[87] As told, this seemed to have reference to the miraculous proliferation of the Biblical loaves and fishes, but it is sufficiently similar to aboriginal hunting beliefs. [88] The Comanche and others usually had a meeting on the spot, eating green peyote. [89] The Kiowa now have five Easter meetings, six on New Year’s Day, four to six on Thanksgiving, and two or three on Armistice Day (by World War soldiers and sailors). Bert Crow-lance vowed to eat a hundred if all the Kiowa boys returned safely from the War (but this is an enormous quantity actually to have eaten). The Kiowa differ from other groups in having no funeral meetings; mourners commonly abstain for several months from meetings. Meetings have been held for heyoka-like display. The Comanche formerly held meetings before a war journey to invoke peyote’s protection from the enemy, and to prophesy the outcome of the battle. [90] “A sweatbath was always undergone by warriors preparing for war ... and perhaps generally, before any serious or hazardous undertaking.... Sweating was important in medical practice for the cure of disease.... Sometimes the friends and relatives of the sick person ... assembled in the sweathouse, sang and prayed for the patient’s recovery” (_Handbook of the American Indians_, 2:661b). The peyote meeting and sweating present many such analogies. [91] Painting is commonly dictated in visions: a Kiowa saw a red-bird after a meeting once as a red-blanketed man who told him to use red paint thereafter. Comanche formerly went in wearing only breech-clout and “blanket,” being painted white or yellow all over the body. One Comanche had an all-over body yellow with blue zigzags up the arm and down the side and leg, with a red zigzag paralleling this (on the outside of the arm and therefore on the inside of the leg); on each cheek a small blue-bordered red spot, and a large three-inch red spot on the breast under the throat. The Tonkawa painted the top of the fetish-plant red also. Leaders often wear otter skin braid-coverings, and at certain points in the ritual fur headdresses. Mescal beans as necklaces or on moccasin- and gourd-fringes are common (the Kiowa wear them on their moccasins as protection against stepping on menstrual blood). The “blanket,” or sheet (in the summer), is invariable. [92] Mooney (_A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 64-65) describes a Kiowa gourd with the Peyote Woman, peyote, moon, ash crescent, and Morning-Star under her feet heralding her morning approach with water. [93] The basic rite is practically free from Christian symbolism. Some call the sage under the fetish a “cross”; some leaders make a cross under the water-bucket or in the water with feathers at midnight. Mooney wrote that “many of the mescal eaters wear crucifixes ... the cross representing the cross of scented leaves ... while Christ is the mescal goddess.” But all crosses are not necessarily Christian. See Appendix 8.