Chapter VI: Part 6

[18] Only two cases are known of women who fully participated in meetings: Dog-woman (deceased), wife of John Red-turtle (Cheyenne) sang and beat the drum; a woman at Taos, Apekaum says, sings in meetings like men.

[19] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 398-99; Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_; the rest field investigation.

[20] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 725.

[21] One William Richard Nebuchadnezzar West ate peyote with the Kiowa for years. Petrullo mentions one Pat Noonigan who ate with the Delaware, and the Shawnee had a white participant for some twenty years. Early white familiarity with peyote in Texas must be postulated to account for its use by Texas Rangers in the Civil War (Lumholtz, 1:358).

[22] A Negro brought by the Kiowa drummed and sang along with the rest in a Shawnee meeting; the former existence of a Negro “peyote” church near Tulsa argues for a considerable amount of such contact.

[23] Again excepting the Caddo, who are over-suspicious for reasons discussed later.

[24] The most homogeneous meeting I attended was a special tribal Wichita one which, nevertheless, was attended by three Kiowa, four Comanche, and two Whites, beside fourteen Wichita.

[25] Radin, _The Winnebago Tribe_, 415.

[26] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 638; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_.

[27] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 2; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 388.

[28] Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_.

[29] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 399; Smith (Mrs. Maurice G.), _A Negro Peyote Cult_, 452, note 10; see also _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:661.

[30] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 404-405; see also Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 101. Shawnee sometimes paint their temples; Oto use red bars below side burns. Delaware examples from Speck: red hair-part, red-blue-red-blue-red horizontal lines over the bridge of the nose and cheeks (Wilson’s Big Moon meetings); red and blue lines below and at corners of eyes (“crying for repentance”); green zigzags in yellow cheek spots, two red and one blue line at corner of eyes; all red chin bounded by a blue semilunar arc on the upper lip and up the cheeks (representing the altar “moon”); and blue red-bordered dots on each cheek-bone and forehead representing peyote-buttons (a woman’s design).

[31] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 182.

[32] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 403, 405.

[33] Opler, _Lipan Apache Field Notes_.

[34] Skinner, _Ethnology of the Ioway Indians_, 261.

[35] Densmore, _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_.

[36] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 119.

[37] Speck, _Notes on the Ethnology of the Osage_, 163.

[38] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 186-87.

[39] Anhalonium means “without salt.” The salt-taboo is a common Southwestern one, unconnected with peyotism there (e.g., Kroeber, _The Seri_, 45) but associated in Plains peyotism with such borrowed Southwestern traits as the water-drum.

[40] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 400.

[41] _Idem_, 398. “The slight variations in pattern,” writes Opler of the Mescalero, “... undoubtedly owe their existence to the fact that there are a number of peyote shamans, each eager to assert his own individuality and ‘way’ by some minor departure or ‘rule’.”

[42] The peyote shaman in Mexico was certainly no figurehead, and the peyote leaders of the Carrizo, Tonkawa, Lipan and Mescalero were important in preventing rivalry.

[43] The authority of the leader finds ritual reflection throughout the John Wilson “moon”: e.g., only the leader might smoke and pray, and others calling for smokes were frowned upon as presumptuous. Further, John Wilson’s “moon” contains his “grave” alongside that of Jesus Christ, and his initials W. (Wilson) or M. (Moonhead). The altar, indeed, represented Moonhead’s face; he even prescribed face-painting styles with his initials in them. A man equated with Jesus Christ is scarcely a negligible person. Koshiway (Oto) performed marriages and baptisms and conducted funerals in the Church of the First-born. The point is just as well demonstrated by the negative cases of those who aspired to peyote leadership and failed. Even the local Pawnee President of the Native American Church, James Sun-eagle, does not lead meetings.

[44] Delaware meetings appear to have had only road-man and fire-guard (Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 188) but this may be an error of omission. The Kiowa, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Iowa, and Taos all have the “cedar-man” in addition.

[45] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 3; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 388. Densmore (_Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_), lists only three leaders but may not be counting the fireman. See Skinner, _Societies of the Ioway_, 724; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 62 ff.

[46] Schultes, _Peyote and Plants Used_, 129-31.

[47] Excessive prices for peyote have been reported elsewhere. Mooney says (_Miscellaneous Notes_, 30) an Oklahoma White dealer once charged 25 cents a button, though they cost him only $5.00 a thousand. Hoebel says a Comanche once traded a fine horse for five hundred buttons. See Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 291-92; Lumholtz, _Tarahumari Dances_, 453-55.

[48] Diguet, _Le Peyote et son usage_, 28.

[49] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 60; Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 293, xiv; Mooney, _Miscellaneous Notes_, 60 ff.

[50] Big Moon leaders apparently required fees; Speck (Peyote MSS.) says the Seneca were too poor to pay more than the leader’s carfare when the cult was brought to them. Wilson himself met his death when some horses given him by the Quapaw and tied to the back of his wagon pulled backward at a crossing as a locomotive approached, and some of his enemies assert that this was in punishment for his avariciousness and economic exploitation of peyotism. He even charged money for sweatbaths he prepared in connection with meetings.

[51] Cf. Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 410. A Shawnee gave the meeting-tipi to two old men the next morning, and the writer has exchanged gifts with several tribes, notably the Oto and the Kiowa.

