First of modern students to describe the peyote rite was James Mooney, who visited the Kiowa, Comanche, Tarahumari, and “a number of other tribes, among them the Mexican tribes of the Sierra Madre, and as far south as the City of Mexico.”[1] But at his death he had published no further study of peyote; ethnographers of the period were in general concerned with preserving complete records of older native cultures, and ignored or paid scant attention to the modern cult of peyote. Mooney himself gave little notice to the rite in his monographs on the Cheyenne and the Kiowa,[2] although at the time he was undoubtedly the authority on the subject. Wissler, for example, barely mentions the peyote cult.[3] Indeed, in its role of modern destroyer or supplanter of older native religions, peyote was even a matter of concern[4] and annoyance to some ethnographers. Lumholtz, with wonted thoroughness, published considerable data on Huichol and Tarahumari peyote in 1898 and later, and Kroeber in 1902 wrote a chapter on Arapaho peyote which has remained a model for later investigators.[5] It remained for Paul Radin, however, in his studies of Winnebago peyote,[6] to point out to ethnographers an engrossingly interesting, but widely ignored, religious cult which was growing and spreading before their very eyes. Since the appearance of his papers in the years following 1914, the ethnographic literature on peyote has grown considerably, due importantly to the impetus Radin gave such studies. Lowie devoted a chapter partly to peyote in his book _Primitive Religion_; Rouhier paid some attention to ethnographic questions in his pharmacological monograph on peyote; and Wagner wrote a short comparative paper based largely on the Comanche and Huichol cults. Petrullo’s _Diabolic Root_ was devoted entirely to Delaware peyotism.[7] No comparative treatment of the peyote cult of the order of Mooney’s on the Ghost Dance, Lowie’s on Plains societies, or Spier’s on the Sun Dance had ever been made when Dr. Maurice Smith of the University of Oklahoma began his studies. The unfortunate death of this investigator, however, prevented the finishing of his work, of which only a short paper[8] has seen publication. But studies of the peyote cult in individual tribes, both published and in manuscript, have multiplied to such an extent since the time of Kroeber’s and Radin’s studies that the time appears ripe to attempt an integrated comparative treatment of the religion. FOOTNOTES: [1] Mooney, _A Kiowa Mescal Rattle_, 64-65; _Mescal Plant and Ceremony_ (from which dates the medical and pharmaceutical interest in peyote); statement in _Peyote, as Used in Religious Worship_, 58. [2] _The Cheyenne_, 418; _Calendar History_, 237-39. [3] _The American Indian_, 376. [4] Skinner, _Material Culture_, 42-43; _Societies of the Iowa_, 693-94, 724.