Chapter XXI: Appendix: The Indian Story of Wounded Knee (3)

When they arose again, they enlarged the circle by facing toward
the center, taking hold of hands, and moving around in the manner
of school children in their play of “needle’s eye.” And now the
most intense excitement began. They would go as fast as they could,
their hands moving from side to side, their bodies swaying, their
arms, with hands gripped tightly in their neighbors’, swinging
back and forth with all their might. If one, more weak and frail,
came near falling, he would be jerked up and into position until
tired nature gave way. The ground had been worked and worn by many
feet, until the fine, flour-like dust lay light and loose to the
depth of two or three inches. The wind, which had increased, would
sometimes take it up, enveloping the dancers and hiding them from
view. In the ring were men, women, and children; the strong and the
robust, the weak consumptive, and those near to death’s door. They
believed those who were sick would be cured by joining in the dance
and losing consciousness. From the beginning they chanted, to a
monotonous tune, the words—

Father, I come;
Mother, I come;
Brother, I come;
Father, give us back our arrows.

All of which they would repeat over and over again until first one
and then another would break from the ring and stagger away and
fall down. One woman fell a few feet from me. She came toward us,
her hair flying over her face, which was purple, looking as if
the blood would burst through; her hands and arms moving wildly;
every breath a pant and a groan; and she fell on her back, and went
down like a log. I stepped up to her as she lay there motionless,
but with every muscle twitching and quivering. She seemed to be
perfectly unconscious. Some of the men and a few of the women would
run, stepping high and pawing the air in a frightful manner. Some
told me afterwards that they had a sensation as if the ground were
rising toward them and would strike them in the face. Others would
drop where they stood. One woman fell directly into the ring, and
her husband stepped out and stood over her to prevent them from
trampling upon her. No one ever disturbed those who fell or took
any notice of them except to keep the crowd away.

They kept up dancing until fully 100 persons were lying
unconscious. Then they stopped and seated themselves in a circle,
and as each one recovered from his trance he was brought to the
center of the ring to relate his experience. Each told his story
to the medicine-man and he shouted it to the crowd. Not one in ten
claimed that he saw anything. I asked one Indian—a tall, strong
fellow, straight as an arrow—what his experience was. He said he
saw an eagle coming toward him. It flew round and round, drawing
nearer and nearer until he put out his hand to take it, when it was
gone. I asked him what he thought of it. “Big lie,” he replied. I
found by talking to them that not one in twenty believed it. After
resting for a time they would go through the same performance,
perhaps three times a day. They practiced fasting, and every
morning those who joined in the dance were obliged to immerse
themselves in the creek. (_Comr., 44._)

SONG REHEARSALS

As with church choirs, the leaders, both men and women, frequently assembled privately in a tipi to rehearse the new or old songs for the next dance. During the first winter spent among the Arapaho I had frequent opportunity of being present at these rehearsals, as for a long time the snow was too deep to permit dancing outside. After having obtained their confidence the Arapaho police invited me to come up to their camp at night to hear them practice the songs in anticipation of better weather for dancing. Thenceforth rehearsals were held in Black Coyote’s tipi almost every night until the snow melted, each session usually lasting about three hours.

On these occasions from eight to twelve persons were present, sitting in a circle on the low beds around the fire in the center. Black Coyote acted as master of ceremonies and opened proceedings by filling and lighting the redstone pipe, offering the first whiff to the sun, then reversing the stem in offering to the earth, next presenting the pipe to the fire, and then to each of the four cardinal points. He then took a few puffs himself, after which he passed the pipe to his next neighbor, who went through the same preliminaries before smoking, and thus the pipe went round the circle, each one taking only a few puffs before passing it on. The pipe was then put back into its pouch, and Black Coyote, standing with his face toward the northwest, the messiah’s country, with eyes closed and arms outstretched, made a fervent prayer for help and prosperity to his tribe, closing with an earnest petition to the messiah to hasten his coming. The others listened in silence with bowed heads. The prayer ended, they consulted as to the song to be sung first, which Black Coyote then started in a clear musical bass, the others joining. From time to time explanations were made where the meaning of the song was not clear. They invited me to call for whatever songs I wished to hear, and these songs were repeated over and over again to give me an opportunity to write them down, but they waived extended discussion until another time. Usually the men alone were the singers, but sometimes Black Coyote’s wives or other women who were present joined in the songs. It was noticeable that even in these rehearsals the women easily fell under the excitement of the dance. Finally, about 10 oclock, all rose together and sang the closing song, _Ni′ninitubi′na Huhu_, “The Crow has given the signal,” and the rehearsal was at an end. On one occasion, before I had obtained this song, I called for it in order that I might write it down, but they explained that we must wait awhile, as it was the closing song, and if they sung it then they must quit for the night.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE DANCE

On several occasions the dance ground was consecrated before the performance, one of the leaders going all about the place, sprinkling some kind of sacred powder over the ground and praying the while.