[52] Koshiway said he ate 100 once: “I was like a Ford, all broken down, connecting rods loose. The next day I was overhauled and hitting on all four, and went to work.” Belo Kozad, well-known Kiowa leader, said he ate 100 green peyote once but had a “hard time keeping it down.” Big Bow (Kiowa) claims to have eaten 75 at the time of his prophetic vision of the World War. One Oto sometimes eats 40 to 50 at which a man comes and instructs him. Alfred Wilson (Cheyenne) for eight years President of the Oklahoma N.A.C. said he ate 84 green ones once. Densmore (_Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_) says Winnebago ate 40 to 100, and many of them ate 60; elsewhere (_The Peyote Cult_) she states a Winnebago usually ate 15, but some ate up to 40. Lipan (Opler, _Lipan Apache Field Notes_) ate 12 to 50. A Tonkawa leader (Opler, _Chiricahua Apache_) ate 40. Users at Taos (Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 66) ate as many as 60, but usually about 20 or 30. Mescalero (Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_) ate from 4 to 40, with 12 as a “generous amount.” Iowa (Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 724-25) considered 16 a good amount, women being restricted to 2. Huichol (Lumholtz, _The Huichol Indians_, 9) rarely ate more than 4 or 5 daily, but at times consumed up to 20. An Arapaho stated under oath (_Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 49) he had eaten 12-30 peyote at different times, agreeing with Kroeber’s average of 12, with amounts of more than 30 eaten sometimes. A White observer in a Comanche meeting said he had seen them eat 30 or 40 apiece (Simmons, _The Peyote Road_). An Osage, on the other hand, stated before an official group that 5 was the upper limit for women and 7 for men (_Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 31), a statement open to doubt.

[53] Opler, _Lipan Apache Field Notes_.

[54] Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; _Chiracahua Apache_; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 3; Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 402, 405; Skinner, _Ethnology of the Ioway_, 249 (but the Christian symbolism here is Plains); Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 187-88; Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 53.

[55] The cane was the symbol of the Aztec merchant, and his friends did this utlatl or otate great reverence at a feast on the return from his travels; it symbolized Yiacatecutli, the god of merchants. Slaves were also sacrificed at a temple rite involving the canes (Sahagún, _A History of Ancient Mexico_, 1:41-42). Among the Huichol the staff of the judges in the native courts are accorded “a superstitious reverence” as symbols of authority (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:250). And although Governor Valdes had visited most of the pueblos to appoint native governors and captains by the year 1642, in Tarahumari the native term for leaders is igúsuame, “stick-bearers” or selfgame, “lance-bearers” (Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 375-76).

[56] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 718; Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 187-88; Opler, _Lipan Apache Field Notes_.

[57] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 65; Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 725; Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 4, 21; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_ (but there is no biblical authority for this in Exodus 7. 19, 20. or concerning Aaron’s rod in Exodus 8 or 10.13).

[58] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 724; Cooke, _Ute Field Notes_.

[59] Winnebago gourds often have on them pictures of Christ, the cross and “crown” of thorns, the shepherd’s crook and other Christian symbols (White Buffalo, in Blair, _The Indian Tribes_, 282; see also Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 188; _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:355b; Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 400, 405; Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 20).

[60] The best gourds are relatively small, not more than 3″ in diameter, somewhat flattened on the top rather than spherical, and elongated toward the handle. A hole is made through the gourd opposite the neck, cut off an inch or so from the round part; a stick is thrust through these, the neck hole being reinforced and made smaller by whittling down half a spool and glueing it in. There is no peg transversely through the portion emerging through the top, but both this and the handle part are usually covered with tightly-sewn buckskin to which bead-work is attached; some handles are carved or left plain. A tuft of red-dyed horse-hair is often put on the top and a buckskin fringe at the bottom; shot or pebbles make the sound.

[61] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 400; Skinner, _Ethnology of the Ioway_, 249; _Societies of the Iowa_, 724; Hoebel, Voegelin, Opler, and Cooke, _Field Notes_; Mooney (_Miscellaneous Notes_) says Comanche drums had eight marbles sometimes, as had also the Shawnee, according to Mrs. Voegelin.

[62] The Kickapoo once tried a four-legged brass kettle instead of the regulation three-legged iron one, but soon discarded it, having decided that the tone was not right (this probably rationalizes some criticism of their ostentation). The Caddo had a 10-marbled crock drum with a deer skin head; the Oto, who have the kettle drum, sometimes use a crock, as do the Omaha (Gilmore, _The Mescal Society_, 166; _Uses of Plants_). The Delaware sometimes used otter skin instead of deer skin, with four bosses tightened with a sharp stick or deer-horn (Harrington, _Religion and Ceremony_, 188; Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 50).

[63] Cf. the Mexican belief about the peyote under the gourd-resonator. Such taboos in regard to drums are also Iroquoian I believe, and possibly Southeastern.

[64] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 726; Densmore, _Winnebago Songs of Peyote Ceremonies_.

[65] The Chickasaw beat on a wet deer skin tied over the mouth of a large clay pot (Adair, _History_, 140). The Choctaw beat with one drumstick on a deer skin stretched over an earthen pot or kettle (Swanton, _Social and Religious Beliefs_, 222); they used the goat skin covered cypress knee drum as well (Bushnell, _Choctaw_, 22), and also bear skin and deer skin (Swanton, _op. cit._, 224). The Koasati older drum was deer skin over a cypress knee, and later the small iron kettle (Paz, _Field Notes_). The Taskigi Creek used a hollow vessel partly filled with water (Speck, _The Creek Indians_, 137). The Yuchi, besides the log drum, had the pot drum, containing water, about 18″ high; the hide was usually decorated with a wheel-like design and the privilege of beating the drum was invested in a certain individual (Speck, _Yuchi_, 61, cf. the Caddo, in some respects a peripheral Southeastern group and who have the “crock” drum). The Catawba and Quapaw also had the pot-drum (Speck, _Catawba Texts_; _Handbook of the American Indian_, 2:335b). It is not known if the Tonkawa water-drum is pre-peyote, but the Lipan pottery drum is late according to Opler. The water-drum of the Southeast is continuous through the Antilles into South America (Wissler, _The American Indian_, 154).

