pay from four to six cents a pound for the newly cut 
heads. 
The peyote industry is not an insignificant business, 
in spite of the fact that it is little known outside of Texas. 
It is said (9) that inhabitants of the small town of Neuvo 
Laredo, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, derive 
their livelihood almost exclusively from the peyote trade. 
In Ward County, Texas, the town of Peyote takes its 
name from the trade in mescal buttons gathered in Ward 
and Winkler Counties. From the following evidence, 
the economic and cultural importance of peyote in Mex- 
ico can be clearly seen. The town of Hikuli in the state 
of Sonora derives its name directly from the Tarahumare 
word for the cactus. A village in the state of Jalisco is 
‘ulled Peyotan. A mission in the state of Durango bears 
the name El] Santo Nombre de Jesus Peyotes on account 
of the abundance of the plant in the surrounding hills. 
No statistical data regarding the extent of this indus- 
try are available. However, assuming a price of $4.00 a 
thousand buttons and a per capita consumption of six 
buttons once a week,* $20,000 seems a very conservative 
estimate of the actual annual commercial transactions in- 
volved north of the Rio Grande. This estimate would be 
greatly modified were it possible to include in it the great 
amount of peyote used in Mexico where most of the sup- 
ply is collected by the Indians themselves. 
Peyotism was embraced over ten years ago by a group 
of negroes in Oklahoma (76), but no records of the pres- 
ent state of this branch of the peyote-cult are available. 
‘Meetings are often held more than once a week, and the per capita 
consumption is, no doubt, much higher as every participant eats at 
least four buttons, and some consume upwards of thirty in a single 
meeting. Add to this the large amount used medicinally, and the ex- 
treme conservatism of this estimate, based on figures for 1922, will 
be evident. 
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