Chapter XI: Introduction (9)

My friends and relations: I will soon start this thing in running
order. I have told you that this would come to pass in two seasons,
but since the whites are interfering so much, I will advance the
time from what my father above told me to do, so the time will be
shorter. Therefore you must not be afraid of anything. Some of my
relations have no ears, so I will have them blown away.

Now, there will be a tree sprout up, and there all the members of
our religion and the tribe must gather together. That will be the
place where we will see our dead relations. But before this time
we must dance the balance of this moon, at the end of which time
the earth will shiver very hard. Whenever this thing occurs, I
will start the wind to blow. We are the ones who will then see our
fathers, mothers, and everybody. We, the tribe of Indians, are the
ones who are living a sacred life. God, our father himself, has
told and commanded and shown me to do these things.

Our father in heaven has placed a mark at each point of the four
winds. First, a clay pipe, which lies at the setting of the sun and
represents the Sioux tribe. Second, there is a holy arrow lying
at the north, which represents the Cheyenne tribe. Third, at the
rising of the sun there lies hail, representing the Arapaho tribe.
Fourth, there lies a pipe and nice feather at the south, which
represents the Crow tribe. My father has shown me these things,
therefore we must continue this dance. If the soldiers surround you
four deep, three of you, on whom I have put holy shirts, will sing
a song, which I have taught you, around them, when some of them
will drop dead. Then the rest will start to run, but their horses
will sink into the earth. The riders will jump from their horses,
but they will sink into the earth also. Then you can do as you
desire with them. Now, you must know this, that all the soldiers
and that race will be dead. There will be only five thousand of
them left living on the earth. My friends and relations, this is
straight and true.

Now, we must gather at Pass creek where the tree is sprouting.
There we will go among our dead relations. You must not take any
earthly things with you. Then the men must take off all their
clothing and the women must do the same. No one shall be ashamed of
exposing their persons. My father above has told us to do this, and
we must do as he says. You must not be afraid of anything. The guns
are the only things we are afraid of, but they belong to our father
in heaven. He will see that they do no harm. Whatever white men may
tell you, do not listen to them, my relations. This is all. I will
now raise my hand up to my father and close what he has said to you
through me. (_Short Bull; War, 4._)

The pipe here referred to is the most sacred thing in Sioux mythology and will be more fully described in treating of the Sioux songs. The sacred object of the Cheyenne is the “medicine arrow,” now in the keeping of the band living near Cantonment, Oklahoma. The Crow and Arapaho references are not so clear. The Arapaho are called by the Sioux the “Blue Cloud” people, a name which may possibly have some connection with hail. The sprouting tree at which all the believers must gather refers to the tree or pole which the Sioux planted in the center of the dance circle. The cardinal directions here assigned to the other tribes may refer to their former locations with regard to the Sioux. The Cheyenne and Arapaho, who now live far west and south of the Sioux, originally lived north and east of them, about Red river and the Saskatchewan.

The most noted thing connected with the Ghost dance among the Sioux is the “ghost shirt” which was worn by all adherents of the doctrine—men, women, and children alike. It is described by Captain Sword in his account of the Ghost dance, given in the appendix to this chapter, and will be noticed at length hereafter in treating of the ceremony of the dance. During the dance it was worn as an outside garment, but was said to be worn at other times under the ordinary dress. Although the shape, fringing, and feather adornment were practically the same in every case, considerable variation existed in regard to the painting, the designs on some being very simple, while the others were fairly covered with representations of sun, moon, stars, the sacred things of their mythology, and the visions of the trance. The feathers attached to the garment were always those of the eagle, and the thread used in the sewing was always the old-time sinew. In some cases the fringe or other portions were painted with the sacred red paint of the messiah. The shirt was firmly believed to be impenetrable to bullets or weapons of any sort. When one of the women shot in the Wounded Knee massacre was approached as she lay in the church and told that she must let them remove her ghost shirt in order the better to get at her wound, she replied: “Yes; take it off. They told me a bullet would not go through. Now I don’t want it any more.”