SACRED OBJECTS FROM THE SIOUX GHOST DANCE

_a_, Staff; _b_, _c_, Bow and bone-head arrows; _d_, Gaming wheel
and sticks]

Frequently in the dance one or more of the leaders while sitting within the circle would beat upon the earth with his extended palm, then lay his hand upon his head, afterward blow into his hand, and then repeat the operation, praying all the time. Sometimes the hypnotist would beat the ground in the same way and then lay his hand on the head of the subject (plate +CXV+). No satisfactory explanation of this ceremony was obtained beyond the general idea that the earth, like the sun, the fire, and the water, is sacred.

GIVING THE FEATHER

The ceremony of “giving the feather” has been already noticed. This was an official ordination of the priests in the dance, conferred on them by the apostle who first brought the ceremony to the tribe. Among the Arapaho, Caddo, Kiowa, and adjoining tribes in the south the feather was conferred by Sitting Bull himself. The feather was thus given to seven leaders, or sometimes to fourteen, that is, seven men and seven women, the number seven being sacred with most tribes and more particularly in the Ghost dance. The feather, which was worn upon the head of the dancers, was either that of the crow, the sacred bird of the Ghost dance, or of the eagle, sacred in all Indian religions. If from the crow, two feathers were used, being attached at a slight angle to a small stick which was thrust into the hair. (See Arapaho song 8.) The feathers were previously consecrated by the priest with prayer and ceremony. The chosen ones usually reciprocated with presents of ponies, blankets, or other property. After having thus received the feather the tribe began to make songs of its own, having previously used those taught them by the apostle from his own language.

Besides the seven leaders who wear the sacred crow feathers as emblems of their leadership, nearly all the dancers wear feathers variously painted and ornamented, and the preparation of these is a matter of much concern. The dancer who desires instruction on this point usually takes with him six friends, so as to make up the sacred number of seven, and goes with them to one who has been in a trance and has thus learned the exact method in vogue in the spirit world. At their request this man prepares for each one a feather, according to what he has seen in some trance vision, for which they return thanks, usually with a small present. The feathers are painted in several colors, each larger feather usually being tipped with a small down feather painted in a different color. On certain occasions a special day is set apart for publicly painting and preparing the feathers for all the dancers, the work being done by the appointed leaders of the ceremony.

THE PAINTING OF THE DANCERS

The painting of the dancers is done with the same ceremonial exactness of detail, each design being an inspiration from a trance vision. Usually the dancer adopts the particular style of painting which, while in the trance, he has seen worn by some departed relative. If he has not yet been in a trance, the design is suggested by a vision of one who does the painting. In making the request the dancer lays his hands upon the head of the leader and says, “My father, I have come to be painted, so that I may see my friends; have pity on me and paint me,” the sacred paint being held to sharpen the spiritual vision as well as to be conducive to physical health. The painting consists of elaborate designs in red, yellow, green, and blue upon the face, with a red or yellow line along the parting of the hair. Suns, crescents, stars, crosses, and birds (crows) are the designs in most common use.

THE CEREMONY

The dance commonly begins about the middle of the afternoon or later, after sundown. When it begins in the afternoon, there is always an intermission of an hour or two for supper. The announcement is made by the criers, old men who assume this office apparently by tacit understanding, who go about the camp shouting in a loud voice to the people to prepare for the dance. The preliminary painting and dressing is usually a work of about two hours. When all is ready, the leaders walk out to the dance place, and facing inward, join hands so as to form a small circle. Then, without moving from their places they sing the opening song, according to previous agreement, in a soft undertone. Having sung it through once they raise their voices to their full strength and repeat it, this time slowly circling around in the dance. The step is different from that of most other Indian dances, but very simple, the dancers moving from right to left, following the course of the sun, advancing the left foot and following it with the right, hardly lifting the feet from the ground. For this reason it is called by the Shoshoni the “dragging dance.” All the songs are adapted to the simple measure of the dance step. As the song rises and swells the people come singly and in groups from the several tipis, and one after another joins the circle until any number from fifty to five hundred men, women, and children are in the dance. When the circle is small, each song is repeated through a number of circuits. If large, it is repeated only through one circuit, measured by the return of the leaders to the starting point. Each song is started in the same manner, first in an undertone while the singers stand still in their places, and then with full voice as they begin to circle around. At intervals between the songs, more especially after the trances have begun, the dancers unclasp hands and sit down to smoke or talk for a few minutes. At such times the leaders sometimes deliver short addresses or sermons, or relate the recent trance experience of the dancer. In holding each other’s hands the dancers usually intertwine the fingers instead of grasping the hand as with us. Only an Indian could keep the blanket in place as they do under such circumstances. Old people hobbling along with sticks, and little children hardly past the toddling period sometimes form a part of the circle, the more vigorous dancers accommodating the movement to their weakness. Frequently a woman will be seen to join the circle with an infant upon her back and dance with the others, but should she show the least sign of approaching excitement watchful friends lead her away that no harm may come to the child. Dogs are driven off from the neighborhood of the circle lest they should run against any of those who have fallen into a trance and thus awaken them. The dancers themselves are careful not to disturb the trance subjects while their souls are in the spirit world. Full Indian dress is worn, with buckskin, paint, and feathers, but among the Sioux the women discarded the belts ornamented with disks of German silver, because the metal had come from the white man. Among the southern tribes, on the contrary, hats were sometimes worn in the dance, although this was not considered in strict accordance with the doctrine.

