GILMORE] TAXONOMIC LIST OF PLANTS 105 
it are attended by much circumstance of ceremony and symbolism. 
The average Indian, with his psychic inheritance and his physical 
and psychic environment, naturally attributes to the peyote most 
wonderful mystic powers. As the Semitic mind could conceive, and 
the Aryan mind could accept the Semitic conception, that deity may 
be incarnated in an animal body—that is, a human body—so to the 
American Indian mind it seems just as reasonable to conceive that 
deity may dwell ina plant body. So he pays the plant divine honors, 
making prayers to it or in connection with it, and eating it or drink- 
ing a decoction of it in order to appropriate the divine spirit-—to 
induce the good, and exorcise the evil. In brief, the use of peyote by 
the Indian corresponds to the Christian use of bread and wine in the 
eucharist. 
The body of doctrine and belief connected with this cult is a. 
curious blending of aboriginal American religious ideas with many 
imbibed by the Indians from Christian missionaries. In the meet- 
ing places the worshipers gather in a circle about a fireplace 
in the center of the lodge or tent. A fire is kept up throughout the 
meeting. At the west side of the fire sits the leader. In front of him 
is spread a cloth like an altar cloth; on this lies a peyote top, 
and at the edge nearest to the leader an open Bible. At his right 
hand stands a staff symbolically decorated with feather ornamen- 
tation. In his hand he carries a fan made of 12 eagle feathers 
symbolizing the 12 Christian apostles. A water drum is beaten 
with a low insistent thrumming sound, accompanied by a gourd 
rattle, while songs are chanted, and the people gaze into the fire or 
sit with bowed head. Owing to the hypnotic effect of the firelight, 
the community of thought, abstraction from all extraneous affairs, 
the droning chant, the thrumming of the drum, and the mental 
attitude of expectancy induced by the words of the speakers, who 
discourse on the visions which shall be seen, combined with the 
physiological effect of the drug, which stimulates the optic center, 
the people fancy they really see most wonderful visions of spirits. 
As an example, the vision described by a certain Omaha may be 
related. It will be observed that his vision was the result of the 
juxtaposition of a number of experiences and mental processes re- 
called and immediately induced by the circumstances of the meeting 
and the physiologic action of the drug. He was an ordinary reser- 
vation Indian, who had had some schooling and had been in Wash- 
ington and other eastern cities. On this occasion the opening read- 
ing from the Bible had been the story of the Hebrew prophet taken 
up to heaven in a chariot of fire. The Indian fell into a trancelike 
state and afterwards described his vision. He related that Jesus had 
come for him in an automobile and had taken him up to heaven, 
where he had seen God in His glory in a splendid city, and with God 
