the old man was often silent or noncommittal, but the disturbing effect of this first encounter was not so easily dispelled.
I made a point of finding out where Don Juan lived, and later visited him several times. On each visit I tried to lead him to discuss peyote, but without success. We became, nonetheless, very good friends, and my scientific investigation was forgotten or was at least redirected into channels that were worlds apart from my original intention.
The friend who had introduced me to Don Juan explained later that the old man was not a native of Arizona, where we met, but was a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico.
At first I saw Don Juan simply as a rather peculiar man who knew a great deal about peyote and who spoke Spanish remarkably well. But the people with whom he lived believed that he had some sort of 'secret knowledge', that he was a 'brujo'. The Spanish word brujo means, in English, medicine man, curer, witch, sorcerer. It connotes essentially a person who has extraordinary, and usually evil, powers.
I had known Don Juan for a whole year before he took me into his confidence. One day he explained that he possessed a certain knowledge that he had learned from a teacher, a 'benefactor' as he called him, who had directed him in a kind of apprenticeship. Don Juan had, in turn, chosen me to serve as his apprentice, but he warned me that I would have to make a very deep commitment and that the training was long and arduous.
In describing his teacher, Don Juan used the word 'diablero Later I learned that diablero is a term used only by the Sonoran Indians. It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal — a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature. On one of my visits to Sonora I had a peculiar experience that illustrated the Indians' feeling about diableros. I was driving at night in the company of two Indian friends when I saw an animal that seemed to be a dog crossing the highway. One of my companions said it was not a dog, but a huge coyote. I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road to get good look at the animal. It stayed within range of the headlights a few seconds longer and then ran into the chaparral. It was unmistakably a coyote, but it was twice the ordinary size. Talking excitedly, my friends agreed that it was a very unusual animal, and one of them suggested that it might be a diablero. I decided to use an account of the experience to question the Indians of that aria about their beliefs in the existence of diableros. I talked with many people, telling them the story asking them questions. The three conversations that follow indicate what they felt.
'Do you think it was a coyote, Choy?' I asked a young man after he heard the story.
'Who knows? A dog, no doubt. Too large for a coyote.'
'Do you think it may have been a diablero?'
'That's a lot of bull. There are no such things.'
'Why do you say that, Choy?'
'People imagine things. I bet if you had caught that animal you would have seen that it was a dog. Once I had some business in another town and got up before daybreak and saddled up a horse. As I was leaving I came upon a dark shadow on the road which looked as a huge animal. My horse reared, throwing me off the saddle. I was pretty scared too, but it turned out that the shadow was a women who was walking to town.'
'Do you mean, Choy, that you don't believe there are diablero si'
'Diableros! What's a diablero? Tell me what a diablero is!'
'I don't know, Choy. Manuel, who was riding with me that night, said the coyote could have been a diablero. Maybe you could tell me what a diablero is?'
'A diablero, they say, is a brujo who changes into any form he wants to adopt. But everybody knows that is pure bull. The old people here are lull of stories about diableros. You won't find that among us younger people.'
'What kind of animal do you think it was, donna Luz?' I asked a middle-aged woman.
'Only God knows that for sure, but I think it was not a coyote. There are things that appear to be coyotes, but are not. Was the coyote running, or was it eating?'
'It was standing most of the time, but when I first saw it, I think it was eating something.'
'Are you sure it was not carrying something in its mouth?'
'Perhaps it was. But tell me, would that make any difference?'
'Yes it would. If it was carrying something in its mouth it was not a coyote.'
'What was it then?'
'It was a man or a woman.'
'What do you call such people, donna Luz?'
She did not answer. I questioned her a while longer, but without success. Finally she said she did not know. I asked her if such people were called diableros, and she answered that 'diableros ' was one of the names given to them.
'Do you know any diableros?' I asked.
'I knew one woman,' she replied. 'She was killed. It happened when I was a little girl. The woman, they said, used to turn into a female dog. And one night a dog went into the house of a white man to steal cheese. The white man kill the dog with a shotgun, and at very moment the dog died in the house of the white man the woman died in her own hut. Her kin got together and went to the white man and demanded payment. The white man paid good money for having killed her.'
'How could they demand payment if it was only a dog he killed?'
'They said that the white man knew it was not a dog, because other people were with him, and they all saw that the dog stood up on its legs like a man and reached for the cheese, which was on a tray hanging from the roof. The men were waiting for the thief because the white man's cheese was being stolen every night. So the man killed the thief knowing it was not a dog.'
'Are there any diableros, nowadays, donna Luz?'
'Such things are very secret. They say there are no more diableros, but I doubt it, because one member of a diablero's family has to learn what the diablero knows. Diableros have their own laws, and one of them is that a diablero has to teach his secrets to one of his kin.'
'What do you think the animal was, Genaro?' I asked a very old man.
'A dog from one of the ranchos of that area. What else?'
'It could have been a diableroV
'A diablero? You are crazy! There are no diableros.'
'Do you mean that there are none today, or that there never were any?'
'At one time there were, yes. It is common knowledge. Everybody knows that. But the people were very afraid of them and had them all killed.'
'Who killed them, Genaro?'
'All the people of the tribe. The last diablero I knew about was S-. He killed dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people with his sorcery. We couldn't put up with that and the people got together and took him by surprise one night and burned him alive.'
'How long ago was that, Genaro?'
'It nineteen forty-two.'
'Did you see it yourself?'
'No, but people still talk about it. They say that there were no ashes left, even though the stake was made of fresh wood. All that was left at the end was a huge pool of grease.'
Although Don Juan categorized his benefactor as a diablero, he never mentioned the place where he had acquired his knowledge, nor did he identify his teacher. In fact, Don Juan disclosed very little about his personal life. All he said was that he had been born in the Southwest on 1891; that he spent nearly all his life in Mexico; that in 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians; and that he lived in central and southern Mexico until 1940. Thus, as Don Juan had travelled a great deal, his knowledge may have been the product of many influences. And although he regarded himself as an Indian from Sonora, I was not sure whether to place the context of his knowledge totally in the culture of the Sonoran Indians. But it is not my intention here to determine his precise cultural milieu.
I began to serve my apprenticeship to Don Juan in June 1961. Prior to that time I had seen him on various occasions, but always in the capacity of an anthropological observer. During these early conversations I took notes in a covert manner. Later, relying on my memory, I reconstructed the entire conversation. When I began to
