown that many Native American myths served an etiological function, becoming charters for actual ritual activities, some of which served for rites of passage into various stages of Indigenous life. One such myth is preserved in James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee, originally published in 1902 as part of the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. In one of the myths, titled “The Gambler,” Mooney documents the following trial:

Thunder lives in the west, or a little to the south of west, near the place where the sun goes down behind the water. In the old times he sometimes made a journey to the east, and once after he had come back from one of these journeys a child was born in the east who, the people said, was his son… [Soon] the news came to Thunder that a boy was looking for him who claimed to be his son. Said Thunder, “I have traveled in many lands and have many children. Bring him here and we shall soon know.” So they brought in the boy, and Thunder showed him a seat and told him to sit down. Under the blanket on the seat were long, sharp thorns of the honey locust, with the points all sticking up, but when the boy sat down they did not hurt him, and then Thunder knew that it was his son. (Mooney. 1902.)

Known to the Cherokee as kulsetsi, honey-locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is a tree possessed of pinnate leaves and dense clusters of large, sharp thorns—sometimes as much as twenty-five to thirty centimeters in length. The tree was especially important in regard to the Cherokee ballgame, before which the players would chew the honey-locust’s roots—spitting out the juices and rubbing the spittle all over their bodies. The athletes would also paint crosses atop their hearts and shoulders with a pigment prepared from honey-locust trees that had been stuck by lightning “but not killed.” (Mooney. 1890.) For, according to the Cherokee, honey-locust is said to be “the home of ‘Thunder-man’,” a notably powerful supernatural entity. G. triacanthos is therefore revered as a very sacred tree. We can glean some idea of the degree to which the honey-locust was venerated in the following excerpt from the same “Gambler” myth. In it, the consort of ‘Thunder-man’ informs the boy that the supernatural arboreal figure,

will send for his other sons to play ball against you. There is a honey-locust tree in front of the house, and as soon as you begin to get tired strike [your lightning] at that and your father will stop the play, because he does not want to lose the tree. […] At last he was tired from defending himself alone against two, and pretended to aim a blow at the honey-locust tree. Then his father stopped the fight, because he was afraid the lightning would split the tree, and he saw that the boy was brave and strong. (Mooney. 1902.)

As the “Gambler” myth makes clear, the boy in the story—perhaps one of the Hero Twins—is himself associated with lightning.

Unbeknownst to many anthropologists and botanists, G. triacanthos conceals a visionary secret within the bark of its roots—one that is among the most potent hallucinogenic substances known to science: N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (N,N-DMT). N,N-DMT constitutes the active component of a number of South American psychedelic preparations, including yopo—a hallucinogenic snuff made from the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina, nyakwána—an entheogenic snuff concocted from the resin of Virola elongata, and ayahuasca or yagé—a psychedelic tea prepared from the leaves of Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana in conjunction with the woody vines of Banisteriopsis caapi.

That the visionary nature of G. triacanthos has gone unnoticed by scholars is understandable. To my knowledge, honey-locust’s psychoactivity has been noted in but a single published source—and it is one that does not necessarily qualify as academic. In November of 1998, a man calling himself ‘Keeper of the Trout’ published a legendary catalog of various flora known to contain tryptamine alkaloids, titled Tryptamines from Higher Plants. Four years later, in April of 2002, ‘Trout’ added tryptamine-containing fungi and fauna to the list, republishing the work as Some Simple Tryptamines, which entered its second edition in December of 2006—with minor revisions added in May of 2007. Raising a single sapling from a G. triacanthos seed, a colleague of ‘Trout,’ known simply as ‘Appleseed,’ using xanthydrol as a colorimetric reagent, assayed the specimen via thin layer chromatography, finding that N,N-DMT was indeed present within the roots of honey-locust trees.

Significantly, bark from the roots of the arbor mundi or ‘world tree’ receives mention in the mythology of the Iroquoian peoples, who lived in the Allegheny and northern Susquehanna valleys, and may be related to the Cherokee “Gambler” lore.

In the Sky-World there was a man who had a wife, and the wife was expecting a child. The woman became hungry for all kinds of strange delicacies, as women do when they are with child. She kept her husband busy almost to distraction finding delicious things for her to eat.

In the middle of the Sky-World there was a Great Tree which was not like any of the trees we know. It was tremendous; it had grown there forever. It had enormous roots that spread out from the floor of the Sky-World. . . . The tree was not supposed to be marked or mutilated by any of the beings who dwelt in the Sky-World. It was a sacred tree that stood at the center of the universe.

