The History of Peyotism in Nevada
Omer C. Stewart
from Nevada Historical
Society Quarterly, Vol 25 No 3, 1982
USING ONLY THE TRADITIONAL methods of history, which heavily
depend on published or unpublished written records, or
ethnography, which rely on data collected by interviews with
native informants and knowledge obtained by participant
observation, would leave a very incomplete and distorted picture
of Peyotism in Nevada Notwithstanding the fact that Peyotists
have always been a small minority in the total Nevada Indian
population, they have become known world-wide and provide
examples of a number of the peculiar circumstances connected with
the whole history of the Peyote religion in the New World.
Involved in that history is the nature of the unusual, small,
spineless cactus called by the Aztecs Peyotl, Peyote by
the Spanish, Mexicans and Indians in the area of its abundant
growth along the Rio Grande in south Texas and northern Mexico,
and by botanists named Lophophora williamsii (Lemaire) Coulter.
Also important is the strong American tradition whereby some
citizens try to legislate against behavior of which they
disapprove, exemplified by the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution which prohibited use of alcohol. The history of
Peyotism in Nevada is incomprehensible if not placed in the
national context.
In October of 1937 I learned of the presence of the Peyote
religion in Nevada during a conversation with Washoes Ben
Lancaster and Sam Dick, following our participation in a Peyote
meeting in Randlett, Utah, on the Uintah and Ouray Ute
reservation. It was known by officials of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA) that Lancaster had started to hold Peyote
ceremonies among the Washo in October 1936, only a few months
after my first ethnographic research in the area I did my field
research for a Ph.D. thesis in the fall of 1938.
My ethnohistorical studies in recent years allow me to
reconstruct an outline of the history of Peyote in Nevada before
the return of Lancaster as a Peyote proselytizer. Christian
missionaries and BIA officials announced their opposition to
Peyotism when it was first discovered in Oklahoma in 1886, and
they continued that opposition actively until John Collier became
Indian commissioner in 1933. Until Collier, the BIA and
missionary societies both collected data on Peyotism and
disseminated reports throughout Indian country to combat it. The
process of data collection itself spread knowledge. For example,
the earliest documents on Peyote in Nevada were copies of three
letters sent to BIA agents in Stewart, Fallon and Owyhee in 1916.
These I found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The
tone of the inquiry suggests danger and opposition. For example,
"Please let me have a report from you immediately, giving
the number of Indians addicted to its use, and the extent and
frequency of its use. Who are the leaders? Where do they get
their supply from, and how? What is the effect on the users as
shown by your own observations and from reports of employees,
missionaries, and others... What is physical condition of
users..." The letter was signed Chief Special Officer,
i.e. detective, of the BIA.
The next reference to Peyote in Nevada is the state statute
regulating the Sale and Use of Poison, Section 5082, paragraph 8,
which added "anhalonium (peyote or mescal button)" in
February 1917 as a substance prohibited except on prescription. I
have found only one hint of local Nevada influence to bring about
that anti-Peyote amendment. In a 1922 letter from the agent of a
Crow reservation to the BIA during his campaign to have an
anti-Peyote law passed in Montana, Agent C. H. Asbury wrote to
the Commissioner: "I had something to do with getting
special legislation against the use of certain drugs in Nevada
and I found no particular difficulty in having the proper words
inserted in the law." Asbury had been the Indian Agent at
the Duck Valley reservation for a number of years until
transferred in the fall of 1916. National forces against Peyote
may have been important in Nevada at that time, as they were in
Utah and Colorado where Peyote was outlawed also in February
1917.
The next mention of Peyote in Nevada is in a report of
Special Agent Dorrington dated May 12-13, 1917. Surprisingly, it
refers to Jack Wilson, the Messiah and originator of the Ghost
Dance of the 1890s. Wrote Dorrington:
Use of peyote and mescal. There is absolutely no
evidence indicating that either peyote or mescal is used on
the reservations or that the Indians know anything about it.
.. Jack Wilson resides in Mason Valley... He is the
'Messiah' and the originator of the 'Ghost Dance'. He appears
to attract but little attention from Indians in this locality
but apparently has considerable influence among distant
tribes and he seemingly keeps in close touch with them; that
he is corresponding with certain individuals in Montana,
South Dakota, Wyoming and Oklahoma... It is further
learned that even delegations have paid him a visit... He
is also known as a 'medicine man' and practices some among
his people, but most of his time is believed to be spent
visiting the distant and more prosperous tribes and
individuals from whom he procures large sums of money...
