The Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church by Thomas C. Maroukis (review)

In his book The Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church, Thomas Maroukis attempts to integrate a “narrative history of the Peyote faith with analyses of its religious beliefs and practices as well as its art and music” (7). He begins this immense task by exploring the basic history, beliefs, and practices shared by peyotists. With these elements established, he proceeds to survey the historical persecution of adherents, the expansion of the practice across North America, the institutionalization of the Native American Church (nac), and the artistic elements of the tradition. Maroukis’s text concludes with an examination of the issue he claims has “dominated the concerns of the nac of North America” since 1953, that of religious liberty (184).

Throughout the manuscript, Maroukis relies primarily on an array of documentary sources supplemented with audio recordings, films, and photographs. These sources allow him to firmly ground himself in the western historical tradition but limit his presentation to that perspective. As a result, the intrinsically Native voice of peyotism is, at times, lost among the facts. This limitation is most evident in the chapter concerning peyote art and music.

In similar fashion, Maroukis largely neglects the more nuanced and individual aspects of the peyote story. While the author presents figures such as Quanah Parker, John Wilson, Leonard Crow Dog, and Frank Takes Gun, he does relatively little to develop or explore who these men were or the specifics of their personal stories. In similar fashion, variations between geographical regions are generally minimized, conveying the impression that there is little meaningful difference between, for example, the peyotism practiced on the Navajo reservation and that found among the tribes of the northern Great Plains.

With the loss of these distinctions and the personal dimensions of individual narratives, the peyotism Maroukis depicts is one where individuals, circumstances, and manifestations blur into a monolithic and uniform tradition that can be more easily discussed within the academy. This is due largely to the fact that the level of detail required to establish the complexity of a tradition such as peyotism is not possible within the scope of Maroukis’s investigation given his heavy reliance on documentary source material.

Despite its shortcomings, however, The Peyote Road provides a valuable resource for anyone seeking a broad overview of peyotism and, particularly, the nac. Since the text offers a framework for approaching the tradition, it could be especially useful in a classroom setting, so long as it was accompanied by diverse primary source materials from Native perspectives. In the end, The Peyote Road fills an important role within the field and contributes to the larger conversation about both peyotism and religious liberty in the United States.