THE GHOST DANCE—SMALL CIRCLE]

No drum, rattle, or other musical instrument is used in the dance, excepting sometimes by an individual dancer in imitation of a trance vision. In this respect particularly the Ghost dance differs from every other Indian dance. Neither are any fires built within the circle, so far as known, with any tribe excepting the Walapai. The northern Cheyenne, however, built four fires in a peculiar fashion outside of the circle, as already described. With most tribes the dance was performed around a tree or pole planted in the center and variously decorated. In the southern plains, however, only the Kiowa seem ever to have followed this method, they sometimes dancing around a cedar tree. On breaking the circle at the end of the dance the performers shook their blankets or shawls in the air, with the idea of driving away all evil influences. On later instructions from the messiah all then went down to bathe in the stream, the men in one place and the women in another, before going to their tipis. The idea of washing away evil things, spiritual as well as earthly, by bathing in running water is too natural and universal to need comment.

The peculiar ceremonies of prayer and invocation, with the laying on of hands and the stroking of the face and body, have several times been described and need only be mentioned here. As trance visions became frequent the subjects strove to imitate what they had seen in the spirit world, especially where they had taken part with their departed friends in some of the old-time games. In this way gaming wheels, shinny sticks, hummers, and other toys or implements would be made and carried in future dances, accompanied with appropriate songs, until the dance sometimes took on the appearance of an exhibition of Indian curios on a small scale.

THE CROW DANCE

Within the last few years the southern Arapaho and Cheyenne have developed an auxiliary dance called the “crow dance,” which is performed in the afternoon as a preliminary to the regular Ghost dance at night. As it is no part of the original Ghost dance and is confined to these two tribes, it deserves no extended notice in this connection. Although claimed by its inventors as a direct inspiration from the other world, where they saw it performed by “crows,” or spirits of departed friends, it is really only a modification of the picturesque Omaha dance of the prairie tribes, with the addition of religious features borrowed from the new doctrine. The men participating are stripped to the breechcloth, with their whole bodies painted as in the Omaha dance, and wear elaborate pendants of varicolored feathers hanging down behind from the waist. An immense drum is an important feature. Men and women take part, and the songs refer to the general subject of the crow and the messiah, but are set to a variety of dance steps and evolutions performed by the dancers. As the leaders, who are chiefly young men, are constantly studying new features, the crow dance has become one of the most attractive ceremonies among the prairie tribes. Hypnotism and trances form an essential feature of this as of the Ghost dance proper. (See plate +CXIX+.)

THE HYPNOTIC PROCESS

The most important feature of the Ghost dance, and the secret of the trances, is hypnotism. It has been hastily assumed that hypnotic knowledge and ability belong only to an overripe civilization, such as that of India and ancient Egypt, or to the most modern period of scientific investigation. The fact is, however, that practical knowledge, if not understanding, of such things belongs to people who live near to nature, and many of the stories told by reliable travelers of the strange performances of savage shamans can be explained only on this theory. Numerous references in the works of the early Jesuit missionaries, of the Puritan writers of New England, and of English explorers farther to the south, would indicate that hypnotic ability no less than sleight-of-hand dexterity formed part of the medicine-man’s equipment from the Saint Lawrence to the Gulf. Enough has been said in the chapters on Smoholla and the Shakers to show that hypnotism exists among the tribes of the Columbia, and the author has had frequent opportunity to observe and study it in the Ghost dance on the plains. It can not be said that the Indian priests understand the phenomenon, for they ascribe it to a supernatural cause, but they know how to produce the effect, as I have witnessed hundreds of times. In treating of the subject in connection with the Ghost dance the author must be understood as speaking from the point of view of an observer and not as a psychologic expert.

Immediately on coming among the Arapaho and Cheyenne in 1890, I heard numerous stories of wonderful things that occurred in the Ghost dance—how people died, went to heaven and came back again, and how they talked with dead friends and brought back messages from the other world. Quite a number who had thus “died” were mentioned and their adventures in the spirit land were related with great particularity of detail, but as most of the testimony came from white men, none of whom had seen the dance for themselves, I preserved the scientific attitude of skepticism. So far as could be ascertained, none of the intelligent people of the agency had thought the subject sufficiently worthy of serious consideration to learn whether the reports were true or false. On talking with the Indians I found them unanimous in their statements as to the visions, until I began to think there might be something in it.