The protective idea in connection with the ghost shirt does not seem to be aboriginal. The Indian warrior habitually went into battle naked above the waist. His protecting “medicine” was a feather, a tiny bag of some sacred powder, the claw of an animal, the head of a bird, or some other small object which could be readily twisted into his hair or hidden between the covers of his shield without attracting attention. Its virtue depended entirely on the ceremony of the consecration and not on size or texture. The war paint had the same magic power of protection. To cover the body in battle was not in accordance with Indian usage, which demanded that the warrior should be as free and unincumbered in movement as possible. The so-called “war shirt” was worn chiefly in ceremonial dress parades and only rarely on the warpath.

Dreams are but incoherent combinations of waking ideas, and there is a hint of recollection even in the wildest visions of sleep. The ghost shirt may easily have been an inspiration from a trance, while the trance vision itself was the result of ideas derived from previous observation or report. The author is strongly inclined to the opinion that the idea of an invulnerable sacred garment is not original with the Indians, but, like several other important points pertaining to the Ghost-dance doctrine, is a practical adaptation by them of ideas derived from contact with some sectarian body among the whites. It may have been suggested by the “endowment robe” of the Mormons, a seamless garment of white muslin adorned with symbolic figures, which is worn by their initiates as the most sacred badge of their faith, and by many of the believers is supposed to render the wearer invulnerable. The Mormons have always manifested a particular interest in the Indians, whom they regard as the Lamanites of their sacred writings, and hence have made special efforts for their evangelization, with the result that a considerable number of the neighboring tribes of Ute, Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshoni have been received into the Mormon church and invested with the endowment robe. (See the appendix to this chapter: “The Mormons and the Indians;” also “Tell It All,” by Mrs T. B. H. Stenhouse.) The Shoshoni and northern Arapaho occupy the same reservation in Wyoming, and anything which concerns one tribe is more or less talked of by the other. As the Sioux, Cheyenne, and other eastern tribes make frequent visits to the Arapaho, and as these Arapaho have been the great apostles of the Ghost dance, it is easy to see how an idea borrowed by the Shoshoni from the Mormons could find its way through the Arapaho first to the Sioux and Cheyenne and afterward to more remote tribes. Wovoka himself expressly disclaimed any responsibility for the ghost shirt, and whites and Indians alike agreed that it formed no part of the dance costume in Mason valley. When I first went among the Cheyenne and neighboring tribes of Oklahoma in January, 1891, the ghost shirt had not yet reached them. Soon afterward the first one was brought down from the Sioux country by a Cheyenne named White Buffalo, who had been a Carlisle student, but the Arapaho and Cheyenne, after debating the matter, refused to allow it to be worn in the dance, on the ground that the doctrine of the Ghost dance was one of peace, whereas the Sioux had made the ghost shirt an auxiliary of war. In consequence of this decision such shirts have never been worn by the dancers among the southern tribes. Instead they wear in the dance their finest shirts and dresses of buckskin, covered with painted and beaded figures from the Ghost-dance mythology and the visions of the trance.

The Ghost dance is variously named among the different tribes. In its original home among the Paiute it is called _Nänigükwa_, “dance in a circle” (_nüka_, dance), to distinguish it from the other dances of the tribe, which have only the ordinary up-and-down step without the circular movement. The Shoshoni call it _Tänä′räyün_ or _Tämanä′rayära_, which may be rendered “everybody dragging,” in allusion to the manner in which the dancers move around the circle holding hands, as children do in their ring games. They insist that it is a revival of a similar dance which existed among them fifty years ago. The Comanche call it _A′p-anĕka′ra_, “the Father’s dance,” or sometimes the dance “with joined hands.” The Kiowa call it _Mânposo′ti guan_, “dance with clasped hands,” and the frenzy, _guan â′dalka-i_, “dance craziness.” The Caddo know it as _Ă′ă kakĭ′mbawi′ut_, “the prayer of all to the Father,” or as the _Nänisana ka-au′-shan_, “nänisana dance,” from _nänisana_, “my children,” which forms the burden of so many of the ghost songs in the language of the Arapaho, from whom they obtained the dance. By the Sioux, Arapaho, and most other prairie tribes it is called the “spirit” or “ghost” dance (Sioux, _Wana′ghi wa′chipi_; Arapaho, _Thigû′nawat_), from, the fact that everything connected with it relates to the coming of the spirits of the dead from the spirit world, and by this name it has become known among the whites.