they were all to come back to earth, and that, as the earth was
too small for them and us, he would do away with heaven and make
the earth itself large enough to contain us all; that we must tell
all the people we met about these things. He spoke to us about
fighting, and said that was bad and we must keep from it; that the
earth was to be all good hereafter, and we must all be friends with
one another. He said that in the fall of the year the youth of all
good people would be renewed, so that nobody would be more than
forty years old, and that if they behaved themselves well after
this the youth of everyone would be renewed in the spring. He said
if we were all good he would send people among us who could heal
all our wounds and sickness by mere touch and that we would live
forever. He told us not to quarrel or fight or strike each other,
or shoot one another; that the whites and Indians were to be all
one people. He said if any man disobeyed what he ordered his tribe
would be wiped from the face of the earth; that we must believe
everything he said, and we must not doubt him or say he lied; that
if we did, he would know it; that he would know our thoughts and
actions in no matter what part of the world we might be. (_G. D.,
5._)
Here we have the statement that both races are to live together as one.
We have also the doctrine of healing by touch. Whether or not this is
an essential part of the system is questionable, but it is certain that
the faithful believe that great physical good comes to them, to their
children, and to the sick from the imposition of hands by the priests
of the dance, apart from the ability thus conferred to see the things
of the spiritual world.
Another idea here presented, namely, that the earth becomes old and
decrepit, and requires that its youth be renewed at the end of certain
great cycles, is common to a number of tribes, and has an important
place in the oldest religions of the world. As an Arapaho who spoke
English expressed it, “This earth too old, grass too old, trees too
old, our lives too old. Then all be new again.” Captain H. L. Scott
also found among the southern plains tribes the same belief that the
rivers, the mountains, and the earth itself are worn out and must be
renewed, together with an indefinite idea that both races alike must
die at the same time, to be resurrected in new but separate worlds.
The Washo, Pit River, Bannock, and other tribes adjoining the Paiute
on the north and west hold the doctrine substantially as taught by the
messiah himself. We have but little light in regard to the belief as
held by the Walapai, Cohonino, Mohave, and Navaho to the southward,
beyond the general fact that the resurrection and return of the dead
formed the principal tenet. As these tribes received their knowledge of
the new religion directly from Paiute apostles, it is quite probable
that they made but few changes in or additions to the original gospel.
A witness of the dance among the Walapai in 1891 obtained from the
leaders of the ceremony about the same statement of doctrine already
mentioned as held by the Paiute, from whom also the Walapai had adopted
many of the songs and ceremonial words used in connection with the
dance. They were then expecting the Indian redeemer to appear on earth
some time within three or four years. They were particularly anxious
to have it understood that their intentions were not hostile toward
the whites and that they desired to live in peace with them until the
redeemer came, but that then they would be unable to prevent their
destruction even if they wished. (_J. F. L., 3._)
The manner of the final change and the destruction of the whites
has been variously interpreted as the doctrine was carried from its
original center. East of the mountains it is commonly held that a deep
sleep will come on the believers, during which the great catastrophe
will be accomplished, and the faithful will awake to immortality on a
new earth. The Shoshoni of Wyoming say this sleep will continue four
days and nights, and that on the morning of the fifth day all will
open their eyes in a new world where both races will dwell together
forever. The Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and others, of Oklahoma, say
that the new earth, with all the resurrected dead from the beginning,
and with the buffalo, the elk, and other game upon it, will come from
the west and slide over the surface of the present earth, as the right
hand might slide over the left. As it approaches, the Indians will be
carried upward and alight on it by the aid of the sacred dance feathers
which they wear in their hair and which will act as wings to bear them
up. They will then become unconscious for four days, and on waking out
of their trance will find themselves with their former friends in the
midst of all the oldtime surroundings. By Sitting Bull, the Arapaho
apostle, it is thought that this new earth as it advances will be
preceded by a wall of fire which will drive the whites across the water
to their original and proper country, while the Indians will be enabled
by means of the sacred feathers to surmount the flames and reach the
promised land. When the expulsion of the whites has been accomplished,
the fire will be extinguished by a rain continuing twelve days. By a
few it is believed that a hurricane with thunder and lightning will
come to destroy the whites alone. This last idea is said to be held
also by the Walapai of Arizona, who extend its provisions to include
the unbelieving Indians as well. (_G. D., 6._) The doctrine held by
the Caddo, Wichita, and Delaware, of Oklahoma, is practically the same
as is held by the Arapaho and Cheyenne from whom they obtained it. All
these tribes believe that the destruction or removal of the whites is
to be accomplished entirely by supernatural means, and they severely
blame the Sioux for having provoked a physical conflict by their
impatience instead of waiting for their God to deliver them in his own
good time.
