The characteristic service of the Native American Church is an all-night prayer meeting, usually held in a tipi erected for the purpose, from about sundown to about sunrise. It is led by a roadman, assisted by a drummer, a cedarman and a fireman, and it is normally called for a specific reason: an illness, a birthday, a funeral, a departure for military service, thanks for a recovery.
An altar of earth is built on the floor, crescent shaped in the Half Moon way, and a fire is kept burning through the night by the fireman, who tends its shape as carefully as anyone tends anything in the meeting. Peyote, taken dried, ground or as a tea, is passed and consumed through the night. A staff, gourd rattle, water drum and feather fan pass around the circle with it; each participant in turn sings four songs while the person beside them drums. Cedar is placed on the fire and prayers are made into the smoke. Water is brought in at midnight and again at dawn, and a ritual breakfast of corn, meat, fruit and water follows in the morning.
Peyote is addressed as a medicine and a sacrament, not as an intoxicant, and members are generally firm on the distinction. It is taken in a fixed ritual setting, under a leader, for a stated purpose, with prayer, and it is not taken outside meetings. The mescaline it contains produces effects that outsiders describe pharmacologically and participants describe as the medicine teaching, healing, or showing something. Members also report that it is intensely bitter, often causes vomiting, and is not a pleasant experience.
The moral teaching attached to it is conservative and is usually summarised as the Peyote Road: sobriety, particularly abstention from alcohol, care for family, honest work and truthfulness. The church has a long record of treating alcohol dependence, and this is one of the clearest reasons for its spread.