Cutting Cactus Flowers
From James Donahue’s Journal
Vividly marked in my mind is the memory of Doris and Jennifer happily sitting in the room of a Navajo medicine man and his wife, cutting thin strips of fresh peyote cactus flowers and hanging them on a clothesline to dry. That they should be involved in such activity, handling what at the time was considered an illegal and "controlled substance" by the United States government, with two strange Indians in an abandoned motel in the high desert southwest would have been impossible for me to comprehend only months earlier. But there they were.
It was a cold night in late autumn. We had just begun to develop a friendship with this Navajo couple. Raymond and Elfrieda Begay, like the other "financially compromised" tenants of the Edwards Motel were drawn by the low rent. They left their reservation home near Greasewood, some sixty miles to the north, to winter near Holbrook where the government was sending them to school.
Everybody living in that motel got to know everyone else because of two factors. They were the community coffee center and a local video rental network. Let me explain the latter. We all had televisions and VCR players. Because we could not receive regular television programming, we rented movies for our nightly entertainment. There was a video rental shop in Holbrook that provided three films for a week for something like five dollars. Nobody had much spare cash and we all had so much time on our hands that we could polish off two or three movies a day. Thus we developed a system of passing our rented films up and down the line. With four or five families participating, we all had more than enough movies to keep us going for the full week. The Begays, who took the room right next to Jennifer, were heavy movie watchers. Thus it was that we hooked up with them within a day or two of their moving in.
They were an odd couple. Raymond, a slight little man old enough to have been a veteran of the Korean War, was one of the few practicing medicine men still doing business on the Navajo Reservation. What was even more interesting was that he was one of the rare medicine men who belonged to a small cult of peyote practitioners. He was actually licensed by the United States government to buy, handle and distribute this controlled substance among the members of his "church." His first wife was long dead and Raymond was now married to a young Navajo woman named Elfrieda. I would guess her age somewhere in the late twenties although it was hard to be sure. She was roly-poly, as were most Navajo women, and her weight belied her age.
While she was jolly and full of fun, Elfrieda had a dark side. Her father, Alfred Lee, was considered one of the most powerful, influential and possibly dangerous men on the reservation. He smuggled beer and whiskey to the people on the reservation. The Navajo Nation practiced prohibition, at least politically, so booze smuggling was a profitable and criminal business. And like the Chicago mob bosses of the 1920s, Alfred Lee controlled the black market operations in the territory spanning the Four Corners. He was a big man who spoke mostly the Navajo tongue, although he understood and spoke some English. He was probably someone to fear, but when we met we developed a strange mutual respect for one another.
The other dark side of Elfrieda was that she was a practicing black witch. She belonged to a secret coven of witches who were practicing their craft in and around the Greasewood area. Also in this little nest were Elfrieda's mother, and at least one sister. But we were not to know or understand all of this during these early days of getting to know one another.
I think Doris and I were surprised at how quickly we were thrown into a situation where we could actually befriend a Navajo medicine man. We had just sold our home and driven thousands of miles from Michigan to Arizona to magically meet some Indian people and follow some spiritual mission that neither of us understood. Our goal was the Hopi Reservation, but the meeting with the Begays seemed so magical, we decided to cultivate their friendship and see what developed. That such people would come to us after we were left abandoned and homeless, eking out a mere day-to-day existence in a clap-trap desert motel, was more than a coincidence. It was a new turn in our path, and we could not resist following it.
Raymond had just returned from a trip to southern Texas, where he bought pails filled with peyote flowers. We were invited that night to come to their room and help get the peyote prepared for religious rituals to be held later on the reservation. We had no idea what those were, but we were happy to take the opportunity to cultivate our new friendship. So there we were, involved in a strange social event that in any other place, at any other time, might have landed us in jail at the blink of an eye. The police in the United States regard peyote as a highly illegal psychedelic plant comparable to psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. The Begays invited us to sample the peyote any time we wished, which we declined. Raymond, who went to jail in his younger years while fighting for the right for his church to use this "sacred" flower in religious services, claimed that consuming the drug opened the mind for all to see. Like LSD, there are no secrets between participants sharing the same room. Something told us to keep our identities secret, although at the time, we didn't know why we felt this way.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Vividly marked in my mind is the memory of Doris and Jennifer happily sitting in the room of a Navajo medicine man and his wife, cutting thin strips of fresh peyote cactus flowers and hanging them on a clothesline to dry. That they should be involved in such activity, handling what at the time was considered an illegal and "controlled substance" by the United States government, with two strange Indians in an abandoned motel in the high desert southwest would have been impossible for me to comprehend only months earlier. But there they were.