Wissler makes no mention of Mexican or Southwestern occurrences of the kettle-drum or water-drum, but the trait is common in these regions. The Aztec had the kettle-drum (Sahagún, _A History of Ancient Mexico_, 1:87, 91). Beals (_Comparative Ethnology_, 112, 188, Table 71) lists the atabale or kettle-drum in Tehueco, Culiacan, Tepic (Zentispac), Tarasco, and Mexico. The pottery drum is Lacandone, Natchez and Chitimacha also (Swanton, _Aboriginal Culture_, 708, in Beals, 188). Stevenson (_The Zuñi_, 39) mentions a Tepehan pottery drum struck loudly at certain ceremonies to insure the presence of beings who would keep the singing of songs correct. The Western Apache have “male” and “female” water drums (Henry, J., _Cult of Silas John Edwards_). The Huichol use no drum in the peyote ceremony; the Tamaulipecan peyote-drum is the wooden type, as is also the Tarahumari drum (Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 67-68) and the Huichol drum, which is “alive” (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:32-34). The Taos is the standard peyote drum; but the pottery drum is found among non-users of peyote: e.g., Navaho, Chiricahua, W. Apache, Jicarilla, Yavapai and Pueblo in general (Spier, information).

[66] Hoebel, _Comanche Field Notes_; Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 724, 758; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 65; Speck, _A Study of the Delaware_, _passim_.

[67] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 405-409; Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 176; Opler, _Carrizo Field Notes_. The feather as a symbol of delegated authority is also found in the Ghost Dance.

[68] Cf. Boas, _Anthropology_, 91, “... the feathers of the Dakota Indians ... by the way they are cut and painted, express warlike exploits.”

[69] Hills, _Eating Medicine with the Quapaws_.

[70] Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 188; Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_. _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:455-56, “The downy feather was to the mind of the Indian a kind of bridge between the spirit world and ours.” Note the Ponca whistling along the water bucket feather.

[71] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 403, 405, 407.

[72] The Oto and Arapaho wear tufts of down feathers on their hair in meetings; cf. the Tarahumari shaman’s feather headdress which tells him all the bird knew and protects him by preventing air from entering his head and making him ill (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:313).

[73] Mooney, _Peyote Notebook_, 28. Crashing Thunder visioned an eagle with outspread wings in a meeting once (Radin, 188-89).

[74] Huichol peyote fetishes include the squirrel, skunk, birds and the shaman’s fetish plant; the Tarahumari have the squirrel, birds and peyote plant; the southern Plains birds and the peyote plant; and the northern Plains the plant only—an interesting degeneration in complexity of symbolism, a sort of diffusionist law of inverse squares.

[75] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 401, 406; letter of L. L. Meeker to Mooney.

[76] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 181-82; _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 21; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 389, “They are regarded by a number of people, certainly by Rave, with undisguised veneration [i.e., the peyote ‘chiefs’].”

[77] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 724; Opler, _Chiricahua Apache_; _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; _Lipan Apache Field Notes_; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 64-65. Cf. the Anadarko Delaware phrase “ear-eating” for peyote-eating (Speck, _Notes on the Life of John Wilson_, 552).

[78] An especially handsome and regular one, oriented with a thorn on its “north” side, had fifteen full radial lines of hair-tufts. Of three others, one was kept in a woman’s small mirrored vanity-case, a pomade jar, and a silk handkerchief, all carefully wrapped up. Another very old one was given his brother-in-law, Yellow Bird, by a Comanche. A cracked one was kept in a beaded buckskin pouch along with a Catholic medallion dated 1890; it had been given him by an Apache. He has also preserved one given his wife by Mexicans at El Rio on their first peyote trip in 1926, and tied up with the mother’s he keeps two little ones which helped his little girl. And finally, there were seven which he laid behind the whistle one New Year’s meeting to represent the seven days of the week; his daughter drank the water in which they were soaked and became well in seven days. She is a grown woman now and he still keeps these peyotes which have so well demonstrated their power.

[79] The Comanche leader Mumsika still preserves a famous peyote button formerly belonging to Kutubi which performed prophecies on an historical war party into Texas (Hoebel, _Comanche Field Notes_). The anxiety of Clyde Koko (Kiowa) when he thought he had lost his “father peyotes” after changing his mind about sending them back to their original country, well demonstrates the psychological reality of these fetishisms.

[80] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 169, note; Gilmore, _The Mescal Society_, 165-66; Speck (manuscript); Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 724; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_.

[81] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 200. This is indeed a miracle if he read it in Matthew 16.

[82] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 186-87; _Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 5; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 394-95.

[83] Radin, _Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 6; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 395-96. The reference to John 1.4 indicates nothing of relevance.

[84] Romans 11.16-18. No native with whom the writer is acquainted has to date noted the obvious Shakespearean reference to peyote, in the speech of Banquo as the three witches vanish incorporeally into thin air (Macbeth I, iii): “Were such things here as we do speak about, or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?”

[85] The Carrizo-Lipan had no crescent mound, which is probably of Mescalero origin.

[86] Gilmore, _The Mescal Society_, 165-66.

[87] Cf. _Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:2b, 661: “Formerly among the southern Plains tribes a buffalo skull was placed on a small mound in front of the sweat house, the mound being formed of earth excavated from the fireplace.” The original Comanche and Caddo moons appear to have been more horseshoe- than crescent-shaped, and the apron of the Caddoan Big Moons obviously developed from an elongation of the horns. The introduction of the heart is apparently Caddoan also, influenced probably by the Catholic “Sacred Heart” of Jesus.

[88] Enoch Hoag was at one time John Wilson’s assistant or drummer.

[89] A Comanche told Hoebel of a “moon” with the entire tipi-floor of cement; if this is identical with one I was told about, it has been subsequently destroyed. The rationalization given was that the cement floor distorted the sound of the drum, and a return to an earthen floor was made.

