Peyote and the Yankton Sioux

Book excerpt: In Peyote and the Yankton Sioux, Thomas Constantine Maroukis focuses on Yankton Sioux spiritual leader Sam Necklace, tracing his family’s history for seven generations. Through this history, Maroukis shows how Necklace and his family shaped and were shaped by the Native American Church. Sam Necklace was chief priest of the Yankton Sioux Native American Church from 1929 to 1949, and the four succeeding generations of his family have been members of the Church. As chief priest, Necklace helped establish the Peyote religion firmly among the Yankton, thus maintaining cultural and spiritual autonomy even when the U.S. government denied them, and American Indians generally, political and economic self-determination. Because the message of peyotism resonated with Yankton pre-reservation beliefs and, at the same time, had parallels with Christianity, Sam Necklace and many other Yankton supported its acceptance. The Yanktons were among the first northern-plains groups to adopt the Peyote religion, which they saw as an essential corpus of spiritual truths.