Jack Wilson is a very dignified and striking Indian...
From all accounts he has always been friendly with whites..
. A recent picture of Jack, taken by myself, is attached. It
cost me the sum of one dollar, that is Jack made a 'touch'
for that amount after the picture had been taken... After
careful inquiry I am satisfied that Jack Wilson does not use
peyote or mescal, nor has he encouraged its use by others..
. he is very temperate in his habits... he is constantly
advising the Indians to abstain from the use of all drugs and
intoxicants.
The next important BIA document prepared and widely
disseminated nationwide was shown to me by missionaries and
officials when I was studying Washo-Northern Paiute Peyotism in
1938. It was a thirty-eight page pamphlet prepared by Dr. Robert
E. L. Newberne, Peyote, An Abridged Compilation from the Files
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, published in 1922. Newberne
summarized historical information on Peyote starting with Spanish
padres, and presented anti-Peyote reports of American
missionaries to the Indians. He included samples of data
collected in 1919 by means of a twenty-one item questionnaire
sent to Indian service employees such as agents, physicians,
farmers, field matrons, directors of Indian schools and sectarian
missionaries. Three hundred and two answers were received in
Washington, D.C. from 116 Indian agencies, for which 87,
including 6 located in Nevada, reported no use of Peyote. The
Nevada Indian population was listed at 10,854 and included no
known Peyotists.
From interviews with Indians in 1938 I learned of a Sioux
Indian Peyote missionary, named Sam Lone Bear. Lone Bear had been
proselytizing since 1914 in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. He
conducted Peyote rituals at Fallon and Pyramid Lake during
several months in the summer of 1929. His success at
"doctoring" attracted participants to his Peyote
meeting at Nixon, Nevada, from as far away as McDermitt, Nevada,
and Bishop, California. Lone Bear made his headquarters with Joe
Green, a well-known and respected Paiute medicineman residing on
the Pyramid Lake Reservation. In 1938 Joe told me of his
conversion to Peyotism notwithstanding his being an active and
convinced Episcopalian, and also a practicing shaman. He had no
difficulties being simultaneously a leader in three religions, a
situation I have found repeatedly among Indian Peyotists.
In 1929 Sam Lone Bear used the name Leo Old Coyote (which I
heard as Leo O'Kio) in Nevada because he was trying to avoid
being arrested under a federal warrant for violation of the Mann
Act. He was arrested in 1932, tried, and sentenced to three years
in the federal prison at McNeil Island, Washington, but was
paroled in two years. On his way home he stopped at Fallon,
Nevada, and courted Mamie Charley, the sister of a Shoshone he
had converted in 1929. Sam and Mamie were married in South Dakota
and lived on Sam's allotment on Lone Bear Creek, Pine Ridge
Reservation, until he died on February 5, 1937.
No Nevada Indians learned how to obtain Peyote or acquired
the equipment and knowledge to conduct Peyote ceremonies from Sam
Lone Bear. Consequently no Peyote meetings were held in western
Nevada until about 1932 when a Ute Peyotist named Ralph
Kochampanaskin, usually called Raymond Lone Bear, married a Washo
and settled in Minden. One of his followers was Sam Dick, an
active old-fashioned Washo medicine man. After an initial
success, Ralph lost his following because he failed to live up to
the non-drinking rule of the Peyote religion.
During my interviewing in the fall of 1938 at the Indian
School near Carson City a woman from Owyhee, Nevada, told me that
Peyotism was introduced to the Duck Valley Reservation from Fort
Hall, Idaho, years before, but she could give me no details.
Later I found a 1939 letter from Owyhee in which the Indian Agent
reported that members of the tribal council agreed Peyote was
first used during a curing ceremony at Duck Valley in 1915.
During my first field work in Fallon in 1936, my Northern Paiute
interpreter praised the Peyote religion; I learned in 1938 that
he had been converted during a visit to Fort Hall in 1920. Since
then he had traveled regularly to other states to attend Peyote
meetings but had not introduced the ceremonies to his people in
Nevada.
Jim Street, a Shoshone living in Fallon, told me in 1938 that
he had been converted to Peyotism on the Gosllute reservation at
Ibapah, Utah, in 1932, hut had not attended any more Peyote
rituals until shortly before I interviewed him.