[90] The Kiowa and Caddo are therefore at opposite extremes; the Kiowa were the leading spirits in the institutionalizing of peyotism in the Native American Church, which gathered to itself even the earlier Church of the First-born. In this respect they are the “Catholics” of the movement, and, tired of the warring rival Protestantisms let loose by Caddo visionaries, many groups are undergoing an “Oxford Movement” back to the simplest earlier native forms, sans Bible and sans elaborate altars, which after all have been the vehicles for prestige and wealth of ambitious individualism.

[91] Several of Petrullo’s examples (Hoag, Black Wolf, etc.) are Caddo rather than Delaware. His Hoag moon (_The Diabolic Root_, pl. 5, B, p. 181) was given to the writer with a half-ellipse joining the moon-tips to form the lower part of the “face,” and the ash-mounds in position as “eyes,” and the two eastern hearts reversed.

[92] Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 64.

[93] This specimen is figured in Schultes, _Peyote and Plants Used_, 7. Is this a reflex of an older Kickapoo pattern? The prophet Kanakuk furnished his followers with a chart showing a path through fire and water, and gave them prayer sticks graven with religious symbols. See _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:650b, “Kanakuk.”

[94] Petrullo, _Diabolic Root_, 50, 101, 113. The symbolism of twelve of the Caddo here is clearly a Delaware borrowing; cf. the twelve panels in the Big Moon altars, the twelve eagle feathers, and the twelve sticks of the fire. See Speck, _Delaware Big House_, for the symbolism of twelve (twelve “heavens” etc.; cf. the twelve steps in the altar apron of the Wilson moon). Petrullo says the twelve sticks represent the months of the year or the tail-feathers of the eagle.

[95] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 401. See also Speck, _A Study of the Delaware Big House_, 47, 51. Cf. the Arapaho, Sitting Bull, the Ghost Dance prophet giving feathers to his assistants.

[96] The ceremonial fire we have seen is Huichol and Tarahumari (cf. the “pillow of Grandfather Fire” of the Huichol with the “heart” of the Caddo-Delaware peyote fire: both are used as a “smoke stick”). The Caddo ceremonial fire, however, was pre-peyote (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:2b; Swanton, _Aboriginal Culture_, 701). Beals (_Comparative Ethnology_, 127) lists the ceremonial fire for the Tarahumari, Caddo, Hasinai, Chitimacha, Houma, Natchez, Tunica, Taënsa, Jalisco (Cutzalán), Mexico, and Maya (Lacandone); it is lacking in Tepic-Culiacan, Old Sinaloa, Old Sonora, Southern Sierra and Tamaulipas (whence a southern Plains provenience for the ceremonial fire in peyotism is implausible). See also Beal’s map 26, 209; table 121, 211-12.

[97] It is believed that the Yuchi example figured by Petrullo in Plate 2 is erroneous in the placing of the ash eagle and in the presence of the redundant ash crescent.

[98] Interestingly, though the bulk of modern peyotists are Siouan, Caddoan and Algonquian groups, none used the elbow pipe in the ceremony—only Taos. See Wissler, _The American Indian_, 26, fig. 6.

[99] Skinner thought peyote destroyed the appetite for tobacco (_Societies of the Iowa_, 694, 726).

[100] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_. See Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 401; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 64, for standard form.

[101] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 640-41.

[102] The importance of taking a comparative viewpoint is indicated by the statement of Gilmore, _The Mescal Society_, 165, “... the Omaha, of Nebraska, have interjected the use of wild sage, _Artemesia gnaphalodes_, in connection with mescal ceremonies, that plant having been an immemorial symbol of sacredness among the Omaha.” But see Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 399, 401; Radin, _The Winnebago Tribe_, 415 and others.

[103] In view of other peyote parallels, note the sweat bath sage-whip.

[104] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 65. The Arapaho (Kroeber, 402), Kiowa, and others chew bits of sage.

[105] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 722.

[106] Harrington (_Religion and Ceremonies_, 189) may be in error in stating that the staff is passed to the drummer’s _right;_ the native painting contradicts this; cf. Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 402, for the standard method; concerning passing persons, see Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 65.

[107] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 171, 175-77, 185-87; cf. _The Winnebago Tribe_, 394-95; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 64. Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637.

[108] Cedar was used to purify the Delaware Big House (Speck, _A Study of the Delaware_, 171), which may account for the special cedar-man in the Delaware rite of Wilson. But the pattern may have been reinforced by the censer of the Catholics, by whom Wilson is known to have been influenced. The Mescalero ascribe sickness after eating peyote to witching by rival shamans. Mooney mentions an odorous root from New Mexico used protectively perhaps, in Kiowa or Comanche meetings. See Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 402-403; Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 65, 105; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_.

[109] Opler, _The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_; cf. Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 63, 65.

[110] Mooney, _Miscellaneous Notes_, 8; _Peyote Notebook_, 12, 14. Dr. Maurice G. Smith collected a number of peyote songs near Anadarko in 1930 (see Densmore, _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_) as did Richardson in 1935 (Kiowa largely); see also Klineberg, _Notes on the Huichol_, 458. Radin (_A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 3; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 388) implies that the paraphernalia circulate only among the four leaders and others sing only occasionally. Songs are best in the morning when the unpleasant effects of the peyote have worn off (cf. Mooney, _The Mescal Plant_; Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 404-405; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 344). Koshiway (Oto) told a joke in the morning about a partially deaf man’s misunderstanding the song “Jesus in the glory now, he ya na ha we,” and singing “Jesus in Missouri now.” Jack said, laughing, “He must be getting close, He’s just over the river now!” Opler’s informant said the Lipan can sing songs of a personal ceremony such as bear songs in peyote meetings, but not masked dancer songs.

[111] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 728. Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_: “The greatness (power) of God is made manifest through seven beasts, as prophesied. One beast is in power now, as seen by the troubles of the present time, all of which are according to prophecy. There is some spirit [the seraphim] praising God constantly, which signifies that we also should do that in order to inherit eternal life.”

[112] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637.

[113] Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_.

