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
The next morning, after breakfast was over, we went into the circle
and spread canvas over it on the ground, the Christ standing in the
midst of us. He told us he was going away that day, but would be
back that next morning and talk to us.
In the night when I first saw him I thought he was an Indian, but
the next day when I could see better he looked different. He was
not so dark as an Indian, nor so light as a white man. He had no
beard or whiskers, but very heavy eyebrows. He was a good-looking
man. We were crowded up very close. We had been told that nobody
was to talk, and even if we whispered the Christ would know it. I
had heard that Christ had been crucified, and I looked to see, and
I saw a scar on his wrist and one on his face, and he seemed to be
the man. I could not see his feet. He would talk to us all day.
That evening we all assembled again to see him depart. When we were
assembled, he began to sing, and he commenced to tremble all over,
violently for a while, and then sat down. We danced all that night,
the Christ lying down beside us apparently dead.
The next morning when we went to eat breakfast, the Christ was with
us. After breakfast four heralds went around and called out that
the Christ was back with us and wanted to talk with us. The circle
was prepared again. The people assembled, and Christ came among us
and sat down. He said he wanted to talk to us again and for us to
listen. He said: “I am the man who made everything you see around
you. I am not lying to you, my children. I made this earth and
everything on it. I have been to heaven and seen your dead friends
and have seen my own father and mother. In the beginning, after God
made the earth, they sent me back to teach the people, and when
I came back on earth the people were afraid of me and treated me
badly. This is what they did to me [showing his scars]. I did not
try to defend myself. I found my children were bad, so went back to
heaven and left them. I told them that in so many hundred years I
would come back to see my children. At the end of this time I was
sent back to try to teach them. My father told me the earth was
getting old and worn out, and the people getting bad, and that I
was to renew everything as it used to be, and make it better.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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