Note 120 — COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM

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.