It is evident that the Indians of Nevada had gained
considerable experience and heard many rumors about Peyote before
Ben Lancaster firmly established the religion among the Washo and
Paiute of western Nevada. It is Lancaster's ceremony which
attracted the support of about 300 of the 2257 Indians in the
area. It is now appropriate to describe the Peyote ritual of
Lancaster and to summarize some of his teachings. It should be
said at the outset that the Washo-Northern Paiute rituals I
observed in 1938 were nearly identical to the rituals I had seen
among the Ute a year earlier; these Ute rituals closely
paralleled ones observed by anthropologists in Oklahoma and
elsewhere who supplied me information for a 265 item comparative
table published as part of my thesis.
A canvas tipi is the most desirable place to conduct the
Peyote ritual, but I attended services with the Washo and Paiute
in a canvas walled "corral" and at regular residences.
Before the participants assemble, a sand crescent altar about
four inches high and four feet long is constructed on the west
side of the meeting place. A fire is laid on a protective mound
or on the ground east of the altar. At dusk the congregation
meets at the entrance on the east side of the structure where the
leader, called the roadman, prays to Jesus, God, Mary and Peyote
for guidance during the ritual and for health and wisdom
throughout life. When the devotees enter, they always move
clockwise to find seats. They follow the same pattern whenever
leaving or entering. Four officials direct the ceremony—
the roadman, chief drummer, and cedarman, who are seated on
blankets on the ground west of the altar, and the fireman or
doorman just inside the entrance. The normal equipment consists
of a water drum, bird-tail feather fans, gourd rattles, a staff,
dried Peyote, or Peyote tea, Bull Durham tobacco, and a
large-size Peyote button to place on the altar. The equipment is
incensed in cedar smoke at the beginning. After all pray through
Bull Durham cigarette smoke, the roadman passes clockwise the
sack of Peyote buttons. Each adult participant takes four
buttons, the ceremonial number, to prayerfully eat. Then the
roadman kneels and holds the three-foot staff and a fan in his
left hand. He shakes the rattle and sings four hymns, in which he
is accompanied by the chief drummer. Each male participant in
turn receives the paraphernalia, and sings while accompanied on
the drum by his neighbor to the right. The singing, drumming and
praying continue until dawn except for a midnight recess and
water drinking. At dawn. a ceremonial meal of water, fruit, meat,
and maize is blessed and passed clockwise; all present take four
spoonfuls of the food and four sips of the water. The water from
the dismantled drum is poured on the sand altar and the ceremony
ends. Women of the congregation prepare a ball(banquet which is
usually eaten about noon, and then members return to their homes.
With the Peyote plant, dried with the appearance of home
dried peaches, Nevada Indians acquired beliefs and attitudes
about the bitter-tasting cactus which have been associated with
it since they were recorded by early Spanish explorers in Mexico
in the 1500s. Peyote itself is sacred, they emphasize, and has
many powers to help mankind. It is also a messenger to
supernatural powers, now usually named God and Jesus. When eaten
and prayed to in the proper ritual context, Peyote helps cure all
diseases and reveals many things: the location of lost objects or
persons, future events, and proper behavior, among others. Peyote
protects from the evil intentions of witches. It brings knowledge
for proper living, which includes avoiding alcoholic beverages
and always acting according to strict Christian ethics—to
love your wife and children and kin, be patriotic and law
abiding, and to respect authority, God and elders.
When asked why they supported the Peyote religion, devotees
cited the success of Peyotists in curing. In tracing the history
of Peyotism in Nevada from the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s, one
discovers the interplay of a number of individuals, first the
Indians and BIA officials, then state and local authorities and
the general public. From the public emerged a few citizens who
actively opposed Peyotism and some who defended it. Christian
missionaries and their supporters disputed with Peyote religion
sympathizers, such as anthropologists and members of the American
Civil Liberties Union.
Lancaster and his rituals soon came under opposition by both
civil and religious authorities, but of course an awareness of
Peyotism and opposition to it was present in Nevada when it was
prohibited by law in 1917. Alida C. Bowler, Superintendent of the
Carson Indian Agency, reported to the BIA that she was suspicious
that Lancaster was a dope peddler. About three months later, the
Reverend S. R. Dunlop, a Baptist missionary to the Washo,
reported that Lancaster, in order to defend himself and Peyotism,
was saying that Commissioner John Collier's son Donald had
participated in Peyote rituals. (Donald Collier had attended a
Peyote meeting with the Kiowa in 1935.) Bowler maintained her
suspicions until she left the Nevada Indian Service at the end of
1939. For three years, BIA detectives kept an intermittent watch
on Lancaster, and his car was searched several times as he passed
the Nevada California state line. Samples of materials in his car
were chemically analysed for Bowler and instead of the morphine
she suspected, Lancaster was transporting ground Peyote and
sagebrush.