THE GHOST DANCE—LARGER CIRCLE]

The first clue to the explanation came from the statement of his own experience in the trance, given by Paul Boynton, a particularly bright Carlisle student, who acted as my interpreter. His brother had died some time before, and as Paul was anxious to see and talk with him, which the new doctrine taught was possible, he attended the next Ghost dance, and putting his hands upon the head of Sitting Bull, according to the regular formula, asked him to help him see his dead brother. Paul is of an inquiring disposition, and, besides his natural longing to meet his brother again, was actuated, as he himself said, by a desire to try “every Indian trick.” He then told how Sitting Bull had hypnotized him with the eagle feather and the motion of his hands, until he fell unconscious and did really see his brother, but awoke just as he was about to speak to him, probably because one of the dancers had accidentally brushed against him as he lay on the ground. He embodied his experience in a song which was afterward sung in the dance. From his account it seemed almost certain that the secret was hypnotism. The explanation might have occurred to me sooner but for the fact that my previous Indian informants, after the manner of some other witnesses, had told only about their trance visions, forgetting to state how the visions were brought about.

This was in winter and the ground was covered deeply with snow, which stopped the dancing for several weeks. In the meantime I improved the opportunity by visiting the tipis every night to learn the songs and talk about the new religion. When the snow melted, the dances were renewed, and as by this time I had gained the confidence of the Indians I was invited to be present and thereafter on numerous occasions was able to watch the whole process by which the trances were produced. From the outside hardly anything can be seen of what goes on within the circle, but being a part of the circle myself I was able to see all that occurred inside, and by fixing attention on one subject at a time I was able to note all the stages of the phenomenon from the time the subject first attracted the notice of the medicine-man, through the staggering, the rigidity, the unconsciousness, and back again to wakefulness. On two occasions my partner in the dance, each time a woman, came under the influence and I was thus enabled to note the very first nervous tremor of her hand and mark it as it increased in violence until she broke away and staggered toward the medicine-man within the circle.

Young women are usually the first to be affected, then older women, and lastly men. Sometimes, however, a man proves as sensitive as the average woman. In particular I have seen one young Arapaho become rigid in the trance night after night. He was a Carlisle student, speaking good English and employed as clerk in a store. He afterward took part in the sun dance, dancing three days and nights without food, drink, or sleep. He is of a quiet, religious disposition, and if of white parentage would perhaps have become a minister, but being an Indian, the same tendency leads him into the Ghost dance and the sun dance. The fact that he could endure the terrible ordeal of the sun dance would go to show that his physical organization is not frail, as is frequently the case with hypnotic or trance subjects. So far as personal observation goes, the hypnotic subjects are usually as strong and healthy as the average of their tribe. It seems to be a question more of temperament than of bodily condition or physique. After having observed the Ghost dance among the southern tribes at intervals during a period of about four years, it is apparent that the hypnotic tendency is growing, although the original religious excitement is dying out. The trances are now more numerous among the same number of dancers. Some begin to tremble and stagger almost at the beginning of the dance, without any effort on the part of the medicine-man, while formerly it was usually late in the night before the trances began, although the medicine-men were constantly at work to produce such result. In many if not in most cases the medicine-men themselves have been in trances produced in the same fashion, and must thus be considered sensitives as well as those hypnotized by them.

Not every leader in the Ghost dance is able to bring about the hypnotic sleep, but anyone may try who feels so inspired. Excepting the seven chosen ones who start the songs there is no priesthood in the dance, the authority of such men as Sitting Bull and Black Coyote being due to the voluntary recognition of their superior ability or interest in the matter. Any man or woman who has been in a trance, and has thus derived inspiration from the other world, is at liberty to go within the circle and endeavor to bring others to the trance. Even when the result is unsatisfactory there is no interference with the performer, it being held that he is but the passive instrument of a higher power and therefore in no way responsible. A marked instance of this is the case of Cedar Tree, an Arapaho policeman, who took much interest in the dance, attending nearly every performance in his neighborhood, consecrating the ground and working within the circle to hypnotize the dancers. He was in an advanced stage of consumption, nervous and excitable to an extreme degree, and perhaps it was for this reason that those who came under his influence in the trance constantly complained that he led them on the “devil’s road” instead of the “straight road;” that he made them see monstrous and horrible shapes, but never the friends whom they wished to see. On this account they all dreaded to see him at work within the circle, but no one commanded him to desist as it was held that he was controlled by a stronger power and was to be pitied rather than blamed for his ill success. A similar idea exists in Europe in connection with persons reputed to possess the evil eye. Cedar Tree himself deplored the result of his efforts and expressed the hope that by earnest prayer he might finally be able to overcome the evil influence.