Among all the tribes which have accepted the new faith it is held that
frequent devout attendance on the dance conduces to ward off disease
and restore the sick to health, this applying not only to the actual
participants, but also to their children and friends. The idea of
obtaining temporal blessings as the reward of a faithful performance
of religious duties is too natural and universal to require comment.
The purification by the sweat-bath, which forms an important
preliminary to the dance among the Sioux, while devotional in its
purpose, is probably also sanitary in its effect.
Among the powerful and warlike Sioux of the Dakotas, already restless
under both old and recent grievances, and more lately brought to the
edge of starvation by a reduction of rations, the doctrine speedily
assumed a hostile meaning and developed some peculiar features, for
which reason it deserves particular notice as concerns this tribe. The
earliest rumors of the new messiah came to the Sioux from the more
western tribes in the winter of 1888–89, but the first definite account
was brought by a delegation which crossed the mountains to visit the
messiah in the fall of 1889, returning in the spring of 1890. On the
report of these delegates the dance was at once inaugurated and spread
so rapidly that in a few months the new religion had been accepted by
the majority of the tribe.
Perhaps the best statement of the Sioux version is given by the veteran
agent, James McLaughlin, of Standing Rock agency. In an official letter
of October 17, 1890, he writes that the Sioux, under the influence
of Sitting Bull, were greatly excited over the near approach of a
predicted Indian millennium or “return of the ghosts,” when the white
man would be annihilated and the Indian again supreme, and which the
medicine-men had promised was to occur as soon as the grass was green
in the spring. They were told that the Great Spirit had sent upon
them the dominant race to punish them for their sins, and that their
sins were now expiated and the time of deliverance was at hand. Their
decimated ranks were to be reinforced by all the Indians who had ever
died, and these spirits were already on their way to reinhabit the
earth, which had originally belonged to the Indians, and were driving
before them, as they advanced, immense herds of buffalo and fine
ponies. The Great Spirit, who had so long deserted his red children,
was now once more with them and against the whites, and the white man’s
gunpowder would no longer have power to drive a bullet through the
skin of an Indian. The whites themselves would soon be overwhelmed and
smothered under a deep landslide, held down by sod and timber, and the
few who might escape would become small fishes in the rivers. In order
to bring about this happy result, the Indians must believe and organize
the Ghost dance.
The agent continues:
It would seem impossible that any person, no matter how ignorant,
could be brought to believe such absurd nonsense, but as a matter
of fact a great many Indians of this agency actually believe it,
and since this new doctrine has been ingrafted here from the more
southern Sioux agencies the infection has been wonderful, and
so pernicious that it now includes some of the Indians who were
formerly numbered with the progressive and more intelligent, and
many of our very best Indians appear dazed and undecided when
talking of it, their inherent superstition having been thoroughly
aroused. (_G. D., 7._)
The following extract is from a translation of a letter dated March
30, 1891, written in Sioux by an Indian at Pine Ridge to a friend at
Rosebud agency:
And now I will tell another thing. Lately there is a man died and
come to life again, and he say he has been to Indian nation of
ghosts, and tells us dead Indian nation all coming home. The Indian
ghost tell him come after his war bonnet. The Indian (not ghost
Indian) gave him his war bonnet and he died again. (_G. D., 8._)
The Sioux, like other tribes, believed that at the moment of the
catastrophe the earth would tremble. According to one version the
landslide was to be accompanied by a flood of water, which would flow
into the mouths of the whites and cause them to choke with mud. Storms
and whirlwinds were also to assist in their destruction. The Indians
were to surmount the avalanche, probably in the manner described in
speaking of the southern tribes, and on reaching the surface of the
new earth would behold boundless prairies covered with long grass and
filled with great herds of buffalo and other game. When the time was
near at hand, they must assemble at certain places of rendezvous and
prepare for the final abandonment of all earthly things by stripping
off their clothing. In accordance with the general idea of a return to
aboriginal habits, the believers, as far as possible, discarded white
man’s dress and utensils. Those who could procure buckskin—which is
now very scarce in the Sioux country—resumed buckskin dress, while the
dancers put on “ghost shirts” made of cloth, but cut and ornamented
in Indian fashion. No metal of any kind was allowed in the dance,
no knives, and not even the earrings or belts of imitation silver
which form such an important part of prairie Indian costume. This was
at variance with the custom among the Cheyenne and other southern
tribes, where the women always wear in the dance their finest belts
studded with large disks of German silver. The beads used so freely on
moccasins and leggings seem to have been regarded as a substitute for
the oldtime wampum and porcupine quill work, and were therefore not
included in the prohibition. No weapon of any kind was allowed to be
carried in the Ghost dance by any tribe, north or south, a fact which
effectually disposes of the assertion that this was another variety of
war dance. At certain of the Sioux dances, however, sacred arrows and a
sacred bow, with other things, were tied on the tree in the center of
the circle.