A number of Indians reacted to the Peyote religion as Joe
Green did, that is by adding it to their lives but still
maintaining the Christian denomination they followed, and
continuing to call on Indian medicine men from time to time. The
majority of the Indians rejected Peyotism, however. In April a
delegation of Washo presented a petition to Bowler requesting
that Peyote meetings be stopped. The Indian opponents used the
same arguments as the whites—"Peyote kills"
—while converts said Peyote saves.
While organizing the data I accumulated at the Carson Indian
Agency and trying to acquire a firmer basis to judge Miss
Bowler's opinion that Ben Lancaster was not a proper Peyotist, I
wrote to Mack Haag, President of the Native American Church
(NAC), a Cheyenne residing in Calumet, Oklahoma. He replied that
he knew Lancaster well and that "he is well qualified"
to start Peyote meetings in Nevada.
Inasmuch as the BIA in Washington in 1937 successfully
opposed an attempt to enact a national Peyote prohibition, and
replaced the antiPeyote pamphlet by Newberne (published in 1922)
with a mimeographed report favorable to Peyote entitled
"Documents on Peyote," a new and widely publicized
campaign against the NAC which developed in Nevada in 1940 is
surprising. Accounts of these efforts, which resembled some of
those used in 1937 and 1938 which I evaluated in my Ph.D. thesis,
were recovered from the National Archives. Newspaper reports from
Nevada dated May 1940 contained opinions that several deaths had
occurred because Indians took Peyote in Lancaster's rituals. The
coroners' verdicts were that the deceased suffered from advanced
stages of tuberculosis before they attended the NAC ceremonies.
Opponents were not convinced and had reinserted into Nevada's
narcotics law a prohibition against Peyote in February 1941.
Under provisions of the amended law, Lancaster was arrested in
Reno in October 1941. A full account of his arrest and the people
who brought it about appeared in a half-page article in,
surprisingly, the New York Sunday News of November 30,
1941. The item, special to the News", included a photograph
of Ben Lancaster and one of Dr. Charles Lee Tranter, a
neurologist, with the caption "Tranter....and Malcolm
Easterlin, attorney, who are leading movement to outlaw use of
peyote, 'Sacred mushroom of the Aztecs', among Indians of the
West, asserting addiction is spreading." The article
outlined a campaign against Peyote very reminiscent of those
which took place from 1914 to 1937 to support bills introduced in
Congress to prohibit Peyote. The News article reported:
Lancaster's arrest came at the end of a long
investigation. The official finger was put on him by the Rev.
Samuel R. Dunlop....Baptist missionary...The Rev. Dunlop has
been in Nevada since 1935, having come from Wisconsin where
he administered to the Winnebago, who also used peyote....
While he [Lancaster] was gathering a congregation around
him, the whites were observing with more and more alarm the
growing use of peyote. Chief among these were Dr. Charles Lee
Tranter...who heads the Association for Prevention of
Peyotism, and Malcolm Easterlin, New York and Washington
attorney. Also active is Representative Frances Bolton (R-
Ohio), who is a member of the Indian Affairs Committee....
The article stated that Commissioner Collier had said that
Peyote as used in Indian ceremonies is not habit forming and not
harmful.
Also in 1941 an article appeared in Scribner's Commentator
(Vol. 11, pp. 77-82) with the title ''Peyote—Indian
Problem No. 1," I)y Malcolm Easterlin. It started with a
disparaging evaluation of Commissioner Collier and then presented
a short history of Peyote; it faulted him for opposing the
anti-Peyote legislation Easterlin conveyed the impression that
only Collier had opposed laws to prohibit Peyote, whereas while
he was in office he worked against only one bill to outlaw
Peyote. Eight earlier similar hills had been sponsored by the BIA
from 1916 to 1926 hut were rejected by Congress. Easterlin
praised Dr. Tranter and accused Ben Lancaster of doping Indians
in order to get all of their money.
