1. Name

Cohoba/Cojoba or Yopo are vernacular names for a psychoactive powder, usually inhaled as snuff, containing powdered seeds from the plant Anadenanthera peregrina. The psychedelic principles compounds of this powder are bufotenine and 5-MeO-DMT, better known as DMT. While a range of Indigenous peoples use preparations of these plants, this entry will focus upon the Indigenous Taino people of the Caribbean, though, as shown below, this group has connection to igneousous people on main continent.

Anadenanthera peregrina seeds are roasted and ground into a powder in a mortar or in a wooden platter; other instruments like pestles or spatulas help crush the seeds. Some bird bones with a “Y” shape have been used to inhale the powder through the nostrils. (Schultes, Hofmann, and Rätsch 1992, 119) There is not a single way to prepare cohobo snuff or a uniform list of ingredients. Different Indigenous traditions sometimes add lime from snail shells or cassava flour to the snuff concoction.

When cohobo is introduced to mucus and mucus membranes, saliva, tears, and other somatic affections, it produces immediate optical effects, including the visualization of phosphenes (seeing sparkles, stars, shapes, and fractals), macropsia (objects appearing larger than their actual size), and inverted spatial perception. (Lombida Balmaseda 2019, 19)

2. Introduction and Artwork

Rituals for preparing and using cohoba have a range of supporting implements and paraphernalia (Image 1), often objects sculpted to depict human, animal, or supernatural beings. Finely-crafted instruments, such as mortars and spoons, are used to prepare the cohoba powder. Cohoba rituals utilize special seats called duhos, meaning “tables,” to transfer powder into container for preparation, storage, and use.

Participants begin cohoba rituals by using purging spatulas to empty their stomachs and purify their bodies before nasal absorption of the snuff powder using inhalation devices like bird bones. This cleansing prepares their bodies for subsequent spiritual experiences. Cohoba rituals use musical instruments—maracas, rattles, or whistles—that contribute to a soundscape that will induce and augment cohoba’s visionary effects. (Balmaseda 2019, 19)

Image 2. Botanical drawing, Anadenanthera peregrina. (Safford 1916, 548)

3. Geography and Context

The Anadenanthera peregrina (Image 2) is a perennial tree naturally growing and also cultivated in the Orinoco basin of Venezuela and Colombia, primarily in grassland areas and plains as well as in the forest of British Guyana, but it has been transported to the Caribbean where it has a wide range of cultural uses.

Indigenous peoples—the Chibcha, the Guahibo, the Muisca, and the Taino—utilize the tree, its beans, and its snuff for sacramental, therapeutic, and divinatory purposes. (Schultes & Hofmann 1992, 116-119) Archeological evidence suggests that Saladoid Indigenous peoples, the pre-Columbian Arawak living in the Orinoco River region, migrated to Caribbean Islands around 500 BCE (Image 3), carrying with them Anadenanthera peregrina tree seeds and establishing Anadenanthera peregrina cultivation in the Caribbean for a range of cultural practices and uses. (Kaye 2018, 151)

4. Primary Sources

Ferdinand Columbus, the son born to Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the New World (1493-1496), records that the Taino people in the Caribbean use a bifurcated tube to inhale a powder trough the nostrils. This snuff is likely cohobo.

Another source for cohoba use is Bartolome 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 if they ought to make war or to undertake important matters, their custom was to make their cohoba.” (Las Casas 1999, 60) Las Casas describes this ritual use of cohobain 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 US botanist and ethnologist William Safford, widely interested in psychoactive plants, explains that cohoba powder was commonly used by behique  shamans to induce visions and trances in which they communicated with spirits and supernatural beings. (Safford, 1916)

5. Interpretation

Among the Indigenous Taino people, the role of behique shamans using cohoba snuff is particularly significant, for these figures intentionally embrace non-human perspectives and non-human subjectivities. Non-human subjectivities can be animals, spirits, and even physical artifacts.

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. (Balmaseda 2019, 17-18)

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 Bartolome de Las Casas explains that participants consume the powder before council meetings that address complex issues such as whether to go to war or undertaking other important decisions. (Kaye 2018) This suggests that collective cohoba experiences, for the snuff was sometimes taken by all members of a decision-making group, influenced decisions made regarding the everyday world as well as the spiritual world. 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:

Fitzpatrick, Scott. The Pre-Columbian Caribbean: Colonization, Population Dispersal, and Island Adaptations. PaleoAmerica. 1. (2015): 305-331. 10.1179/2055557115Y.0000000010.

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), 149-175.

Las Casas, Bartolome 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), 54–67.

Lombida Balmasena, 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).

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.

Schultes, R.E, Hofmann, Albert and Rätsch, Christian. Plants of the Gods Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers (Healing Arts Press, 1992), 116-119.