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
For some time after the surrender the unrest of the native tribes was
soothed into a semblance of quiet by the belief, artfully inculcated
by their old allies, that the king of France, wearied by his great
exertions, had fallen asleep for a little while, but would soon awake
to take vengeance on the English for the wrongs they had inflicted on
his red children. Then, as they saw English garrisons occupying the
abandoned posts and English traders passing up the lakes even to the
sacred island of the Great Turtle, the despairing warriors said to one
another, “We have been deceived. English and French alike are white men
and liars. We must turn from both and seek help from our Indian gods.”
In 1762 a prophet appeared among the Delawares, at Tuscarawas, on the
Muskingum, who preached a union of all the red tribes and a return
to the old Indian life, which he declared to be the divine command,
as revealed to himself in a wonderful vision. From an old French
manuscript, written by an anonymous eyewitness of the scene which he
describes, we have the details of this vision, as related by Pontiac
to his savage auditors at the great council of the tribes held near
Detroit in April, 1763. Parkman gives the story on the authority of
this manuscript, which he refers to as the “Pontiac manuscript,” and
states that it was long preserved in a Canadian family at Detroit,
and afterward deposited with the Historical Society of Michigan. It
bears internal evidence of genuineness, and is supposed to have been
written by a French priest. (_Parkman, 1._) The vision, from the same
manuscript, is related at length in Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches.
According to the prophet’s story, being anxious to know the “Master
of Life,” he determined, without mentioning his desire to anyone, to
undertake a journey to the spirit world. Ignorant of the way, and
not knowing any person who, having been there, could direct him, he
performed a mystic rite in the hope of receiving some light as to the
course he should pursue. He then fell into a deep sleep, in which he
dreamed that it was only necessary to begin his journey and that by
continuing to walk forward he would at last arrive at his destination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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