THE GHOST DANCE—LARGE CIRCLE]

We shall now describe the hypnotic process as used by the operators, with the various stages of the trance. The hypnotist, usually a man, stands within the ring, holding in his hand an eagle feather or a scarf or handkerchief, white, black, or of any other color. Sometimes he holds the feather in one hand and the scarf in the other. As the dancers circle around singing the songs in time with the dance step the excitement increases until the more sensitive ones are visibly affected. In order to hasten the result certain songs are sung to quicker time, notably the Arapaho song beginning _Nû′nanû′naatani′na Hu′hu_. We shall assume that the subject is a woman. The first indication that she is becoming affected is a slight muscular tremor, distinctly felt by her two partners who hold her hands on either side. The medicine-man is on the watch, and as soon as he notices the woman’s condition he comes over and stands immediately in front of her, looking intently into her face and whirling the feather or the handkerchief, or both, rapidly in front of her eyes, moving slowly around with the dancers at the same time, but constantly facing the woman. All this time he keeps up a series of sharp exclamations, Hu! Hu! Hu! like the rapid breathing of an exhausted runner. From time to time he changes the motion of the feather or handkerchief from a whirling to a rapid up-and-down movement in front of her eyes. For a while the woman continues to move around with the circle of dancers, singing the song with the others, but usually before the circuit is completed she loses control of herself entirely, and, breaking away from the partners who have hold of her hands on either side, she staggers into the ring, while the circle at once closes up again behind her. She is now standing before the medicine-man, who gives his whole attention to her, whirling the feather swiftly in front of her eyes, waving his hands before her face as though fanning her, and drawing his hand slowly from the level of her eyes away to one side or upward into the air, while her gaze follows it with a fixed stare. All the time he keeps up the Hu! Hu! Hu! while the song and the dance go on around them without a pause. For a few minutes she continues to repeat the words of the song and keep time with the step, but in a staggering, drunken fashion. Then the words become unintelligible sounds, and her movements violently spasmodic, until at last she becomes rigid, with her eyes shut or fixed and staring, and stands thus uttering low pitiful moans (plate +CXVII+). If this is in the daytime, the operator tries to stand with his back to the sun, so that the full sunlight shines in the woman’s face (plate +CXVI+). The subject may retain this fixed, immovable posture for an indefinite time, but at last falls heavily to the ground, unconscious and motionless (plate +CXVIII+). The dance and the song never stop, but as soon as the woman falls the medicine-man gives his attention to another subject among the dancers. The first one may lie unconscious for ten or twenty minutes or sometimes for hours, but no one goes near to disturb her, as her soul is now communing with the spirit world. At last consciousness gradually returns. A violent tremor seizes her body as in the beginning of the fit. A low moan comes from her lips, and she sits up and looks about her like one awaking from sleep. Her whole form trembles violently, but at last she rises to her feet and staggers away from the dancers, who open the circle to let her pass. All the phenomena of recovery, except rigidity, occur in direct reverse of those which precede unconsciousness.

Sometimes before falling the hypnotized subject runs wildly around the circle or out over the prairie, or goes through various crazy evolutions like those of a lunatic. On one occasion—but only once—I have seen the medicine-man point his finger almost in the face of the hypnotized subject, and then withdrawing his finger describe with it a large circle about the tipis. The subject followed the direction indicated, sometimes being hidden from view by the crowd, and finally returned, with his eyes still fixed and staring, to the place where the medicine-man was standing. There is frequently a good deal of humbug mixed with these performances, some evidently pretending to be hypnotized in order to attract notice or to bring about such a condition from force of imitation, but the greater portion is unquestionably genuine and beyond the control of the subjects. In many instances the hypnotized person spins around for minutes at a time like a dervish, or whirls the arms with apparently impossible speed, or assumes and retains until the final fall most uncomfortable positions which it would be impossible to keep for any length of time under normal conditions. Frequently a number of persons are within the ring at once, in all the various stages of hypnotism. The proportion of women thus affected is about three times that of men.

THE AREA COVERED BY THE DANCE

It is impossible to give more than an approximate statement as to the area of the Ghost dance and the messiah doctrine and the number of Indians involved. According to the latest official report, there are about 146,000 Indians west of Missouri river, exclusive of the five civilized nations in Indian Territory. Probably all these tribes heard of the new doctrine, but only a part took any active interest in it. Generally speaking, it was never taken up by the great tribe of the Navaho, by any of the Pueblos except the Taos, or by any of the numerous tribes of the Columbia region. The thirty or thirty-five tribes more or less concerned with the dance have an aggregate population of about 60,000 souls. A number of these were practically unanimous in their acceptance of the new doctrine, notably the Paiute, Shoshoni, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Caddo, and Pawnee, while of others, as the Comanche, only a small minority ever engaged in it. Only about one-half of the 26,000 Sioux took an active part in it. It may safely be said, however, that the doctrine and ceremony of the Ghost dance found more adherents among our tribes than any similar Indian religious movement within the historic period, with the single possible exception of the crusade inaugurated by Tenskwatawa, the Shawano prophet, in 1805. (See plate +LXXXV+.)