[Illustration: PL. XCIII
SIOUX GHOST SHIRTS FROM WOUNDED KNEE BATTLEFIELD]
EXPLANATION OF PLATE XCIII
The originals of these ghost shirts, now in the National Museum,
were taken, by scouts present during the fight, from the bodies of
Indians killed at Wounded Knee, and were obtained by the author,
at Pine Ridge, from Philip Wells and Louis Menard, mixed-blood
interpreters, the former having also been present as interpreter
for the Indian scouts during the fight. They are made of coarse
white cloth, sewn with sinew. One of the shirts is partially
burned, having probably been taken out of one of the tipis
overturned and set on fire during the action. Two other ghost
shirts, said to be from the same battlefield, are also in the
National Museum.
Valuable light in regard to the Sioux version of the doctrine is
obtained from the sermon delivered at Red Leaf camp, on Pine Ridge
reservation, October 31, 1890, by Short Bull, one of those who had been
selected to visit the messiah, and who afterward became one of the
prime leaders in the dance:
My friends and relations: I will soon start this thing in running
order. I have told you that this would come to pass in two seasons,
but since the whites are interfering so much, I will advance the
time from what my father above told me to do, so the time will be
shorter. Therefore you must not be afraid of anything. Some of my
relations have no ears, so I will have them blown away.
Now, there will be a tree sprout up, and there all the members of
our religion and the tribe must gather together. That will be the
place where we will see our dead relations. But before this time
we must dance the balance of this moon, at the end of which time
the earth will shiver very hard. Whenever this thing occurs, I
will start the wind to blow. We are the ones who will then see our
fathers, mothers, and everybody. We, the tribe of Indians, are the
ones who are living a sacred life. God, our father himself, has
told and commanded and shown me to do these things.
Our father in heaven has placed a mark at each point of the four
winds. First, a clay pipe, which lies at the setting of the sun and
represents the Sioux tribe. Second, there is a holy arrow lying
at the north, which represents the Cheyenne tribe. Third, at the
rising of the sun there lies hail, representing the Arapaho tribe.
Fourth, there lies a pipe and nice feather at the south, which
represents the Crow tribe. My father has shown me these things,
therefore we must continue this dance. If the soldiers surround you
four deep, three of you, on whom I have put holy shirts, will sing
a song, which I have taught you, around them, when some of them
will drop dead. Then the rest will start to run, but their horses
will sink into the earth. The riders will jump from their horses,
but they will sink into the earth also. Then you can do as you
desire with them. Now, you must know this, that all the soldiers
and that race will be dead. There will be only five thousand of
them left living on the earth. My friends and relations, this is
straight and true.
Now, we must gather at Pass creek where the tree is sprouting.
