Mooney spent many days conversing with this interesting person, Wovoka, who told him that he had given to his people this dance about two years previously. He seems to have talked very freely with Mr. Mooney, permitting him to take his photograph, and when Mooney left, the prophet gave him as souvenirs to exhibit to his friends, a blanket of rabbit skins, sacred paint endowed with miraculous powers and which plays an important part in the ritual of the Ghost dance religion, and other trinkets. In Oklahoma Mooney met with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes and they gave him a written statement of the doctrine of Wovoka, which he was permitted to take to Washington to convince the authorities, “that there was nothing bad or hostile in the new religion.” Mooney traveled many months West and South and his excellent report is evidence that he studied every phase of the dance. My work was confined to Pine Ridge where I studied the dance while it was in progress. There it appeared in all its purity; there the white people made of it a “warlike” demonstration; there stupidity and ignorance transformed a peaceful, religious ceremony into a bloody tragedy—Wounded Knee. I employed three interpreters: the Weasel (Itonkasan,) George Bartlett (Husté), and a Frenchman, whose name I do not recall. Doctor Charles A. Eastman, the Sioux, some years after my account was published, informed me that it was correct, and he was present before, during and after the trouble at Pine Ridge, and knew all the actors intimately. Summing up Mr. Mooney’s conclusions in a few words, the Messiah craze of 1890 was a mixture of Christianity and Indian religion. In a nutshell, the Messiah craze conformed to the sentiments of Jesus Christ. It was not expressed in His language, but the frequent repetitions of such sentiments as “you must not fight”, and, “do injury to no one”; “give up the bad white man’s ways”; “live as brothers as you did before the Whites came”; “Dance faithfully to the Great Spirit”; “Father and Mother are talking”; etc., indicate a belief in the better things of life and of the hereafter. Instead of hostility, peace was proclaimed; instead of avarice, the communistic life was advocated.