[114] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 5; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 395.

[115] Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; Radin, _The Winnebago Tribe_, 416-17.

[116] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 403. A more concrete physiological reason for the leader’s exit was suggested in the preceding section.

[117] Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 725, 727. Murie (_Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637) misplaced emphasis in stating that midnight ceremonies as such are peculiar to the Pawnee, yet he was correct, I believe, in implying that their special midnight recess was unique.

[118] Cf. Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 116. Spybuck follows this Caddo-Delaware custom (Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_.) Cf. the painting in Harrington (_Religion and Ceremonies_, pl. 9); but Spybuck is Shawnee not Delaware.

[119] The Osage case is offered thus tentatively as it was in answer to a leading question in a public hearing. See Office of Indian Affairs, _Discussion Concerning Peyote_, 44.

[120] Certainly doctoring was the most important element in the Southwest; cf. Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 294: “The use of peyote resembles an elaborate curing ceremony [among the Tarahumari] rather than a cult.” Opler (_The Influence of Aboriginal Pattern_) writes that “Apache ceremonialism had for its primary object the curing of disease,” and peyotism came within this framework.

[121] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 12-13; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 423.

[122] Densmore, _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_, 3.

[123] To be sure, diagnosis of illness by clairvoyance, etc., is resorted to, but this is to be expected when witchcraft is the main cause of sickness. (Cf. the combination of doctoring and divination with cohoba snuff in Haiti. Safford, _Narcotic Plants_, 393.) Obsessive elements of interest to psychiatry are found both in the witchcraft fear and in the methods chosen to cure the ill.

[124] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 405.

[125] Kiowa and Comanche parallels with older doctoring methods have been collected also. One of the latter involves a 2 foot mound in the tipi with a cedar sprig on it, a fire, a woman assistant, smoking of tobacco, and blowing on the patient.

[126] Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_; _Winnebago Songs of the Peyote Ceremony_.

[127] Parsons, _Taos Pueblo_, 60, 67-68.

[128] Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 189; Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 725.

[129] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637.

[130] “[At] 5 o’clock in the morning, when suddenly the singing ceased, the drum and the ceremonial staff were put away, and the leader, beginning at the door, asked each person, ‘What did you see?’” (La Flesche, in _Peyote as Used in Religious Worship_, 33).

[131] Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 3; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 388.

[132] Radin, _Crashing Thunder_, 176; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_.

[133] Wissler, _The American Indian_, 189: “One prominent feature of Nahua life was the elaboration of the moral lecture. In the Pueblo region of the Rio Grande the chiefs and head men were given to daily moral lectures.... Perhaps we are again dealing with a general characteristic of New World society.” Cf. the Tamaulipecan harangue (Prieto, _Historia y Estadistica_, 123-24).

[134] The prophecies and predictions of C. W. (Kickapoo president of the Native American Church) on the basis of his visions have an old-time flavor, though colored by Christianity and proselytizing for peyote: he prophesied the “Judgment Day” and the “new world” to come; “it will be too late to go in [the peyote tipi] when the time comes—you’ve got to start now,” Kishkaton reports him as saying.

[135] _Handbook of the American Indians_, 1:65a, 309-10, 401-402, 650; 2:371a, 587a, 885-86. Cf. the elaborate Quichua and Aztec Messiah legends.

[136] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 403-404; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_.

[137] Mooney (_The Mescal Plant_, 8) errs, we believe, in citing a Kiowa midnight baptism.

[138] Kroeber, _The Arapaho_, 404.

[139] Petrullo, _The Diabolic Root_, 93; Harrington, _Religion and Ceremonies_, 190; Skinner, _Societies of the Iowa_, 727; Voegelin, _Shawnee Field Notes_; Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_. “Baptism” is Lipan also.

[140] Murie, _Pawnee Indian Societies_, 637; Radin, _A Sketch of the Peyote Cult_, 3, 5; _The Winnebago Tribe_, 389; Densmore, _The Peyote Cult_. It is said that “the peyote-eaters wanted to get baptized and unite with the church in Winnebago, but the clergyman in charge would not permit them, so they went and did their own baptizing through their leader John Rave.”

[141] Some add cookies and candy. The use of sweet foods and the sweetening of others recalls the eating of teo-nanacatl with honey, and the eating of sweet-meats while smoking “grifos” or marihuana. See Maillefert, _La Marihuana_, 6-7.

[142] Mopope (Kiowa) painted a special set of white enamel-ware vessels for Kozad’s meetings: water-bucket (tipi and “water-bird”), parched-corn pan (ear of corn and four-direction feathers), fruit-pan (thunderbird, fruit within a crescent design) and meat-dish (cooking fire, buffalo horns and sun design).

[143] A recurrence of an old custom ascribed to Sweet Medicine appears in the Northern Cheyenne peyote breakfast, when an individual takes five pieces of meat across the lodge to a visitor (Hoebel, _Northern Cheyenne Field Notes_).

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTISM

A descriptive account of a ritual pattern, however meticulously detailed it be, must always fall short of reality unless supplemented by further information regarding its functioning in terms of individuals. The older descriptive ethnography and the newer interest in the dynamics of culture are as necessary to each other as anatomy and physiology, of which, indeed, they are the anthropological parallels. We accordingly embark upon the somewhat anecdotal filling in of the pattern sketched in the preceding section.

Every student of peyote has been met with a sometimes odd mixture of suspiciousness and candor, an ambivalence in attitude derived primarily from the native attitudes toward peyotism itself. Most of the younger adherents of the cult have had White schooling of a sort, but though the express intent of this schooling has been the deculturation of the Indian, on returning to their tribes old loyalties are characteristically reestablished and old ways of thinking fallen into; the total effect of Christian teaching on peyotism, therefore, has not been particularly profound.

