Very few ascertainably Christian elements are discoverable in Mexican peyotism. Some such as “curing” with rosaries of Job’s-tears beads dipped in tesvino, eating bits of the idol’s body and the like, may be largely aboriginal.[1] “El Santo Niño de Peyote” of Santa Rosalia is apparently a local variation of El Santo Niño de Atoche; the mission of El Santo Nombre de Jesus Peyotes is so-called merely from the abundance of the plant thereabouts. The overlay of Mexican Catholicism is elsewhere thin and localized also. The Huichol[2] see the saints in their color visions as pictures or giant men and women walking about; sometimes they press the saints into service in their rain-making ceremonies. The cross[3] in tesvino-curing and those on the Huichol peyote patio may really derive from an old native four-point symbolism. The Tarahumari[4] call the large green hikuli “peyote christiano,” in contrast to a small, red, ineffective one called “peyote cimarrón,” and Christian Tarahumari lift their hats to the plant and make the sign of the cross, but the essential ritual was unmodified by Christian ideas. None of these Christian features is common to Mexican peyotism. The rite as it came to the United States, then, was aboriginal in character, as far as we can ascertain. Opler writes that[5] there is no hint of the influence of Christianity in the Mescalero use of peyote. The growth of the cult among these people has been maintained entirely within the traditional bounds of Apache ceremonialism. Indeed, far from becoming a weakened and Christianized version of native beliefs, the Mescalero Apache acceptance of peyote resulted instead in an intensification of the aboriginal religious values and concepts at many points. This characterization would equally well fit the basic Kiowa-Comanche rite of the Plains, in which Christian elements are quite absent. These elements in the Plains are distinctly a secondary development, stemming from the Oto Koshiway and such Oto-influenced groups as the Omaha, Iowa and Winnebago[6] and the groups taught by John Wilson, such as the Delaware, Quapaw and Osage. Arapaho-Winnebago officials and ritual food are given Christian symbolism:[7] During the evening the leader represents the first created man, the woman dressed up is the New Jerusalem, the bride waiting for the bridegroom. The cup used by the leader and the woman is supposed to symbolize the fact that they are to become one; the water represents the God’s gift, His Holiness. The corn represents the feast to be partaken of on the Day of Judgment and the fruit represents the fruit of the tree of life. The meat represents the message of Christ and those who accept it will be saved.