1. Name

Cohoba (also spelled cojoba) or yopo are vernacular names for a psychoactive powder—usually inhaled as snuff—that contains powdered seeds from the plant Anadenanthera peregrina (Image 1), a plant similar to the Anadenanthera colubrina tree from which other South American cultures make psychedelic snuff, such as vilca. When cohoba is inhaled via the nostrils, it produces immediate optical effects that include visualization of phosphenes (seeing sparkles, stars, shapes, and fractals), macropsia (objects appearing larger than their actual size), and inverted spatial perception (vertically flipping or rotating the visual field). [1] While many Indigenous peoples use preparations of Anadenanthera peregrina, this entry focuses on the Taino people of the Caribbean—though, as shown below, this group had a connection to Indigenous cultures on the American continent. This entry favors the name and spelling “cohoba” for this psychedelic snuff. 

Anadenanthera peregrina seeds (Image 1) are roasted, then ground into a powder using a wooden mortar or a wooden platter. Additional instruments, such as pestles or spatulas, help to crush and process the seeds. (Image 2) Y-shaped bird bones are used as paraphernalia to inhale snuff powder. [3] Such implements and instruments are key to the historical study of cohoba. There is not a single way to prepare cohoba snuff, nor is there a uniform or universal list of its ingredients. Different Indigenous traditions add other ingredients to the snuff concoction, such as lime from snail shells or cassava flour.

The psychedelic principle compounds of cohoba powder are N,N- dimethytrylptamine, better known as DMT, and bufotenine. DMT is an active, naturally occurring psychedelic compound that strongly interacts with serotonin receptors in the brain; it is found in a variety of Amazonian plants. Bufotenine is a naturally occurring alkaloid related to the neurotransmitter serotonin—they share the common parent molecule tryptamine—that naturally occurs in specific species of toads of the genus Bufo and also in a wide range of plants. Bufotenine was isolated from Anadenanthera peregrina in the mid-twentieth century by Verner Stromberg. [4]

2. Introduction and Artwork

Rituals for preparing and inhaling cohoba utilize a range of supporting implements and paraphernalia; often, these are objects sculpted to depict human, animal, or supernatural beings: storage and preparation containers, processing and preparation tools, snuff tubes, musical instruments, and portable religious objects called “zemis” that embody non-human entities. (Image 2) 

Participants begin cohoba rituals by using purging spatulas to empty their stomachs and purify their bodies before nasal absorption of the snuff powder via inhalation devices, such as bird bones with a Y-shape inserted into both nostrils. This cleansing prepares participants’ bodies for subsequent spiritual experiences. Cohoba rituals use musical instruments—maracas, rattles, or whistles—that contribute to a soundscape that induces and augments cohoba’s visionary effects. [6] Finely-crafted instruments, such as mortars and spoons, are used to prepare the cohoba powder. Cohoba rituals utilize special tables called “duhos,” which may also be considered seats, to transfer the powder into containers for preparation, storage, and use. Such paraphernalia significantly nuance our interpretation of cohoba’s cultural uses, reflecting the interaction facilitated by cohoba with non-human entities.

3. Geography and Context

The Anadenanthera peregrina is a perennial tree that grows naturally and is also cultivated in the Orinoco basin of Venezuela and Colombia, primarily in the grasslands. It also grows in the forests of British Guyana, but it has been transported to the Caribbean, where it has a wide range of cultural uses, such as those documented among the Taino. (Image 1) Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas—the Chibcha, Guahibo, Muisca, and Taino—utilize the Anadenanthera peregrina tree, its beans, and its snuff for sacramental, therapeutic, and divinatory purposes. [7] Archaeological evidence suggests that Saladoid Indigenous peoples—pre-Columbian Arawak living in the Orinoco River region—migrated from the main continent to the Caribbean Islands around 500 BCE; they carried Anadenanthera peregrina tree seeds and established cultivation for a range of cultural uses. [8] (Image 3)

4. Primary Sources and Evidence

Ferdinand Columbus, the son born to Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the New World (1493-1496), records the Taino people in the Caribbean using a bifurcated tube to inhale a powder through the nostrils, recalling the Y-shaped bird bones documented for cohoba use. This inhaled snuff is likely cohoba (Anadenanthera peregrina).

