In February and March 1918, prominent Society leaders argued both sides of the peyote issue before the U.S. Congress House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs on the "Hayden Bill", legislation proposed by Congressman Carl Hayden from Arizona to suppress liquor and peyote among Indians. Testimony against the use of peyote was given by Gertrude Simmons Bonnin and Charles Eastman, while supporters the peyote religion included Thomas L. Sloan, Francis LaFlesche, Cleaver Warden and Paul Boynton. In response to the Congressional hearings on the Hayden Bill, Carlisle Indian School alumni and other progressive leaders founded the Native American Church of Oklahoma in October 1918. Society lawyers Sloan and Hiram Chase asserted that the peyote religion was an "Indian religion" or the "Indian version of Christianity" and entitled to the Constitutional right to religious freedom. The Native American Church combined Indian and Christian elements, and was popular among the best-educated and most acculturated men among the Winnebago, Omaha and other tribes. Henry Roe Cloud, a Winnebago, acknowledged the peyote religion attracted the best-educated and ablest men in his tribe, but personally opposed the use. Oliver Lemere, a former Carlisle student who served as treasurer of the Church, was attracted to the religion because of its mixture of Christianity and Winnebago customs, and that its adherents came from the progressive wing of the tribe. By 1934, the Native American Church of Oklahoma was the most important Pan-Indian religious movement in the United States, and church leadership founded affiliated churches in other states. The 1918 and the 1934 charters had the same incorporators, evidencing a continuity of Carlisle alumni leadership in Pan-Indianism. In 1945, the Native American Church in Oklahoma was incorporated as "The Native American Church of United States."