On March 17, 1942, Judge William McKnight dismissed the
charges against Lancaster on a legal technicality—the 1941
legislature had voted to amend a "repealed and non-existing
former act." But that did not stop Tranter, who was joined
by Dr. Walter Bromberg, a psychiatrist who had worked for the New
York Criminal Courts until he moved to Reno in December 1941. In
June 1942 Bromberg and Tranter presented a paper to the Western
Regional Conference of the Home Mission Council of North America
during its meeting at the Indian School in Stewart, Nevada. Data
presented came from earlier publications, yet the paper was
published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
(Vol. 97, pp. 518-527), under the title "Peyote
intoxication: Some psychological aspects of the Peyote
rite." The article was condensed and distributed at five
cents a copy by the National Fellowship of Indian Workers and was
published in a letter of August 6, 1943. An article less
blatantly critical of Peyotism by Bromberg appeared in Nature
Magazine, October 1942, entitled "Storm Over
Peyote."
A really scurrilous article, containing many inaccuracies,
written by Charles L. Tranter, M.D., under the title "Peyote
—New Dope Menace," appeared in the national scandal-
mongering magazine PIC, on December 8, 1942. Included were
pictures of old Indian women said to be under the influence of
Peyote, hut who actually were known to never use Peyote.
Representative Frances Bolton inserted the article in a hearing
of the Committee on Indian Affairs and it was printed by the
government without the photographs in December 1944. Nothing more
by or about the leaders of the 1941-1942 campaign against Peyote
in Nevada has come to my attention. Except for a few news items
over the years reporting that NAC members had successfully
opposed new bills submitted to the Nevada legislature to outlaw
Peyote, since 1944 nearly all information on the subject coming
from Nevada has originated in anthropological research.
Publications by anthropologists began in 1940 with the notice
by Jack Harris about the Shoshone at Duck Valley which is
mentioned above, and the appearance in the Proceedings of
the Sixth Pacific Science Congress, in which I published a short
paper. This was the first report on Ben Lancaster in a
publication distributed internationally. My Ph.D. thesis was
issued in print in January 1944, and a review appeared in the American
Anthropologist in 1946.
In 1954 Warren d'Azevedo began research among the Washo and
was soon invited to participate in a Peyote meeting held by
Ramsey Walker at Woodfords, California He produced several
unpublished reports before he and musicologist Alan P. Merriam
published an article in the American Anthropologist (1957,
Vol. 59, pp. 615-641) entitled "Washo Peyote Songs."
(In 1976, I discovered a listing in a Schwann Guide to Tapes
and Records an album by the same title issued as No. 4384, by
Folkway Records. I have not been able to ascertain if the two are
related. A Northern Paiute originally from McDermitt, Wilbur
Jack, recorded Peyote songs on Canyon Records, ARP 6054.) Other
anthropologists who have written on Washo Peyotism are James
Downs and John A. Price; d'Azevedo attempted to promote a general
public understanding of Peyotism with a long article in the Native
Nevadan, September 3, 1968, entitled "Peyote: Fact and
Fancy."
Until his death in 1953, Ben Lancaster made annual
pilgrimages to Oilton, Texas, to collect and dry a year's supply
of Peyote. By not furnishing Peyote to others he strengthened his
own role as leader. As early as 1939, I assisted some other
Indians in receiving Peyote by mail, but because the State of
Nevada had passed a law against the transportation of Peyote,
commercial suppliers could not send it by U.S. Mail into the
state. Others began traveling to Texas and making arrangements
with Indians in Oklahoma to transship packages of the sacred
cactus.
Lancaster had been active with officials of the NAC before
becoming a Peyote proselytizer in Nevada in 1936; and although
the NAC organization has never attempted to control or direct
Peyotist missionaries, it did attempt to intercede in his behalf
with the BIA when he was being harassed by Dr. Tranter in 1941.
Copies of large quantities of official NAC correspondence
came into my possession from the estate of Sidney Slotkin after
his death in 1958. From letters in that file a clear record
emerges that others began communicating with the NAC by 1954.
That year Harry Sam of Smith, Nevada, and Burton John of
Gardnerville sent word to the president of the NAC that they
would attend a regional meeting at Fort Hall.
By 1955 and 1956, as shown in the Bulletin of the NAC edited
by anthropologist Slotkin in Chicago, and by other documents from
the Slotkin file, Washo and Northern Paiute Peyotists numbered
about sixty in and near Gardnerville. Louise Lancaster, the widow
of Ben, was one of the leaders and in 1955 contributed $115 to
the international organization of the NAC. Her financial support
probably stimulated the international officials to appoint her
the "Regional Representative of NAC for Nevada and
California" at the 1955 annual convention.