There we will go among our dead relations. You must not take any
earthly things with you. Then the men must take off all their
clothing and the women must do the same. No one shall be ashamed of
exposing their persons. My father above has told us to do this, and
we must do as he says. You must not be afraid of anything. The guns
are the only things we are afraid of, but they belong to our father
in heaven. He will see that they do no harm. Whatever white men may
tell you, do not listen to them, my relations. This is all. I will
now raise my hand up to my father and close what he has said to you
through me. (_Short Bull; War, 4._)
The pipe here referred to is the most sacred thing in Sioux mythology
and will be more fully described in treating of the Sioux songs. The
sacred object of the Cheyenne is the “medicine arrow,” now in the
keeping of the band living near Cantonment, Oklahoma. The Crow and
Arapaho references are not so clear. The Arapaho are called by the
Sioux the “Blue Cloud” people, a name which may possibly have some
connection with hail. The sprouting tree at which all the believers
must gather refers to the tree or pole which the Sioux planted in the
center of the dance circle. The cardinal directions here assigned to
the other tribes may refer to their former locations with regard to the
Sioux. The Cheyenne and Arapaho, who now live far west and south of the
Sioux, originally lived north and east of them, about Red river and the
Saskatchewan.
The most noted thing connected with the Ghost dance among the Sioux is
the “ghost shirt” which was worn by all adherents of the doctrine—men,
women, and children alike. It is described by Captain Sword in his
account of the Ghost dance, given in the appendix to this chapter, and
will be noticed at length hereafter in treating of the ceremony of the
dance. During the dance it was worn as an outside garment, but was
said to be worn at other times under the ordinary dress. Although the
shape, fringing, and feather adornment were practically the same in
every case, considerable variation existed in regard to the painting,
the designs on some being very simple, while the others were fairly
covered with representations of sun, moon, stars, the sacred things of
their mythology, and the visions of the trance. The feathers attached
to the garment were always those of the eagle, and the thread used in
the sewing was always the old-time sinew. In some cases the fringe or
other portions were painted with the sacred red paint of the messiah.
The shirt was firmly believed to be impenetrable to bullets or weapons
of any sort. When one of the women shot in the Wounded Knee massacre
was approached as she lay in the church and told that she must let them
remove her ghost shirt in order the better to get at her wound, she
replied: “Yes; take it off. They told me a bullet would not go through.
Now I don’t want it any more.”
The protective idea in connection with the ghost shirt does not seem
to be aboriginal. The Indian warrior habitually went into battle naked
above the waist. His protecting “medicine” was a feather, a tiny bag
of some sacred powder, the claw of an animal, the head of a bird, or
some other small object which could be readily twisted into his hair or
hidden between the covers of his shield without attracting attention.
Its virtue depended entirely on the ceremony of the consecration and
not on size or texture. The war paint had the same magic power of
protection. To cover the body in battle was not in accordance with
Indian usage, which demanded that the warrior should be as free and
unincumbered in movement as possible. The so-called “war shirt” was
worn chiefly in ceremonial dress parades and only rarely on the warpath.
Dreams are but incoherent combinations of waking ideas, and there is a
hint of recollection even in the wildest visions of sleep. The ghost
shirt may easily have been an inspiration from a trance, while the
trance vision itself was the result of ideas derived from previous
observation or report. The author is strongly inclined to the opinion
that the idea of an invulnerable sacred garment is not original with
the Indians, but, like several other important points pertaining to
the Ghost-dance doctrine, is a practical adaptation by them of ideas
derived from contact with some sectarian body among the whites. It may
have been suggested by the “endowment robe” of the Mormons, a seamless
garment of white muslin adorned with symbolic figures, which is worn
by their initiates as the most sacred badge of their faith, and by
many of the believers is supposed to render the wearer invulnerable.
The Mormons have always manifested a particular interest in the
Indians, whom they regard as the Lamanites of their sacred writings,
and hence have made special efforts for their evangelization, with
the result that a considerable number of the neighboring tribes of
Ute, Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshoni have been received into the Mormon
church and invested with the endowment robe. (See the appendix to
this chapter: “The Mormons and the Indians;” also “Tell It All,” by
Mrs T. B. H. Stenhouse.) The Shoshoni and northern Arapaho occupy the
same reservation in Wyoming, and anything which concerns one tribe
is more or less talked of by the other. As the Sioux, Cheyenne, and
other eastern tribes make frequent visits to the Arapaho, and as these
Arapaho have been the great apostles of the Ghost dance, it is easy
to see how an idea borrowed by the Shoshoni from the Mormons could
find its way through the Arapaho first to the Sioux and Cheyenne and
afterward to more remote tribes. Wovoka himself expressly disclaimed
any responsibility for the ghost shirt, and whites and Indians alike
agreed that it formed no part of the dance costume in Mason valley.
