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Encyclopedia entry: Native American Church
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to United States History
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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Native American Church,
is a loosely confederated religious organization with some 250,000 American Indian adherents in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.Its distinctive characteristic is the sacramental use of peyote (
Lophophora williamsii
), a cactus found in the Chihuahuan Desert that contains the psychedelic mescaline. An important part of the twentieth‐century Pan‐Indian movement, the Native American Church has been further influential by expanding the scope of religious practice protected under the First Amendment.
Suppression of peyote use began during the Spanish colonial period; starting in the 1880s, U.S. government Indian agents issued new prohibitions. At that ...