The Ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890 : $b Fourteenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, part 2. — John Shaqi
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
were also promised that their dead friends would be restored to them.
The ideas as to the catastrophe that was to usher in the new era seem
to have varied according to the interpreter of the belief. Among the
Ottawa, and perhaps among the lake tribes generally, there was to be a
period of darkness, as already stated. Among the Cherokee, and probably
also among the Creek, it was believed that there would be a terrible
hailstorm, which would overwhelm with destruction both the whites
and the unbelievers of the red race, while the elect would be warned
in time to save themselves by fleeing to the high mountain tops. The
idea of any hostile combination against the white race seems to have
been no part of the doctrine. In the north, however, there is always a
plain discrimination against the Americans. The Great Father, through
his prophet, is represented as declaring himself to be the common
parent alike of Indians, English, French, and Spaniards; while the
Americans, on the contrary, “are not my children, but the children of
the evil spirit. They grew from the scum of the great water, when it
was troubled by an evil spirit and the froth was driven into the woods
by a strong east wind. They are numerous, but I hate them. They are
unjust; they have taken away your lands, which were not made for them.”
(_Kendall, 3._)
From the venerable James Wafford, of the Cherokee nation, the author
in 1891 obtained some interesting details in regard to the excitement
among the Cherokee. According to his statement, the doctrine first
came to them through the Creek about 1812 or 1813. It was probably
given to the Creek by Tecumtha and his party on their visit to that
tribe in the fall of 1811, as will be related hereafter. The Creek
were taught by their prophets that the old Indian life was soon to
return, when “instead of beef and bacon they would have venison, and
instead of chickens they would have turkeys.” Great sacred dances
were inaugurated, and the people were exhorted to be ready for what
was to come. From the south the movement spread to the Cherokee, and
one of their priests, living in what is now upper Georgia, began to
preach that on a day near at hand there would be a terrible storm,
with a mighty wind and hailstones as large as hominy mortars, which
would destroy from the face of the earth all but the true believers
who had previously taken refuge on the highest summits of the Great
Smoky mountains. Full of this belief, numbers of the tribe in Alabama
and Georgia abandoned their bees, their orchards, their slaves, and
everything else that might have come to them through the white man,
and, in spite of the entreaties and remonstrances of friends who put no
faith in the prediction, took up their toilsome march for the mountains
of Carolina. Wafford, who was then about 10 years of age, lived with
his mother and stepfather on Valley river, and vividly remembers the
troops of pilgrims, with their packs on their backs, fleeing from the
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