The Ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890 : $b Fourteenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, part 2.Mooney, James
Religion
The Ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890 : $b Fourteenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, part 2.
Mooney, James
Dakota Indians -- Wars, 1890-1891; Ghost dance
As soon as the news of my arrival went abroad among the Cheyenne and
Arapaho on my return, my friends of both tribes came in, eager to
hear all the details of my visit to the messiah and to get my own
impressions of the man. In comparing notes with some of the recent
delegates I discovered something of Wovoka’s hypnotic methods, and
incidentally learned how much of miracle depends on the mental
receptivity of the observer.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho, although for generations associated in the
most intimate manner, are of very different characters. In religious
matters it may be said briefly that the Arapaho are devotees and
prophets, continually seeing signs and wonders, while the Cheyenne
are more skeptical. In talking with Tall Bull, one of the Cheyenne
delegates and then captain of the Indian police, he said that
before leaving they had asked Wovoka to give them some proof of his
supernatural powers. Accordingly he had ranged them in front of him,
seated on the ground, he sitting facing them, with his sombrero between
and his eagle feathers in his hand. Then with a quick movement he
had put his hand into the empty hat and drawn out from it “something
black.” Tall Bull would not admit that anything more had happened,
and did not seem to be very profoundly impressed by the occurrence,
saying that he thought there were medicine-men of equal capacity among
the Cheyenne. In talking soon afterward with Black Coyote, one of the
Arapaho delegates and also a police officer, the same incident came
up, but with a very different sequel. Black Coyote told how they had
seated themselves on the ground in front of Wovoka, as described by
Tall Bull, and went on to tell how the messiah had waved his feathers
over his hat, and then, when he withdrew his hand, Black Coyote looked
into the hat and there “saw the whole world.” The explanation is
simple. Tall Bull, who has since been stricken with paralysis, was
a jovial, light-hearted fellow, fond of joking and playing tricks on
his associates, but withal a man of good hard sense and disposed to be
doubtful in regard to all medicine-men outside of his own tribe. Black
Coyote, on the contrary, is a man of contemplative disposition, much
given to speculation on the unseen world. His body and arms are covered
with the scars of wounds which he has inflicted on himself in obedience
to commands received in dreams. When the first news of the new religion
came to the southern tribes, he had made a long journey, at his own
expense, to his kindred in Wyoming, to learn the doctrine and the
songs, and since his return had been drilling his people day and night
in both. Now, on his visit to the fountain head of inspiration, he was
prepared for great things, and when the messiah performed his hypnotic
passes with the eagle feather, as I have so often witnessed in the
Ghost dance, Black Coyote saw the whole spirit world where Tall Bull
saw only an empty hat. From my knowledge of the men, I believe both
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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