The Sioux first heard of the messiah in 1889. According to the statement of Captain George Sword, of that tribe, the information came to the Ogalala (Sioux of Pine Ridge) in that year, through the Shoshoni and Arapaho. Later in the same year a delegation consisting of Good Thunder and several others started out to the west to find the messiah and to investigate the truth of the rumor. On their return they announced that the messiah had indeed come to help the Indians, but not the whites. Their report aroused a fervor of joyful excitement among the Indians and a second delegation was sent out in 1890, consisting of Good Thunder, Cloud Horse, Yellow Knife, and Short Bull. They confirmed the report of the first delegation, and on this assurance the Ghost dance was inaugurated among the Sioux at Pine Ridge in the spring of 1890. The matter is stated differently and more correctly by William Selwyn, an educated Sioux, at that time employed as postmaster at Pine Ridge. He says there was some talk on the subject by Indians from western tribes who visited the agency in the fall of 1888 (?), but that it did not excite much attention until 1889, when numerous letters concerning the new messiah were received by the Indians at Pine Ridge from tribes in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Dakota, and Oklahoma. As Selwyn was postmaster, the Indians who could not read usually brought their letters to him to read for them, so that he was thus in position to get accurate knowledge of the extent and nature of the excitement. It may be remarked here that, under present conditions, when the various tribes are isolated upon widely separated reservations, the Ghost dance could never have become so widespread, and would probably have died out within a year of its inception, had it not been for the efficient aid it received from the returned pupils of various eastern government schools, who conducted the sacred correspondence for their friends at the different agencies, acted as interpreters for the delegates to the messiah, and in various ways assumed the leadership and conduct of the dance.