It was a cold night in late autumn. We had just begun to develop a friendship with this Navajo couple. Raymond and Elfrieda Begay, like the other "financially compromised" tenants of the Edwards Motel were drawn by the low rent. They left their reservation home near Greasewood, some sixty miles to the north, to winter near Holbrook where the government was sending them to school.
Everybody living in that motel got to know everyone else because of two factors. They were the community coffee center and a local video rental network. Let me explain the latter. We all had televisions and VCR players. Because we could not receive regular television programming, we rented movies for our nightly entertainment. There was a video rental shop in Holbrook that provided three films for a week for something like five dollars. Nobody had much spare cash and we all had so much time on our hands that we could polish off two or three movies a day. Thus we developed a system of passing our rented films up and down the line. With four or five families participating, we all had more than enough movies to keep us going for the full week. The Begays, who took the room right next to Jennifer, were heavy movie watchers. Thus it was that we hooked up with them within a day or two of their moving in.
They were an odd couple. Raymond, a slight little man old enough to have been a veteran of the Korean War, was one of the few practicing medicine men still doing business on the Navajo Reservation. What was even more interesting was that he was one of the rare medicine men who belonged to a small cult of peyote practitioners. He was actually licensed by the United States government to buy, handle and distribute this controlled substance among the members of his "church." His first wife was long dead and Raymond was now married to a young Navajo woman named Elfrieda. I would guess her age somewhere in the late twenties although it was hard to be sure. She was roly-poly, as were most Navajo women, and her weight belied her age.
While she was jolly and full of fun, Elfrieda had a dark side. Her father, Alfred Lee, was considered one of the most powerful, influential and possibly dangerous men on the reservation. He smuggled beer and whiskey to the people on the reservation. The Navajo Nation practiced prohibition, at least politically, so booze smuggling was a profitable and criminal business. And like the Chicago mob bosses of the 1920s, Alfred Lee controlled the black market operations in the territory spanning the Four Corners. He was a big man who spoke mostly the Navajo tongue, although he understood and spoke some English. He was probably someone to fear, but when we met we developed a strange mutual respect for one another.
The other dark side of Elfrieda was that she was a practicing black witch. She belonged to a secret coven of witches who were practicing their craft in and around the Greasewood area. Also in this little nest were Elfrieda's mother, and at least one sister. But we were not to know or understand all of this during these early days of getting to know one another.
I think Doris and I were surprised at how quickly we were thrown into a situation where we could actually befriend a Navajo medicine man. We had just sold our home and driven thousands of miles from Michigan to Arizona to magically meet some Indian people and follow some spiritual mission that neither of us understood. Our goal was the Hopi Reservation, but the meeting with the Begays seemed so magical, we decided to cultivate their friendship and see what developed. That such people would come to us after we were left abandoned and homeless, eking out a mere day-to-day existence in a clap-trap desert motel, was more than a coincidence. It was a new turn in our path, and we could not resist following it.
Raymond had just returned from a trip to southern Texas, where he bought pails filled with peyote flowers. We were invited that night to come to their room and help get the peyote prepared for religious rituals to be held later on the reservation. We had no idea what those were, but we were happy to take the opportunity to cultivate our new friendship. So there we were, involved in a strange social event that in any other place, at any other time, might have landed us in jail at the blink of an eye. The police in the United States regard peyote as a highly illegal psychedelic plant comparable to psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. The Begays invited us to sample the peyote any time we wished, which we declined. Raymond, who went to jail in his younger years while fighting for the right for his church to use this "sacred" flower in religious services, claimed that consuming the drug opened the mind for all to see. Like LSD, there are no secrets between participants sharing the same room. Something told us to keep our identities secret, although at the time, we didn't know why we felt this way.