The woman decided that she wanted some bark from one of the roots of the Great Tree–perhaps as a food or as a medicine, we don’t know. She told her husband this. He didn’t like the idea. He knew it was wrong. But she insisted, and he gave in. So he dug a hole among the roots of this great sky tree, and he bared some of its roots. But the floor of the Sky-World wasn’t very thick, and he broke a hole through it. He was terrified, for he had never expected to find empty space underneath the world.

But his wife was filled with curiosity. He wouldn’t get any of the roots for her, so she set out to do it herself. She bent over and she looked down, and she saw the ocean far below. . . . No one knows just what happened next. Some say she slipped. Some say her husband, fed up with all the demands she had made on him, pushed her.

So she fell through the hole. As she fell, she frantically grabbed at its edges, but her hands slipped. However, between her fingers there clung bits of things that were growing on the floor of the Sky-World and bits of the root tips of the Great Tree. And so she began to fall toward the great ocean far below. (ExplorePAHistory.com. “Iroquois Creation Story.”)

Recall that it is within the bark of the roots of G. triacanthos that the potent psychedelic molecule, N,N-DMT, is most concentrated. While the myths themselves are markedly different, their preoccupation with the roots of their respective trees is worth noting.

The Pancarú Indians of the eastern Amazon, as well as the Karirí, Tusha, and Fulnio, would employ the N,N-DMT-rich roots of Mimosa hostilis, a close cousin of G. triacanthos, in the preparation of jurema preta drinks, called ajucá or veuêka—known to induce altered states of consciousness that brought on “an enchantment, transporting them to heaven.” According to one source,

An old master of ceremonies, wielding a dance rattle decorated with a feather mosaic, would serve a bowlful of the infusion made from jurema roots to all celebrants, who would then see glorious visions of the spirit land, with flowers and birds. They might catch a glimpse of the clashing rocks that destroy souls of the dead journeying to their goal or see the Thunderbird shooting lightning from a huge tuft on his head and producing claps of thunder by running about. (Rätsch. P. 363.)

For the Tukano,

[The] shaman’s body lies as if dead while his consciousness has taken off into another reality. The shamanic soul has transformed itself into a jaguar and now flies over a rainbow to the Milky Way. The most fantastic colors and forms unfold before the shaman’s inner eye. Honeycomb patterns dance by and change into crystals filled with an otherworldly light. Wavy lines flow out and back together into colorful swirls. The jaguar shaman is irresistibly sucked in. The swirls open into a tunnel made of circling skulls, at the end of which shines a warm, blue light. The jaguar shaman has reached the Milky Way, where he meets the ayahuasca woman who revealed the true reality to humans at the dawn of creation and gave them the secret of the “drink of true reality.” (Rätsch. P. 710.)

It is important to note that N,N-DMT is not normally orally active in humans on account of the presence of a digestive enzyme, called monoamine oxidase (MAO), under which the tryptamine alkaloid is broken down. But, when β-carboline alkaloids, such as harmine, harmane, norharman, etc.—which constitute various types of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI)—are co-administered, N,N,-DMT is rendered pharmacologically active. (Barker. 2018.) Without the presence of β-carboline alkaloids, it is unknown whether N,N-DMT is absorbable by oral mucosa. Ergo, simply chewing the roots of G. triacanthos, as Mooney noted, may not elicit any psychedelic response. However, there is evidence in the literature that N,N-DMT may be absorbable via transdermal inoculation. (McKenna. P. 45.) Therefore, chewing the roots, with the addition of spitting and rubbing the juices upon the skin, may in fact be an effective mode of application. Even so, there are a number of plants that were familiar to and exploited by the Mississippians that are known carriers of various β-carboline alkaloids—including Nicotiana rustica, Passiflora incarnata, and possibly even Ilex vomitoria, all of which were discovered in various botanical assemblages recovered from a number of Southeastern sites. (Hollenbach. 2017.; Parker and Simon. 2018.; Barrier. 2020.)

N. rustica, a potent species of tobacco, was found to contain the β-carboline alkaloids, harmane and norharman. (Berlowitz, Egger, and Cumming. 2022.) The tricyclic β-carboline alkaloid, harmine, is present in P. incarnata—as well as in the South American variety, P. edulis. (Mota, Kviecinski, Felipe, Grinevicius, Siminski, Almeida, Zeferino, Pich, Filho, and Pedrosa. 2020.) Lastly, the South American yaupon, Ilex paraguayensis, better known by its common name, yerba-maté—a close cousin of North America’s Ilex vomitoria—is possessed of trace amounts of β-carboline alkaloids. If the same is true also of Ilex vomitoria, considering the substantial reductions to which the leaves were regularly boiled down to create the syrupy ‘black drink,’ Natives may have been able—on the chance that honey-locust roots were added to the mix—to arrive at a brew concentrated enough to potentiate N,N-DMT in a Mississippian analogue to ayahuasca. In any case, a U.S. patent filed in 2005 relies on an extract of yerba-maté for the specific purpose of modulating MAO activity. (Williams, DeLorenzo, and Burton. 2005.)

