Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian WomenSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
History
Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian Women
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Indians of North America -- Biography; Indians of North America -- Wars
The Pai-Utes were glad to believe whatever he claimed for himself. He
seemed to hypnotize them. The word that Wo-vo-ka was the Messiah and
could perform miracles spread through the Pai-Utes of Nevada and the
Utes of Utah; it crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California on
the west, and the Rocky Mountains into Wyoming on the east; and it kept
going, east and north and south.
This spring Good Thunder, Short Bull, Cloud Horse and Yellow Knife
journeyed to see the Messiah again.
When they came back they reported that he had appeared to them out of
some smoke. He welcomed them, and showed them a land that bridged the
ocean, and upon the land all the Indians of all nations were on their
way home again.
They saw lodges, of buffalo hides, in which the dead were living. They
talked with dead Sioux whom they had known.
The Messiah had given them red and white paint, that would ward off
sickness, renew youth, and cause visions. He had told them to have the
Sioux send their children to school, and to attend to farming. There
was to be no fighting with the white people. But the whites were to be
destroyed, by a great landslide that would cover the world with new
earth. Upon the new earth would roam the buffalo and deer, as of old.
The Indians who obeyed the Messiah would be lifted up, above the
landslide, and gently dropped back again, there to live forever with
all their friends and relatives who had come with it from spirit land.
This reunion was to occur the next spring, of 1891, when the grass was
knee high.
The Good Thunder party brought what they said was a piece of buffalo
meat. The Messiah had told them that if on their way home they killed
any buffalo, they were to leave the hoofs and tail and head on the
prairie, and the buffalo would spring up, whole, when they turned their
backs.
All the buffalo would act this way, in the happy time to come.
The day of buffalo herds on the plains was past; but the party asserted
that they did find a herd, and killed one buffalo--and he sprang up,
from the hoofs and tail and head, just as the Messiah had promised.
The Cheyennes, the Shoshonis, the Arapahos, the Kiowas, the Utes, the
Pai-Utes, were dancing the Ghost Dance. The Sioux now danced.
The Ghost Dancers danced in a circle, holding hands and chanting, until
they fell over and went to spirit land. From the spirits they brought
back signs, such as buffalo tails, buffalo meat, and other things of an
Indian country.
The Sioux Ghost Dancers wore Ghost shirts, of white muslin. These
Ghost shirts would turn a bullet: no enemy weapon could pierce a Ghost
shirt! That was the word of Kicking Bear and Short Bull.
The Ghost Dance ceremonies were many, and the dance was noisy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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