But all peyote adherents are aware of the efforts, both religious and secular, to suppress the movement, and most of them are familiar with the arguments advanced against peyote as an allegedly harmful drug. They have commonly met this with the counter-propaganda that peyote is a specific cure for alcoholism, but nevertheless this attitude on the part of bearers of the powerful and prestige-full White culture has not left them unimpressed, and there is a consequent lack of psychological security in their belief and practice of peyotism. Though the cult is a compromise solution between Christianity and older native religions, there is still a large number of persons whose attitude toward peyote is thoroughly precarious—as evidenced by the vacillations, defections and rationalizations we are about to list.

Save for the Caddo (and there are perhaps historical reasons for this) ordinary sincerity and interest are met by the Plains practitioners with corresponding candor and friendliness toward the ethnographer. There is no very great difficulty in a sympathetic White man’s attending a peyote meeting nowadays. Indeed, some groups, out of naïve faith in the plant’s power, seem even to invite attendance in the hope of producing a propagandist for the cult to counteract the unfriendliness which they feel, and not unrightly, has arisen from ignorance and prejudice. An instance of this good faith and even naïveté occurs in an Osage petition to Congress that in the event of a law being passed to regulate the use of peyote, an exception be made for the “Indian lodges using it as a sacrament,” and they promised to use it only under the supervision of reservation superintendents![1] And a sincerity not open to doubt was evidenced by a Cheyenne, one time president of the Native American Church, who sent 200 peyote buttons on his own initiative through his agency-superintendent to a chemist at Stanford University, requesting a thorough and disinterested scientific analysis, and offering his further services if necessary.[2]

Another factor making for insecurity of belief and practice has been the intense opposition on the part of some leaders of older cults in the tribe itself. We will recur to this subject in discussing the history of peyote in specific groups, but cite here the rather accentuated example of hostility at Taos.[3] Dr. Parsons tells of a lawsuit between a “peyote boy” and one of the Mexican Penitentes which was resolved by both paying the costs, to prevent the betrayal of native customs. Thereafter the chiefs said:

[Peyote] does not belong to us. It is not the work given to us.
It will stop the rain. Something will happen.

But as desire for rain is the typical anxiety reflected in native ritual in the agricultural Southwest, the peyote boys retorted in the same vein. In the drought of 1922 they said:

“Now it is so dry this summer because the peyote boys can’t
have their meetings; they used to bring so much rain.” [Indeed,
nowadays,] the townspeople are given to referring all their
inclination to feud to the peyote situation.

But there is ample evidence that this tendency existed before peyote ever came to Taos. On the other hand, the wife of one peyote-user asserted that there was no more “witch sickness” in the town because of the peyote people, who were able to exorcize witches; nevertheless, one man attributed his trachoma to witching by “foreigners” in peyote meetings.

Such intense seriousness is in marked contrast to the situation in some Plains tribes, where peyote jokes are told at times in the forenoons after meetings, when sufficient rapport has been established. A Comanche story tells of a leader who took his expensive watch into a meeting and laid it on the altar cloth near the father peyote to “show off.” A man shaking the gourd vigorously on the north side was making motions toward the father peyote, and miraculously the watch became broken up; “it was just a mess of works there loose, and the hands dropped off.” The informant was highly amused at this story. An Oto told the tale of a man whose jaw became stiff as he was singing, a contretemps which upset the whole meeting. Though this effect was apparently due to peyote, the story was greeted with much laughter. People laugh at the incorrect singing of peyote songs too. We have already mentioned the one involving the alarming proximity of the Messiah just across the river in Missouri. Another story is told of a visiting Kiowa who attempted to sing a Comanche song in meeting. He mispronounced the words and sang, “_Mentula exposita est! Mentula exposita est!_” All the auditors of this story laughed at this further proof that the Comanche have “no shame.”

The attitudes surrounding the plant itself are interesting. Perhaps the Tarahumari[4] attitudes are most accentuated:

Those who have never eaten peyote fear it most. Should they
touch the plant, they believe they would go crazy or die. Those
who have once eaten it at a fiesta need have no fear of it,
providing they treat it properly.

At Tarahumari feasts of the dead peyote protects the living from the ghost of the deceased, quite as eating it prevents bears from attacking the hunter or deer from running away from him; it confers invulnerability from the Apaches and warns of their approach, and likewise foils the machinations of sorcerers and robbers. In short, “hikuli is a powerful protector of its people under all circumstances.”

The Lipan well represent the attitude of early users in the United States:

If a fellow is not scared, is not afraid of it, he will surely
have a good time. A fellow who is afraid of it just gets dizzy
and frightened. He sees things that frighten him. What he sees
is not true, but is just playing a joke on him.... When a
fellow is honest and good natured it is easy for him. But when
a fellow is rough and ill tempered he will have a hard time
learning from peyote. It will scare him and make it hard for
him.... The chief peyote is pretty tough. It watches what is
going on. It keeps everything straight. It is a plant, but it
can see and understand better than a man. If someone has wrong
thoughts, he had better look out or he will go crazy....

When they first start eating peyote they put their thoughts on
something good, something they want, for they say that whatever
you are thinking about when you start is what you will see all
during the night in your vision.... Sometimes a man sees a
vision and it scares him and he goes out running. But he is all
right the next day. The thing that frightened him won’t happen
unless he thinks about it all the time and it frightens him
continually. Then he begins to be afraid of it and thinks it
will happen. But if he holds it off—holds off the bad thoughts
that frighten him—nothing will occur.... Sometimes it makes
you dream something pleasant, sometimes it makes you dream
something dangerous.... In the morning, just after the meeting
is over, you can tell others what you saw.

Hoebel writes that

the trickiness of peyote is emphasized by the Cheyenne. They
constantly reiterate that a man must keep hold of himself and
also that he must live straight or peyote will shame him.

A Delaware rationalized the unpredictable effect of peyote somewhat differently:[5]

I had the feeling once that it was going to make me foolish,
but that happens to everybody, and is a test of one’s faith in
peyote.