THE GHOST DANCE—PRAYING]

PRESENT CONDITION OF THE DANCE

Among most of these tribes the movement is already extinct, having died a natural death, excepting in the case of the Sioux. The Shoshoni and some others lost faith in it after the failure of the first predictions. The Sioux probably discontinued the dance before the final surrender, as the battle of Wounded Knee and the subsequent events convinced even the most fanatic believers that their expectations of invulnerability and supernatural assistance were deceptive. The Paiute were yet dancing a year ago, and as their dream has received no such rude awakening as among the Sioux, they are probably still patiently awaiting the great deliverance, in spite of repeated postponements, although the frenzied earnestness of the early period has long ago abated. The Kiowa, who discarded the doctrine on the adverse report of Ä′piatañ, have recently taken up the dance again and are now dancing as religiously as ever under the leadership of the old men, although the progressive element in the tribe is strongly opposed to it. Among the other tribes in Oklahoma—especially the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Caddo, Wichita, Pawnee, and Oto—the Ghost dance has become a part of the tribal life and is still performed at frequent intervals, although the feverish expectation of a few years ago has now settled down into something closely approaching the Christian hope of a reunion with departed friends in a happier world at some time in the unknown future.

As for the great messiah himself, when last heard from Wovoka was on exhibition as an attraction at the Midwinter fair in San Francisco. By this time he has doubtless retired into his original obscurity.

+Chapter XVI+

PARALLELS IN OTHER SYSTEMS

I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your
young men shall see visions.—_Joel._

How is it then, brethren? When ye come together every one of you
hath a doctrine, hath a revelation.—_I Corinthians._

THE BIBLICAL PERIOD

The remote in time or distance is always strange. The familiar present is always natural and a matter of course. Beyond the narrow range of our horizon imagination creates a new world, but as we advance in any direction, or as we go back over forgotten paths, we find ever a continuity and a succession. The human race is one in thought and action. The systems of our highest modern civilizations have their counterparts among all the nations, and their chain of parallels stretches backward link by link until we find their origin and interpretation in the customs and rites of our own barbarian ancestors, or of our still existing aboriginal tribes. There is nothing new under the sun.

The Indian messiah religion is the inspiration of a dream. Its ritual is the dance, the ecstasy, and the trance. Its priests are hypnotics and cataleptics. All these have formed a part of every great religious development of which we have knowledge from the beginning of history.

In the ancestors of the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament, we have a pastoral people, living in tents, acquainted with metal working, but without letters, agriculture, or permanent habitations. They had reached about the plane of our own Navaho, but were below that of the Pueblo. Their mythologic and religious system was closely parallel. Their chiefs were priests who assumed to govern by inspiration from God, communicated through frequent dreams and waking visions. Each of the patriarchs is the familiar confidant of God and his angels, going up to heaven in dreams and receiving direct instructions in waking visits, and regulating his family and his tribe, and ordering their religious ritual, in accord with these instructions. Jacob, alone in the desert, sleeps and dreams, and sees a ladder reaching to heaven, with angels going up and down upon it, and God himself, who tells him of the future greatness of the Jewish nation. So Wovoka, asleep on the mountain, goes up to the Indian heaven and is told by the Indian god of the coming restoration of his race. Abraham is “tempted” by God and commanded to sacrifice his son, and proceeds to carry out the supernatural injunction. So Black Coyote dreams and is commanded to sacrifice himself for the sake of his children.

THE GHOST DANCE—INSPIRATION]

Coming down to a later period we find the Chaldean Job declaring that God speaketh “in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men; then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction.” The whole of the prophecies are given as direct communications from the other world, with the greatest particularity of detail, as, for instance, in the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, where he says that “it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”

In the New Testament, representing the results of six centuries of development beyond the time of the prophets and in intimate contact with more advanced civilizations, we still have the dream as the controlling influence in religion. In the very beginning of the new dispensation we are told that, while Joseph slept, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and as a result “Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him.” The most important events in the history of the infant redeemer are regulated, not in accordance with the ordinary manner of probabilities, but by dreams.

The four gospels are full of inspirational dreams and trances, such as the vision of Cornelius, and that of Peter, when he went up alone upon the housetop to pray and “fell into a trance and saw heaven opened,” and again when “a vision appeared to Paul in the night,” of a man who begged him to come over into Macedonia, so that “immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us.” In another place Paul—the same Paul who had that wonderful vision on the road to Damascus—declares that he knew a man who was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words. In Paul we have the typical religious evangel, a young enthusiast, a man of sensibility and refinement above his fellows, so carried away by devotion to his ideal that he attaches himself to the most uncompromising sect among his own people, and when it seems to be assailed by an alien force, not content simply to hold his own belief, he seeks and obtains official authority to root out the heresy. As he goes on this errand, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” the mental strain overcomes him. He falls down in the road, hears voices, and sees a strange light. His companions raise him up and lead him by the hand into the city, where for several days he remains sightless without food or drink. From this time he is a changed man. Without any previous knowledge or investigation of the new faith he believes himself called by heaven to embrace it, and the same irrepressible enthusiasm which had made him its bitterest persecutor leads him now to defend it against all the world and even to cross the sea into a far country in obedience to a dream to spread the doctrine. In many respects he reminds us forcibly of such later evangelists as Fox and Wesley.