When I first went among the Cheyenne and neighboring tribes of Oklahoma
in January, 1891, the ghost shirt had not yet reached them. Soon
afterward the first one was brought down from the Sioux country by a
Cheyenne named White Buffalo, who had been a Carlisle student, but the
Arapaho and Cheyenne, after debating the matter, refused to allow it
to be worn in the dance, on the ground that the doctrine of the Ghost
dance was one of peace, whereas the Sioux had made the ghost shirt an
auxiliary of war. In consequence of this decision such shirts have
never been worn by the dancers among the southern tribes. Instead they
wear in the dance their finest shirts and dresses of buckskin, covered
with painted and beaded figures from the Ghost-dance mythology and the
visions of the trance.
The Ghost dance is variously named among the different tribes. In
its original home among the Paiute it is called _Nänigükwa_, “dance
in a circle” (_nüka_, dance), to distinguish it from the other
dances of the tribe, which have only the ordinary up-and-down step
without the circular movement. The Shoshoni call it _Tänä′räyün_
or _Tämanä′rayära_, which may be rendered “everybody dragging,” in
allusion to the manner in which the dancers move around the circle
holding hands, as children do in their ring games. They insist that it
is a revival of a similar dance which existed among them fifty years
ago. The Comanche call it _A′p-anĕka′ra_, “the Father’s dance,” or
sometimes the dance “with joined hands.” The Kiowa call it _Mânposo′ti
guan_, “dance with clasped hands,” and the frenzy, _guan â′dalka-i_,
“dance craziness.” The Caddo know it as _Ă′ă kakĭ′mbawi′ut_, “the
prayer of all to the Father,” or as the _Nänisana ka-au′-shan_,
“nänisana dance,” from _nänisana_, “my children,” which forms the
burden of so many of the ghost songs in the language of the Arapaho,
from whom they obtained the dance. By the Sioux, Arapaho, and most
other prairie tribes it is called the “spirit” or “ghost” dance (Sioux,
_Wana′ghi wa′chipi_; Arapaho, _Thigû′nawat_), from, the fact that
everything connected with it relates to the coming of the spirits of
the dead from the spirit world, and by this name it has become known
among the whites.
APPENDIX
THE MORMONS AND THE INDIANS
While the Indian excitement was at its height in 1892, a curious
pamphlet was published anonymously at Salt Lake City in connection
with a proposed series of lectures, from which we make some extracts
for the light they give on the Mormon attitude toward the Indians. The
pamphlet is headed, “The Mormons have stepped down and out of Celestial
Government—the American Indians have stepped up and into Celestial
Government.” It begins by stating that the Messiah came to His people
at the time appointed of the Father—March, 1890—notwithstanding the
assertion in the Deseret Evening News, made January, 1892: “1890 has
passed, and no Messiah has come.” It goes on to say:
“1891 has passed, and no pruning of the vineyard.” The vineyard
of the Lord is the house of Israel.—Isa. 5:7. In the part of
the vineyard the American Indians, descendants of the righteous
branch of Joseph, who were led to the Western Continent or
hemisphere—Zion—we find the vine, the stone-power of the Latter
Days. Ps. 80.
The celestial prophet, seer, and revelator, Joseph Smith, jr.,
prophesied on the 2d of April, 1843, that the Messiah would reveal
himself to man in mortality in 1890. Doctrine and Covenants, 130,
15, 17, which reads: “I was once praying very earnestly to know
the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice
speak the following: ‘Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art
eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man.’”
* * * * *
Five years later (than 1882) the sign that was to usher in the
work of the Father was given to the American Indians, while March,
1890, witnesses the organization of a church under the restored
order, where twelve disciples were chosen and ordained, whose first
allegiance is given irrevocably to the Lord God, whereas that of
the Celestial Church is given to the government fostering it.
* * * * *
The following seven signs were to precede the fullness of the
Gentiles upon the land of America; Zion, the time, place, and
parties given with each. [The first, second, and third “signs” are
omitted here.]