Note 37 — HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS

In judging the relative importance of the Kiowa and the Comanche in the diffusion of peyotism, one should recall that Comanche was historically the lingua Franca of the southern Plains. Quanah took peyote to the Caddo and Wichita it is said, though he was not the first to do so; he led meetings among the Cheyenne and the Arapaho in 1884. Petrullo (The Diabolic Root, 129) says he learned peyote about 1868 in Arizona, New Mexico and Old Mexico.