the degree of shamanistic influence apparent at present is greater than at some time in the past.... Possibly the use of peyote also had some influence in extending and reviving shamanistic concepts.... Visionary experiences reach their highest development ordinarily in religions of the shamanistic type. These remarks go far toward explaining the differential diffusion of peyotism. Peyote never penetrated the Yuman Southwest, perhaps because the _dream_ performed the psychological function of the peyote vision (which, moreover, was not very significant in Mexico). Again, the ritual use of peyote failed to penetrate the Pueblo Southwest or the Aztec, both strongholds of priestly religion; perhaps the stereotyped institutional rituals of these regions stifled such orgiastic individual emotional experiences as peyote is calculated to induce. On the other hand, peyotism entered the shamanistic Southwest (the Mescalero) and one Pueblo, Taos, where the kachina cult was weak, and once it reached the individualistic vision-valuing Plains, it fairly ran riot. MESCALERO APACHE AND TRANSITIONAL FORMS OF RITUAL Peyote came to the Mescalero[71] about 1870, in the same “general movement which resulted in its adoption by a large number of the tribes of the United States.”[72] Like other Apache ceremonies its origin was attributed to an individual’s encounter with a power, but the tribe involved was the Tonkawa, Lipan or “Yaqui.” Like the Plains groups, the Mescalero made a trip south to get peyote,[73] which was kept by the shaman for ceremonial use only, lest private individual users who did not “know” and have the right to use the power go mad. The primary purpose of meetings was for doctoring,[74] though “occasionally a peyote meeting was called for some other purpose—for peyote, like other sources of supernatural power, was believed to be efficacious for locating the enemy, finding lost objects, foretelling the results of a venture, etc.” The news that a peyote shaman is conducting a meeting for a sick person spreads rapidly, and all who are to attend bathe at noon of the appointed day.[75] At nightfall they enter the tipi, where the peyote chief is sitting west of the fire facing the door, with a gourd rattle in one hand and an incised wooden staff in the other.[76] The staff is his protection against witchcraft, and he “sings to it”; he exchanges the gourd for the drum of his assistant, but retains the staff in his left hand. In front of him on an eagle feather or piece of buckskin lies the large talismanic “chief peyote” or “Old Man Peyote.”[77]