1999, p. 385).
Native Americans from the area of the United States learned about Peyotism from the occupants of the peyote area of southern Texas and northern Mexico about 1800, when they were settled as allies near Spanish missions (in an example of how the policies of colonialism can work against the colonizing forces, spreading knowledge that the colonial forces would rather have kept isolated into a few groups).
When the Texans forced the removal of all Native Americans, the Lipan Apache moved from the vicinity of Laredo and found refuge with the Comanche, Kiowa, and other tribes in Indian Territory. By 1880 the Comanche and Kiowa had been converted to Peyotism.
Peyotism shares a number of important social and cultural characteristics with other pan-Indian (or at least cross-Indian) rituals that developed in the 19th century and that were designed to restore a sense of cultural identity and strength to tribal members. These rituals were also sometimes designed to help Indian cultures return to a state of prosperity known before European-Americans moved into Indian territories. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Ghost Dance, which was performed by a number of Plains Indian groups. It is perhaps best known from its performances by the Sioux, although it was begun, in 1889, by a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, who foretold the imminent end of the current world order. Casting himself in a messianic role that seemed to be influenced by Christian imagery, Wovoka promised that if Native Americans would conduct a ceremony known as the Ghost Dance, depleted animal populations and deceased relatives would be restored. For several years, many indigenous peoples in the western part of North America performed the ceremony, even after United States Army troops massacred Sioux ghost dancers at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890. The Ghost Dance gave a concrete and recognizable form to the fears and hopes...