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Article: Indian Religious Life
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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INDIAN RELIGIOUS LIFE
INDIAN RELIGIOUS LIFE.
One summer day in the early 1990s atop a grassy hill side on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota, an ad hoc crew of young men gathered to set up a large tent in preparation of a service of the Native American Church. This service would involve the consumption of the church's sacrament, the flesh of peyote, a cactus that grows near the Texas-Mexico border. The tent poles, resting on the ground, were tree-size timbers. A man tied the tips of two of them together, and the men lifted the poles skyward. But the rope slipped and the poles slid apart. The process had to start all over. On the second attempt, the rope slipped and the poles ...