The cloudy indistinctness which Wovoka and his followers ascribe to the Father as he appears to them in their trance visions has numerous parallels in both Testaments. At Sinai the Lord declares to Moses, “I come unto thee in a thick cloud,” and thereafter whenever Moses went up the mountain or entered into the tabernacle to receive revelations “the Lord descended upon it in a cloudy pillar.” Job also tells us that “thick clouds are a covering to him,” and Isaiah says that he “rideth upon a swift cloud,” which reminds us of the Ghost song of the Arapaho representing the Indian redeemer as coming upon the whirlwind. Moses goes up into a mountain to receive inspiration like Wovoka of the Paiute and Bi′äñk̔i of the Kiowa. As Wovoka claims to bring rain or snow at will, so Elijah declares that “there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word,” while of the Jewish Messiah himself his wondering disciples say that even the winds and the sea obey him.

Fasting and solitary contemplation in lonely places were as powerful auxiliaries to the trance condition in Bible days as now among the tribes of the plains. When Daniel had his great vision by the river Hiddekel, he tells us that he had been mourning for three full weeks, during which time he “ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all.” When the vision comes, all the strength and breath leave his body and he falls down, and “then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.” Six hundred years later, Christ is “led by the spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted by the devil, and in those days he did eat nothing.” Another instance occurs at his baptism, when, as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the spirit like a dove, and heard a voice, and immediately was driven by the spirit into the wilderness. In the transfiguration on the mountain, when “his face did shine as the sun,” and in the agony of Gethsemane, with its mental anguish and bloody sweat, we see the same phenomena that appear in the lives of religious enthusiasts from Mohammed and Joan of Arc down to George Fox and the prophets of the Ghost dance.

Dancing, which forms so important a part of primitive rituals, had a place among the forms of the ancient Hebrew and of their neighbors, although there are but few direct references to it in the Bible. The best example occurs in the account of the transfer of the ark to Zion, where there were processions and sacrifices, and King David himself “danced before the Lord with all his might.”

MOHAMMEDANISM

Six hundred years after the birth of Christianity another great religion, which numbers its adherents by the hundred million, had its origin in the same region and among a kindred Semitic race. Its prophet and high priest was the cataleptic Mohammed, who was born about the year 570 and died in 642. In infancy and all through life he was afflicted with epileptic attacks and fainting fits, during which he would lose all appearance of life without always losing inner consciousness. It was while in this condition that he received the visions and revelations on which he built his religious system. Frequently at such times it was necessary to wrap him up to preserve life in his body, and at other times he was restored by being drenched with cold water. At one time for a period of two years he was in such a mental condition—subject to hallucinations—that he doubted his own sanity, believing himself to be possessed by evil spirits, and contemplated suicide. “It is disputed whether Mohammed was epileptic, cataleptic, hysteric, or what not. Sprenger seems to think that the answer to this medical question is the key to the whole problem of Islam.” (“_Mohammedanism_,” in _Encyclopedia Britannica_.) To how many other systems might such an answer be the key?

THE GHOST DANCE—RIGID]

We are told that ordinarily his body had but little natural warmth, but that whenever the angel appeared to him, as the Mohammedan biographers express it, the perspiration burst out on his forehead, his eyes became red, he trembled violently, and would bellow like a young camel—all the accompaniments of the most violent epileptic fit. Usually the fit ended in a swoon. There is no question that he was sincere in his claim of divine inspiration. His last hours were serene and peaceful, and there is no evidence of the slightest misgiving on his part as to the reality of his mission as a prophet sent from God. Some of his inspiration came in dreams, and he was accustomed to say that a prophet’s dream is a revelation. At times the revelation came to him without any painful or strange accompaniment.

The fit during which he received the revelation of his religious mission is thus described, as it came to him after a long period of despondency and mental hallucinations: “In this morbid state of feeling he is said to have heard a voice, and on raising his head, beheld Gabriel, who assured him he was the prophet of God. Frightened, he returned home, and called for covering. He had a fit, and they poured cold water on him, and when he came to himself he heard these words: ‘Oh, thou covered one, arise, and preach, and magnify thy Lord;’ and henceforth, we are told, he received revelations without intermission. Before this supposed revelation he had been medically treated on account of the evil eye, and when the Koran first descended to him he fell into fainting fits, when, after violent shudderings, his eyes closed, and his mouth foamed.” (_Gardner, Faiths of the World._)

Solitude also had much to do with his visions, as a great part of his early life was spent in the lonely occupation of a shepherd among the Arabian mountains. Like other prophets he asserted that the various angels had offered him control over the stars, the sun, the mountains, and the sea. Further, it is claimed most positively by all his followers that his great ascent into the seven heavens was made bodily and in full wakefulness, and not merely in spirit while asleep, and this assertion they supported by “the declarations of God and his prophet, the imâms of the truth, the verses of the Koran, and thousands of traditions,” as earnestly as religious enthusiasts the world over have ever backed up the impossible.

