Smohalla now declared to his people that the Sa′ghalee Tyee, the Great Chief Above, was angry at their apostasy, and commanded them through him to return to their primitive manners, as their present miserable condition in the presence of the intrusive race was due to their having abandoned their own religion and violated the laws of nature and the precepts of their ancestors. He then explained in detail the system to which they must adhere in future if they would conform to the expressed will of the higher power. It was a system based on the primitive aboriginal mythology and usage, with an elaborate ritual which combined with the genuine Indian features much of what he had seen and remembered of Catholic ceremonial and military parade, with perhaps also some additions from Mormon forms. His words made a deep impression on his hearers. They had indeed abandoned their primitive simplicity to a great extent, and were now suffering the penalty in all the misery that had come to them with the advent of the white-skin race that threatened to blot them out from the earth. The voice of the prophet was accepted as a voice from the other world, for they knew that he had been dead and was now alive. What he said must be true and wise, for he had been everywhere and knew tribes and countries they had never heard of. Even the white men confirmed his words in this regard. He could even control the sun and the moon, for he had said when they would be dark, and they were dark. If genius be a form of insanity, as has been claimed, intense religious enthusiasm would seem to have a close connection with physical as well as mental disease. Like Mohammed and Joan of Arc, and like the Shaker prophet of Puget sound, Smohalla is subject to cataleptic trances, and it is while in this unconscious condition that he is believed to receive his revelations. Says MacMurray: