In a few days preparations were made for a great dance near Walker lake, with all the delegates from the various tribes and hundreds of Indians in attendance. They danced two nights or longer, the messiah himself—Wovoka—coming down from his home in Mason valley to lead the ceremony. After the dance Wovoka went into a trance, and on awaking announced to those assembled that he had been to the other world and had seen the spirits of their dead friends and of his own father and mother, and had been sent back to teach the people. According to Porcupine he claimed to be the returned Christ and bore on his body the scars of the crucifixion. He told them that the dead were to be resurrected, and that as the earth was old and worn out it would be renewed as it used to be and made better; that when this happened the youth of everyone would be renewed with each return of spring, and that they would live forever; that there would be universal peace, and that any tribe that refused his message would be destroyed from the face of the earth. It was early in the spring of 1890 when Porcupine and his Cheyenne companions returned to their tribe at Tongue River agency in Montana with the news of the appearance of the messiah. A council was called and Porcupine made a full report of the journey and delivered the divine message, talking five days in succession. The report aroused the wildest excitement among the Cheyenne, and after several long debates on the subject the Ghost dance was inaugurated at the various camps in accordance with the instructions from beyond the mountains. In June the matter came to the attention of the military officer on the reservation, who summoned Porcupine before him and obtained from him a full account of the journey and the doctrine. (See page 793.) Porcupine insisted strongly on the sacred character of the messiah and his message, and challenged any doubters to return with him to Nevada and investigate for themselves. He claimed also that the messiah could speak all languages. As a matter of fact, Wovoka speaks only his native Paiute and a little English, but due allowance must be made for the mental exaltation of the narrator. Grinnell states that the failure of certain things to happen according to the predictions of the messiah, in September, 1890, caused a temporary loss of faith on the part of the Cheyenne, but that shortly afterward some visiting Shoshoni and Arapaho from Wyoming reported that in their journey as they came over they had met a party of Indians who had been dead thirty or forty years, but had been resurrected by the messiah, and were now going about as if they had never died. It is useless to speculate on the mental condition of men who could seriously report or believe such things; but, however that may be, the result was that the Cheyenne returned to the dance with redoubled fervor. (_J. F. L., 5._)