Reubin Hardin of McDermitt wrote to Slotkin in 1956 to
subscribe to the NAC Bulletin, and in 1958 Hardin was put forward
as a leading Peyotist in Nevada by Peyotists in Idaho. Reubin
Hardin was named a "Delegate-at-Large" by NAC officials
when he was present at the annual convention of the Peyote Church
during its 1978 meeting in Laredo, Texas.
The participation of Nevada Indians in the international
affairs of the NAC brought Vice-President Frank Takes Gun to the
state in 1958 so that local people would incorporate the NAC of
Nevada under the laws of the state. This was completed on May 20,
1958 with Washo, Paiute and Shoshone signing as incorporators
with Crow Indian Takes Gun.
In 1972, I had an opportunity to again talk with Peyotists on
the Goshute Reservation, and in Duck Valley, Pyramid Lake,
Fallon, Gardnerville, Elko and McDermitt. At McDermitt I was
allowed to be a participant-observer in a Peyote meeting
conducted by Grover Tom.
It was remarkable that a number of circumstances I had
discovered present among Peyotists in other states were
duplicated in Nevada. Several were exemplified by Grover Tom,
roadman at McDermitt. First was the surprise I felt that he was a
leader of Peyotism for the Paiute at McDermitt, yet he was a
Shoshone who learned to speak Paiute after he married a McDermitt
Paiute woman in 1950. He was thus an alien Peyote preacher to
those Paiute. Grover Tom insisted that his Peyote ritual was
different from others in Nevada because he had studied with
Comanche in Oklahoma for extended periods from 1939 to 1942 to
learn the original ritual. But he also said he remembered
attending a meeting conducted by Sam Lone Bear for the Shoshone
on the Goshute reservation when he happened to be visiting
relatives there in 1929. He had attended meetings with Washo and
with a Sioux conducting a meeting at Fort Hall. Foreign Indians,
that is, Indians from other tribes, conducted meetings for the
Paiute at McDermitt. Grover named Ramsey Walker, a Washo, and
Ralph Turtle, an Arapaho.
Stanley Smart, a McDermitt Paiute who had been fireman at the
meeting I attended there named additional visiting roadmen from
Fort Hall, Idaho, Wind River, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. Stanley had
attended meetings with Northern Cheyenne in Montana, with Ute in
Utah, with Navajo at Aneth, Utah, and others. He has been invited
to be roadman at Healdsburg, California, Fort Hall, Idaho and
Gardnerville, Nevada.
My most unusual discoveries in 1972 involved Sam Lone Bear,
such as the instance related by Grover Tom above. Several
families in Fallon remembered Sam Lone Bear, and knew that Mamie
Charley, a Shoshone of' that town, had married him. An old
Peyotist at Pyramid Lake recalled that Willie Hardin of McDermitt
had been nearly dead and had been cured by Sam at Pyramid Lake.
Most remarkable was finding a Shoshone Indian, Sam Long, on
the Te-Moak Reservation south of Elko who had as a sacred object
a carved staff that his father had received from Sam Lone Bear in
1929. I visited him a second time in 1978 and learned more about
the new rules for conducting a Peyote ceremony he said he had
learned directly from God through Peyote. God had told him to
reverse the ceremonial direction from clockwise to counter-
clockwise. He had no fire in the ritual and used a cloth altar.
His following is so small it is unlikely that his special ritual
will survive him.
The Native American Church of Nevada has converted a very
small percentage of' the total Indian population in Nevada.
However, cultural and social patterns connected with Peyote are
found similar to those elsewhere in the United States. Opposition
to Peyotism arrived from outside the state even before Peyote
ceremonies were practiced. The Nevada NAC has had regular
encouragement from outside Indians, and Nevada Peyotists since
1936 have been regularly bolstered by visits with Peyotists in
other states. In 1978 the vitality of Peyotism in Nevada
suggested it would continue indefinitely.
In Nevada, I discovered what appeared at first to be a unique
behavior pattern. Joe Green, an active Paiute medicineman, was at
the same time a devout Episcopalian and a devotee of Peyotism. He
believed in and practiced three religions at a time. Since I
became aware of that religious phenomenon in 1938, I have found
it many times among Peyotists throughout the United States and
Mexico. In time I came to realize (and then I confirmed this from
published examples) that human beings universally appear able and
willing to add religions together and practice them alternately,
yet maintaining them discrete. Except for peoples reared in or
fully converted to Christianity, Islam or Judaism the ability to
easily carry on three or more religions simultaneously appears to
be the rule.