Note 90 — COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PLAINS PEYOTISM

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.