Another source for cohoba use is Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), a lay settler to Hispaniola who eventually became a Dominican friar. “But when all the leaders of the people gathered to make cohoba, persuaded by the behiques or ordered by the lords, then it was amazing to see them. In order to hold their councils or to decide difficult matters, such as whether they ought to make war or to undertake important matters, their custom was to make their cohoba.” [10] Las Casas describes this ritual use of cohoba in an appendix to the very first work of ethnology of the New World, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, written in 1496 by Ramón Pané, a Spanish friar who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage.

In a 1916 article titled “Identity of Cohoba, the Narcotic Snuff of Ancient Haiti,” the United States botanist and ethnologist William Safford, widely interested in psychoactive plants, explains that cohoba powder was commonly used by behiques—i.e., ritual specialists or “shamans”—to induce visions and trances in which they communicated with spirits and supernatural beings. [11]

5. Interpretation

Among the Indigenous Taino people of the Caribbean, the role of behiques, or “shamans,” who used cohoba snuff, was particularly significant, as these figures intentionally embraced non-human perspectives and subjectivities. Non-human subjectivities can include animals, spirits, and physical artifacts that can also possess personhood.

The behique is a subject in transformation. They become a non-human spirit, an animal, or they might even assume the interior position of a sculpture, attaining the interiority of an object. They do this by establishing a dialogue through which non-humans are granted humanity by connecting to and becoming the behique. [12]

The rituals of the behiques work through this process of shifting personhood.

6. Implications

Spanish chroniclers describe cohoba being used to negotiate with spiritual forces that influence important community outcomes. Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas explains that participants consume the powder before council meetings that address complex issues such as whether to go to war or undertake other important decisions. [13]

The psychedelic snuff was sometimes ritually inhaled by all members of a decision-making group, which suggests that collective cohoba experiences influenced decisions made regarding the everyday world in addition to the ritual sessions led by behiques to interact with the spiritual world. Cohoba uses demonstrate that supernatural beings and spirits, animals, and even material culture were incorporated into decision-making; non-human subjectivities were a valued influence upon the world of humans.

References

[1] Lombida Balmaseda, Ruben. “El ojo visionario en el arte indígena de las Antillas Mayores. El ícono ocular como índice de la experiencia chamánica entre las culturas taínas.” (M.A. Thesis. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019), 18.

[2] Safford, William Edwin. “Identity of Cohoba, the Narcotic Snuff of Ancient Haiti.” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 6, 15:  Sept 19, (1916): 548.

[3] Schultes, Richard Evans, Albert Hofmann and Christian Rätsch. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. (Healing Arts Press, 1992), 119.

[4] Stromberg, Verner, I. “The isolation of Bufotenine from piptadenia peregrina.” Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 76, no. 6, (1954): 1707.

[5] Fitzpatrick, Scott. “The Pre-Columbian Caribbean: Colonization, Population Dispersal, and Island Adaptations.” PaleoAmerica. 1. (2015): 317. 10.1179/2055557115Y.0000000010.

[6] Lombida Balmaseda, Ruben. “El ojo visionario en el arte indígena de las Antillas Mayores. El ícono ocular como índice de la experiencia chamánica entre las culturas taínas.” (M.A. Thesis. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019), 19.

[7] Schultes, Richard Evans, Albert Hofmann and Christian Rätsch. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. (Healing Arts Press, 1992), 116-119.

[8] Kaye, Quetta. “Power From, Power To, Power Over? Ritual Drug Taking and the Social Context of Power among the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean,” in Ancient Psychoactive Substances, ed. Scott. M Fitzpatrick (University Press of Florida, 2018), 151.

[9] Fitzpatrick, Scott. “The Pre-Columbian Caribbean: Colonization, Population Dispersal, and Island Adaptations.” PaleoAmerica. 1. (2015): 307. 10.1179/2055557115Y.0000000010.

[10] Las Casas, Bartolomé de. “Appendix C,” in Pane, Fray Ramon. An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, ed. and trans. S. C. Griswold, (Duke University Press, 1999), 60.

[11] Safford, William Edwin. “Identity of Cohoba, the Narcotic Snuff of Ancient Haiti.” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 6, 15:  Sept 19, (1916): 547-562.

[12] Lombida Balmaseda, Ruben. “El ojo visionario en el arte indígena de las Antillas Mayores. El ícono ocular como índice de la experiencia chamánica entre las culturas taínas.” (M.A. Thesis. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019), 17-18.

[13] Kaye, Quetta. “Power From, Power To, Power Over? Ritual Drug Taking and the Social Context of Power among the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean,” in Ancient Psychoactive Substances, ed. Scott. M Fitzpatrick (University Press of Florida, 2018), 153.