The parents of John Bearskin belonged to the medicine lodge and he belonged to that organization until 1912. The mother of John Bearskin became sick in 1905 and told him that she was near to death. He was so distressed that he went to town and became drunk. The next morning they wakened him and said that his mother was dead. His father died in 1909. At that time he had a little girl two years old and his sister had a little girl five years of age. Both children died a week after his father’s death. Bearskin’s father left him a farm with house, stock and implements. He disposed of these, spent part of the proceeds and with the remainder bought a house in Winnebago [Nebraska] but later sold that and spent the money. He was drifting from place to place and working as he had opportunity when a cousin wrote him about peyote, advising him to return and use it. He went back and on January 19, 1912, he and his two daughters joined the peyote organization, being baptized by John Rave. His wife joined later, during an illness. Since that time he has not wavered in his attachment to the peyote cult, neither has he gambled nor used liquor nor tobacco. But there are skeptics who do not join. Michelson[16] quotes a Sauk informant, who first belonged and later quit the cult: I do not believe in it because it gives you the same effect as whisky when you are drunk four or five days; only peyote will affect you when you eat it once. I have eaten so there is nothing in it. I quit five years ago. And another reason why I do not believe in it is because the man did not know who the manitou was who did the talking [in the Peyote origin legend]; because the men pitied by manitous, among us Sauks, knew who they were, such as Wolf, Wisake, Turtle, or such as that. An Oto informant was skeptical at first about the power of peyote, and experimented with it: for two days he drank tea to test its virtues, and then went to a meeting. There he was converted or “saved” when he realized that he was “pitiful like a stick.” Delos Lonewolf (Kiowa) quit peyote and became a preacher again, though he had been an important peyote leader and one-time president of the Oklahoma Native American Church; he had had “family troubles” and was apparently persuaded thereto by his wife. Cecil Horse and Albert Cat (Kiowa) have also recently quit peyote. When Kiowa Jim lost his son, he gave his staff, gourd and feathers to Baptiste Derond (Oto), a brother-in-law of Jonathan Koshiway. Derond was later killed in an automobile accident. His younger brother Frank now has the paraphernalia, but according to Koshiway, “they are afraid of them, and want to return them,” since they are associated with misfortune.[17]