Another factor making for insecurity of belief and practice has been the intense opposition on the part of some leaders of older cults in the tribe itself. We will recur to this subject in discussing the history of peyote in specific groups, but cite here the rather accentuated example of hostility at Taos.[3] Dr. Parsons tells of a lawsuit between a “peyote boy” and one of the Mexican Penitentes which was resolved by both paying the costs, to prevent the betrayal of native customs. Thereafter the chiefs said: [Peyote] does not belong to us. It is not the work given to us. It will stop the rain. Something will happen. But as desire for rain is the typical anxiety reflected in native ritual in the agricultural Southwest, the peyote boys retorted in the same vein. In the drought of 1922 they said: “Now it is so dry this summer because the peyote boys can’t have their meetings; they used to bring so much rain.” [Indeed, nowadays,] the townspeople are given to referring all their inclination to feud to the peyote situation. But there is ample evidence that this tendency existed before peyote ever came to Taos. On the other hand, the wife of one peyote-user asserted that there was no more “witch sickness” in the town because of the peyote people, who were able to exorcize witches; nevertheless, one man attributed his trachoma to witching by “foreigners” in peyote meetings. Such intense seriousness is in marked contrast to the situation in some Plains tribes, where peyote jokes are told at times in the forenoons after meetings, when sufficient rapport has been established. A Comanche story tells of a leader who took his expensive watch into a meeting and laid it on the altar cloth near the father peyote to “show off.” A man shaking the gourd vigorously on the north side was making motions toward the father peyote, and miraculously the watch became broken up; “it was just a mess of works there loose, and the hands dropped off.” The informant was highly amused at this story. An Oto told the tale of a man whose jaw became stiff as he was singing, a contretemps which upset the whole meeting. Though this effect was apparently due to peyote, the story was greeted with much laughter. People laugh at the incorrect singing of peyote songs too. We have already mentioned the one involving the alarming proximity of the Messiah just across the river in Missouri. Another story is told of a visiting Kiowa who attempted to sing a Comanche song in meeting. He mispronounced the words and sang, “_Mentula exposita est! Mentula exposita est!_” All the auditors of this story laughed at this further proof that the Comanche have “no shame.” The attitudes surrounding the plant itself are interesting. Perhaps the Tarahumari[4] attitudes are most accentuated: