Note 26 — APPENDIX 7: JOHN WILSON, THE REVEALER OF PEYOTE

To be sure the pattern of gift-giving is deep-rooted in the Plains, yet it is a curious coincidence at least that Wilson should have taken peyote to the Quapaw, who own the largest lead and zinc mining fields in the world, and the Osage, made notoriously wealthy through oil. Anderson told Speck that the Osage had given Wilson $200 for building them a moon, and Charles Tyner (Quapaw) told me that he and Victor Griffin (Quapaw) had received $500 for an altar in one sum and some hundreds of dollars in money gifts later. The Osage once gave Anderson $20 and his wife $10 because his uncle, John Wilson, had built their moon (Speck, op. cit., 551). Wilson even used to charge $1 per person for the sweatbaths he gave before meetings.