When DeSoto’s ships landed in the modern-day Sunshine State, it was noted that the Amerindians, every few days, were in the habit of boiling up a thick, black tea from the roasted leaves of a small shrub. To the surprise of the Spanish, upon assembling, the Natives would cheerfully drink, vomit, and drink again, leading later anthropologists to assume that the concoction simply functioned as an emetic and thus was associated with a rite of purgation—and further resulting in the unfortunate classification by ethnobotanists as Ilex vomitoria: ‘the Ilex that makes one vomit’.

While it is certainly possessed of ample amounts of caffeine—indeed, Ilex vomitoria is the only native source of caffeine in North America—yaupon holly is not an emetic. I know this to be true from extensive personal experimentation. Although, there is evidence that a number of other, often secretive, plants were regularly included in the ‘cassina’ brew, as it was called by Muskogean speakers. The addition of certain unknown substances to black drink blends has been specifically noted by Sean Rafferty, a professor of anthropology at the University of Albany, for instance. (Rafferty. P. 116.).

If G. triacanthos was among those additives, the cathartic action of black drink—which, again, by itself does not appear to function as an emetic—would be entirely validated. Indeed, the purgative potential of ayahuasca is so pronounced that, in some regions, the brew is actually known as simply “la purga,” ‘the purge.’ (Goldin and Salani. 2021.; Fotiou and Gearin. 2019.; Domínguez-Clavé, Soler, Elices, Pascual, Álvarez, Revenga, Friedlander, Feilding, and Riba. 2016.) Conversely, were I. vomitoria, P. incarnata, or N. rustica combined with G. triacanthos, a potion virtually indistinguishable from the South American yagé would be the result. Remarkably, the Cherokee “Gambler” myth recounted by Mooney does in fact contain evidence that the roots of the honey-locust tree were, just like yaupon leaves, sometimes “boiled”—and done so in a context directly connected to a threatening, potentially ritualized ordeal, which may have served as a charter for a legitimate Indigenous rite of passage.

There was a large pot in the corner and he told his wife to fill it with water and put it over the fire. When it was boiling, he put in some [of the honey-locust] roots, then took the boy and put him in with them. He let it boil a long time until one would have thought that the flesh was boiled from the poor boy’s bones… (Mooney. 1902.)

While the child’s entry into the pot, in the event of a ritualized context, probably would have amounted to little more than a ceremonial test of courage, the inclusion of the motif of boiling G. triacanthos roots is highly suggestive, and too compelling to ignore. And, notably, this charter myth happens to be supported by strong archaeological evidence in the form of a Spaghetti Style gorget, found in the Tennessee Valley and currently housed at the Field Museum in Chicago. This splendid artifact plainly depicts a human figure, half-submerged in a cauldron and surrounded by the twisting, boiling roots of what appears to be G. triacanthos. (Stauffer and Reilly. 2017.)

William Island Style Gorget. PDO

If my reading of the Cherokee “Gambler” myth, the Tennessee Valley Spaghetti Stye gorget, and the various botanical assemblages recovered from a number of Mississippian sites is correct, the Natives of the Southeast may have employed G. triacanthos, along with N. rustica, P. incarnata, and / or I. vomitoria, toward similar—if not identical—ends as the ayahuasca quaffing tribes located in South America. It is the product of this speculative hypothesis that I have proposed to call Missihuasca.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that I have yet to visit a Mississippian site where I did not find honey-locust trees growing directly on or around the mound complexes. This itself is not a coincidence. A 2016 study confirmed that the unnaturally wide distribution of G. triacanthos in the Southeastern United States is a direct result of deliberate human intervention; that the Mississippians—especially the Cherokee—were intentionally cultivating honey-locust trees in and around their complexes, planting them in numbers that far exceed the species’ ordinary area of dispersal. (Warren. 2016.) Insofar as G. triacanthos is a notoriously dense wood that is remarkably resistant to manipulation—especially when worked by hand—employing it in anything save extremely small contexts (such as the production of sticks for the Cherokee ballgame) would have been simply unmanageable. And, that is to say nothing of the formidable, icepick-like clusters of footlong thorns that cover the tree’s trunk and branches, which would have effectively served as a convincing deterrent in its own right. Therefore, it is possible that honey-locust trees were propagated, at least in part, for the use of their psychoactive roots in the preparation of this hypothetical Southeastern ayahuasca analogue, Missihuasca.