Vomiting of peyote is a punishment for one’s sins, but it cleanses the body of its impurities in the process and purifies the blood. Part of the symbolism in the bead-work on an Arapaho fetish-pouch is the “vomitings” deposited in a ring around the inside of the tipi.[6]

It would be naïve to suppose that peyote tastes any less unpleasant to natives than it does to Whites. But we should remember that peyote is eaten by Indians influenced by strong motives and deep belief, and the consequent physiological state is easily and adequately rationalized. It is not surprising that a man addicted to alcohol and shamed by it before both Indians and Whites believes that “whiskey and peyote fight in a man, and usually peyote wins and brings it out.” No doubt such a cure _ad nauseam_ is as good as any, and more effective than some. The depressing effect of peyote is also well recognized and measures are taken to overcome it. The Arapaho have feathers at four corners of the tipi to brush persons who tire during the meeting, and the “smoke” at Taos is made to overcome the depression of the early stages of eating, as sage is similarly used in the Plains.[7]

But suffering is counted even a positive virtue among people who had the “vision quest” in the old days. A crippled Indian at Miami told me that “to get power from peyote a man must suffer to it.” The four rounds of the drum without water among the Caddo suggests an intention of making the meeting an ordeal, and Mrs. Voegelin’s Shawnee informant emphasized that the Spybuck moon modelled on the Caddo was “hard.” Most informants would consider the Osage, who have “beds” in their meeting-houses sometimes, not merely ostentatious but also “soft”; one old man said that sage under the blankets of the seat as a cushion indicated a decadent generation, for did not they sit on the bare ground in the old days? A Kickapoo informant said Quanah Parker used to warn them that the taste of peyote wasn’t good, though “it would keep you on the right path.” About 2:10 in the morning a Comanche informant of Simmons said:

If there is suffering, this is the time. That’s the reason
I took a good rest: so I could stand it. Many a time I have
fallen over at this time. It’s getting on to what they call
the dark hour, the hour of the Crucifixion. Everyone here is
suffering now.

The Winnebago[8] elaborated into a dogma the physiological effect of peyote in producing occasional vomiting:

If a person who is truly repentant eats peyote for the first
time, he does not suffer at all from its effects. But if an
individual is bull-headed, does not believe in its virtue, he
is likely to suffer a great deal.... If a person eats peyote
and does not repent openly, he has a guilty conscience, which
leaves him as soon as the public repentance has been made....
If a peyote-user relapses into his old way of living, then the
peyote causes him great suffering.... The disagreeable effects
of the peyote varied directly with a man’s disbelief in it.
This explanation [Rave] persistently drummed into the ears of
beginners, who otherwise become terrified and give up too soon.

We have already noted the Huichol-Tarahumari belief that peyote sees and punishes evil deeds. Similarly, when as an old man Kutubi (Comanche) became sick he gave his father peyote to Mumsika, reasoning that he had “probably eaten something peyote didn’t allow”; this is probably the same father peyote which years before had predicted a bad fate for a war party. The leader had wept and strenuously upbraided peyote for this and may later have felt some guilt for his presumptuousness. In any case he held peyote responsible both times for his bad fortune.

But if peyote is blamed for bad fortune, it is also accredited with the liquidation of manifold anxieties. Fear of death is perhaps the most conspicuous anxiety in Plains culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that doctoring plays a major part in the cult. But the power and authority of peyote are relied upon in other ways too. In a number of tribes peyote or peyote tea is used whenever the individual finds himself confronted with any important personal problem. To be sure, it is the individual’s _total wishes_ which ultimately find expression in the course of action followed, but the consultation with peyote composes conflicts and gives an authority to the decision which the “unaided” individual might not have been able to summon.[9]

The protective function of the father peyote is most highly patterned, perhaps, among the Mescalero Apache.[10] In this culture the aggressions arising from the particular socio-economic system of marriage find expression in intense witchcraft activity. But for the typical aggressions which a culture engenders, a culture often has a patterned solution to offer. For though the means used were magical, the aggressions and counter-aggressions were _real_ in the psychological sense, and peyote had a real function in witch-prophylaxis. Shamanistic rivalry was most virulent and witchcraft-anxiety was correspondingly as intense as the projected hatreds. One never knew what dangerous and powerful supernatural possessions a hated rival possessed, hence a number of protective devices were developed in Mescalero peyotism.[11] Yet characteristically in this uncomfortable culture, the power of peyote was itself dangerous, and elaborate care had to be exercised in removing the fuzz from the top of the buttons before eating. Should it touch the eyes, it would cause blindness!

In the Plains the fear is often expressed, not without justification, that the white man is ever about to take away the peyote religion from the Indian, as he has taken almost everything else material and immaterial. But the frequency of this asserveration, sometimes in contexts which the writer thought were unrealistic, indicates that Indians view peyote in a sense as a protector from the Whites. Peyote is rather confidently thought to be able to take care of itself—which accounts for the comparative ease with which a white man can obtain entrance to a meeting, where he will be exposed to “proof” of peyote’s power. We need not emphasize this function of peyote beyond its true proportions, but it may be recalled that peyote enabled a native to escape from a white man’s jail; that it aided peyote pilgrims to bring plants undeterred through the white man’s customs; that it is the sovereign remedy for the evil of the white man’s whiskey; that peyote has so far protected itself against the white man’s attempted sumptuary legislation; that it miraculously escaped detection and confiscation in a white man’s war, through which it protected its bearer; and, not least in psychological importance, that peyote characteristically succeeds (because it is of God, not man) in cures which the white doctor has long since given up as hopeless.

