_Staff._ From ancient times, and possibly before Columbus, the cane or staff was a symbol of authority in Mexico,[55] and for this reason we should hesitate before labeling this feature of peyote an Hispanicism. Again, Opler equates the staff of the Mescalero shaman (which he holds throughout the ceremony, not passing it around with the drum) with the “old age stick” held by the singer in the aboriginal girl’s puberty rite. Similar syncretism with older patterns seems to have occurred also in the Plains. The Comanche used a bow for a staff when holding peyote meetings on the war path, but the term naci-hιta means literally “resting stick-to walk,” according to White Wolf. In the Iowa Red Bean war bundle ceremony, the rattle was held in the left hand [sic] while the bow and arrow were waved in the right as the person sang. The Delaware call the leader’s staff “arrow,” and so also do the Osage, Quapaw and Oto; the Ponca, on the other hand, call it a “bow.” The Kiowa suggest that a bow was formerly used, but the term ᴅo’ᴅęⁱä means “brace-to hold-stick”; it must be of bois d’arc (_Maclura pomifera_ C. K. Schneider), however, and some are nocked at the top and bottom like a bow. The Lipan “cane” was called ilkibenatsi´e or “ram-rod.”[56] The Shawnee, according to Mrs. Voegelin, called the peyote staff the walking stick of the old, but the red tassel at the top symbolized the headdress worn with a single feather at the war dance. The t’owayennemö of Taos was held in the left hand “for the strength of life,” and the red and white horse-hair tufts encircling the top (so Dr. White was told) were there “because the White man is above the Indian.” A Delaware staff which Dr. Speck saw contained designs representing a tipi, water, the door of the lodge, the blue sky and fire, symbolized by the colors of the bead-work. Reinterpretations of the meaning of the staff are common. A Wichita called it the “staff of life.” The Iowa staff represents the staff of the Saviour, while the Winnebago variously interpret it as a shepherd’s crook and the rod with which Moses smote the rock (in obvious reference to the leader’s calling for water in the ceremony). Differences in the staff have even come to symbolize a schism in the Winnebago church: that used by Rave was decorated, as elsewhere in the Plains, but Clay used a simple undecorated staff, lacking even feathers, calling attention to the fact that Moses staff was undecorated.[57]