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
There were other causes of dissatisfaction, some local and others
general and chronic, which need not be detailed here. Some of these
are treated in the documents appended to this chapter. Prominent among
them were the failure of Congress to make payment of the money due the
Sioux for the lands recently ceded, or to have the new lines surveyed
promptly so that the Indians might know what was still theirs and
select their allotments accordingly; failure to reimburse the friendly
Indians for horses confiscated fourteen years before; the tardy arrival
of annuities, consisting largely of winter clothing, which according
to the treaty were due by the 1st of August, but which seldom arrived
until the middle of winter; the sweeping and frequent changes of agency
employees from the agent down, preventing anything like a systematic
working out of any consistent policy, and almost always operating
against the good of the service, especially at Pine Ridge, where so
brave and efficient a man as McGillycuddy was followed by such a one as
Royer—and, finally, the Ghost dance.
The Ghost dance itself, in the form which it assumed among the
Sioux, was only a symptom and expression of the real causes of
dissatisfaction, and with such a man as McGillycuddy or McLaughlin
in charge at Pine Ridge there would have been no outbreak, in spite
of broken promises and starvation, and the Indians could have been
controlled until Congress had afforded relief. That it was not the
cause of the outbreak is sufficiently proved by the fact that there
was no serious trouble, excepting on the occasion of the attempt to
arrest Sitting Bull, on any other of the Sioux reservations, and none
at all among any of the other Ghost-dancing tribes from the Missouri to
the Sierras, although the doctrine and the dance were held by nearly
every tribe within that area and are still held by the more important.
Among the Paiute, where the doctrine originated and the messiah has his
home, there was never the slightest trouble. It is significant that
Commissioner Morgan in his official statement of the causes of the
outbreak places the “messiah craze” eleventh in a list of twelve, the
twelfth being the alarm created by the appearance of troops. The Sioux
outbreak of 1890 was due entirely to local grievances, recent or long
standing. The remedy and preventive for similar trouble in the future
is sufficiently indicated in the appended statements of competent
authorities.
APPENDIX—CAUSES OF THE OUTBREAK
COMMISSIONER MORGAN’S STATEMENT
[_From the Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
for 1891, Vol. I, 132–135._]
In stating the events which led to this outbreak among the Sioux,
the endeavor too often has been merely to find some opportunity for
locating blame. The causes are complex, and many are obscure and
remote. Among them may be named the following:
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