This function of peyote as protector is rooted in earlier history: it sees from afar the approach of the enemy, predicts the results of battle and protects one in battle from the hazards of war. Peyote would have prevented a gun accident, and an accident with a mechanical saw, in instances collected, if the persons involved had only been able to understand its warning. And in another case, when a serious automobile accident had already happened, peyote quelled the anxiety of worrying relatives in assuring an ultimate cure. Again, Mary Buffalo, White Wolfs mother and Belo Kozad’s wife had all lost many children, until they took their sons into peyote meetings and prayed to the power that they be spared; in each case the son grew to manhood. Peyote is the comforter in the event of death also; a funeral meeting is often held as the last rite of respect to the deceased, and some groups hold anniversary meetings for four years after the death.

But peyote punishes as well. An inconstant result of its physiological action is the production at times of an intense fear-state. Rave, for example, (Winnebago)[12] in a period of mental stress experienced his fear:

Suddenly I saw a big snake. I was very much frightened.
Then another one came crawling over me. “My God! Where are
these snakes coming from?” There at my back there seemed to
be something also. So I looked around and saw a snake about
ready to swallow me entirely. It had arms and legs and a long
tail. The end of its tail was like a spear. “Oh God! I am
surely going to die now,” I thought. Then I turned in another
direction and I saw a man with horns and long claws and with a
spear in his hand. He jumped for me and I threw myself on the
ground. He missed me. Then I looked back. This time he started
back but it seemed to me that he was directing his spear at
me. Again I threw myself on the ground and he missed me. There
seemed to be no escape for me.

A similar experience of Crashing Thunder (Winnebago) is noted elsewhere; and in a story told of Bear Track (Cheyenne) and his Osage wife on their visit to the Holy Land, the parents seem to have communicated some of their anxiety and fear surrounding mysterious experiences there to their small daughter, who awoke screaming one night at a presence she saw in the room.

The peyote meeting of many groups has incorporated in it a powerful mechanism for the liquidation of individual anxieties in the practice of public confession of sins. It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of this feature.[13] On the exhortation of the leader, many members rise and accuse themselves publicly of misdemeanors or offenses, asking pardon of persons who might have been injured by them. How large a part peyote has in the production of such states is an open question (for the pattern of public confession is widespread aboriginally in the New World); but that confession to the father-peyote and his authority, and repentance before the group is of profound significance cannot be doubted. More than ritual tears stream down the confessant’s cheeks as he acknowledges his faults and asks aid to keep his promise to mend his ways.

Peyote often figures in matters of personal adjustment. The story of John Rave is too well known to require more than mention here. The somewhat similar history of Jonathan Koshiway (Oto) is likewise interesting in showing how a compromise was struck between the older pagan culture and Christianity, to whose influence this individual had been exposed. The personal solution in Koshiway’s case seems to have been a perfectly satisfactory one: in the Church of the First-born he doctored and “hollered” like the source of his power in good old Indian fashion, and on the other hand baptized, conducted funerals and married couples just as in white churches. The statements of Crashing Thunder’s father[14] indicate a somewhat less happy and inclusive solution, which involved the sacrifice of the old customs:

The peyote people are rather foolish for they cry when they
feel happy about anything. They throw away all the medicines
that they possess and whose virtues they know. They give up
all the blessings they received while fasting, give up all the
spirits who blessed them. They stop giving feasts and making
offering of tobacco. They burn up all their holy things,
destroy the war-bundles. They stop smoking and chewing tobacco.
They are bad people. They burn up their medicine pouches, give
up the Medicine Dance and even cut up their otter-skin bags.

Crashing Thunder, as we have seen, was himself persuaded by peyote cultists that it was disgraceful to have his hair long, and he gave his shorn hair with his medicine bundles to his brother-in-law, as both wept and as he received the thanks of his relatives. Clothing and headdress are also symbols of conflict between the old and the new for Taos and Osage.

A dramatic solution of a life-long problem was offered Crashing Thunder in peyotism. He had lied about having gotten power from a vision-experience in connection with the the older native religion: so important for personal prestige was this experience that he was betrayed into fabrication to obtain it. But he never lied to himself. All his life he was aware of the deception, and being a man of marked fundamental honesty, he keenly felt the fraud. Finally at the age of forty-five he did achieve through peyote the experience which he had missed in his youth. His conversion to the peyote religion was consequently most profound: “It is the only holy thing that I have become aware of in all my life,” he said simply, after this experience.

Jack Thomas (Delaware) solved a problem of major importance to himself through peyote. He had been appointed a Government policeman, and found considerable conflict between his duty and his sympathies. Finally he became gravely ill, and a meeting was put on by his brother and another relative to pray for his recovery. In this meeting the answer came to him:

The others in the tipi did not like me. Peyote told me this. I
had been a man-catcher. That was the reason. The two persons
that loved me prayed for me and I got well. I did not go back
to my job of man-catcher. Peyote showed me that it is wrong.

The mechanisms for social control afforded by the public and communal nature of the cult (as opposed to the individualism of the older religions in the Plains) are on the whole very effective. The speeches of the leaders and old men give ample opportunity for the expression of opinions concerning the conduct of younger members in peyote meetings and out. We have already noted the case in which a Kiowa marriage was saved from destruction by timely advice and reprimand addressed to the husband in a peyote meeting. The prayers, too, which almost any individual may make by calling for a smoke, are further vehicles for quite various psychological transactions.

Peyote leadership carries with it much prestige, and the great road-chiefs like Quanah Parker, Belo Kozad, Old Man Horse, White Horn, John Rave and Jonathan Koshiway are spoken of with considerable respect. In the case of John Wilson peyote was further made the vehicle of economic success. But the negative instances are just as interesting. We have already mentioned A. S., a Seminole who lived and married among the Caddo. He built a moon of the general John Wilson-Enoch Hoag type, which differed from these in only minor details. His bid for personal prestige, however, received so little support on the part of his group that he removed the inner symbolic part of his altar to the woods nearby, and left only the crescent and apron of a “small moon.”