White stamped titling to front board at about 90 percent, but completely chipped away from spine, leaving title there as a blind-stamping only. Copyright date matches date to title page; no later printings mentioned. Tissue sheet remains in place over frontispiece photo of an Indian mountain camp. The story of pioneer Indian minister Frank Hall Wright and the Southwest Indian missions of the Reformed Church, by the then-Field Secretary of the Women's Board, who asserts in her introduction that the Indian nations need Christianity, since "To-day the 'Witch Doctor' rules with grip of terror. Debauchery is more sought after than peace." Sure enough, on pg. 27, the missionary Wright confronts among the Comanche one Nahwaatz, Chief of Mescal, wearing "a strange necklace made of flat round discs of some brown substance like shrunken hardened leather." Asked what it was, Nahwatz "laid hold of the largest disc with a strangely reverent gesture. 'It is Mescal, my god,' he answered." Wright then proceeds to belittle "that bean which you have picked and which you can carry on a string around your neck," asking whether the "bean" could tell the road man where he would go when he died. Mahwatz replied "The Mescal shows me wonderful things," and then would speak no more. The mescal bean (Dermatophyllum) is small and poisonous, of course; large flattened leathery discs would instead almost certainly have been the cactus Lophophora williamsii. And at pg. 195, the author acknowledges that as of 1906 "another young man" had founded "a new religion. He had first taken the drug mescal which had already gotten so strong a hold on the southern Indians, and had combined its worship with the Bible. This drug, made from the Mexican Peyote, is a powerful brain stimulant. . . . But like any other engine overworked the mind slowly breaks down and the victim's mental, moral and physical fibre gradually disintegrates." The evidence for which is . . .? No undocumented slander here of a competing religion whose sacrament actually produced transcendent visions, surely? Without having even given it a try? Repressive, intolerant, smug and supercilious Christianity at its finest. 245 pp. followed by 8 pp. of publisher's ads. Reduced from $25. Bookseller Inventory # 004184
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