Note 127 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM

Opler says that “in no other Mescalero ceremony is a mound of earth in the shape of a crescent found. On the other hand, crude earth tracings did grace a Mescalero rite occasionally, and the moon was much in evidence in ritual song and design. The staff of the peyote shaman seems an innovation at first thought; yet it has a counterpart in the ‘old age stick’ held by the singer in the girl’s puberty rite.” The gourd in Mescalero has exclusively peyote associations. On the whole, the standard Plains ceremony appears to have taken shape among the Lipan-Mescalero. But Curtis (North American Indian 19:199-200) says that the White Mountain Apache were the first United States users and that “the ritual [in the United States] is obviously copied from the Wichita ceremonial form.”