FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
SAGUARO WINE
Berzok, Lindsa Murray. 2005. American Indian Food. Food in American History. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.
In the Southwest, the Pima and Tohono O'odham fermented fruit of the saguaro cactus annually during a two-day summer celebration. The juice was mied with four times as much water and fermented while heated for seventy-two hours. Each family contributed a jar of boiled juice to the huge jars kept in the council house. For ritual reasons, to "bring dow the clouds" or make rain, the men drank large quantitites of this wine, called navai't (it had a very low alcoholic content) specifically to induce vomiting. The logic was that because the saguaro is the tallest plant in the desert and therefore nearest the clouds, consumption of its fermented fruit and vomiting it back onto the earth was a good way to cause rain. As one Tohono O'odham elder speaking in 1979 explained to an anthropologist, "When I'itoi [the Creator] gave the Indian people the saguaro cactus wine, he gave it to them for two days, to have a dizzy effect for only two days, to use as medication. I'itoi knew that to stay dizzy for days was not good for man."
Indians of the Southwest also sometimes made a fermented drink out of dried, pounded and ground mesquite mixed with water. Some tribes fermented the pulp from the agave. After pit-roasting, the pulp was pounded, placed in a hide pouch and buried for two days. When removed, the juice was squeezed out and allowed to ferment for another two or three days.