The kinship of the late Semitic idea to the old is well exemplified in Mohammed’s account of this vision, in which he is conducted to Mount Sinai, where he is directed to alight and pray, because there God had spoken to Moses, after which he is conducted to Bethlehem, where again he is directed to alight and pray, because there Jesus was born, after which again he is brought into the presence of Abraham, Moses, Enoch, John the Baptist, and Jesus, by all of whom he was hailed as a worthy brother and prophet. The direct descent becomes plainer still when we learn how Mohammed, on his return from talking with God in the seventh heaven, again meets Moses, who persuades him that the religious exercises prescribed by God for the faithful are too onerous, and goes back with him to plead with the Lord for a reduction of the daily prayers from fifty to five as Abraham pleaded for Sodom.

The spirit world of our Indians is a place where death and old age are unknown, and where every one is happy in the simple happiness which he knew on earth—hunting, feasting, and playing the old-time games with former friends, but without war, for there all is peace. The ideal happiness is material, perhaps, but it is such happiness as the world might long for, with nothing in it gross or beyond reasonable probability. The Semitic ideal, from which our own is derived, is very different. We get one conception, in the book of Revelation and the limits of space, whose business is every morning to praise the Lord and set all the cocks on earth to crowing after him. There is an angel who bathes daily in a river, after which he flaps his wings, and from every drop that falls from them there is created an angel with 20,000 faces and 40,000 tongues, each of which speaks a distinct language, unintelligible to the rest. But the masterpiece is the tree _tooba_, whose fruit is the food of the inhabitants of paradise. Every branch produces a hundred thousand different-colored fruits, while from its roots run rivers of water, milk, wine, and honey. As if this were not enough, the tree produces also ready-made clothing. “On the tree were baskets filled with garments of the brocade and satin of paradise. A million of baskets are allotted to each believer, each basket containing a hundred thousand garments, all of different class and fashion”—and so on ad nauseam. (_Merrick’s Mohammed._) When we reflect that this is accepted by more than 150,000,000 civilized Orientals, from whom we have derived much of our own culture, we may, perhaps, be more tolerantly disposed toward the American Indian belief.

JOAN OF ARC

The most remarkable, the most heroic and pathetic instance of religious hallucination in Europe is that of Joan of Arc, known as the Maid of Orleans, born in 1412 and burned at the stake in 1431, and recently beatified as the patron saint of France. Naturally of a contemplative disposition, she was accustomed from earliest childhood to long fasts and solitary communings, in which she brooded over the miserable condition of her country, then overrun by English armies. When 13 years of age, she had a vision in which a voice spoke to her from out of a great light, telling her that God had chosen her to restore France. She immediately fell on her knees and made a vow of virginity and entire devotion to the cause, and from that day to the time of her cruel death she believed herself inspired and guided by supernatural voices to lead her countrymen against the invader. A simple peasant girl, she sought out the royal court and boldly announced to the king her divine mission. Her manner made such an impression that she was assigned a command, and putting on a soldier’s dress and carrying a sword which she claimed had come to her through miraculous means, she led the armies of France, performing superhuman feats of courage and endurance and winning victory after victory for three years until she was finally captured. After a long and harassing mockery of a trial, in which the whole machinery of the law and the church was brought into action for the destruction of one poor girl barely 19 years of age, she was finally condemned and burned at Rouen, ostensibly as a witch and a heretic, but really as the most dangerous enemy of English tyranny in France.

THE GHOST DANCE—UNCONSCIOUS]

She was forever hearing these spirit voices, which she called “her voices” or “her counsel.” They spoke to her with articulate words in the ripple of the village fountain, in the vesper bells, in the rustling of the leaves, and in the sighing of the wind. Sometimes it was the warlike archangel Michael, but oftener it was the gentle Saint Katherine, who appeared to her as a beautiful woman wearing a crown. Her visions must be ascribed to the effect of the troubled times in which she lived, acting on an enthusiastic, unquestioning religious temperament. She is described as physically robust and intellectually keen, aside from her hallucination, as was proven in her trial, and there is no evidence that she was subject to epilepsy or other abnormal conditions such as belonged to Mohammed and most others of the same class. Her long and frequent fasts unquestionably aided the result. She claimed no supernatural powers outside of her peculiar mission, and in every public undertaking relied entirely on the guidance of her voices.

Toward the end these voices were accompanied by other hallucinations, together with presentiments of her coming death. On one occasion, while assaulting a garrison, her men fled, leaving her standing on the moat with only four or five soldiers. Seeing her danger, a French officer galloped up to rescue her and impatiently asked her why she stood there alone. Lifting her helmet from her face she looked at him with astonishment and replied that she was not alone—that she had 50,000 men with her—and then, despite his entreaties, she turned to her phantom army and shouted out her commands to bring logs to bridge the moat. It was in April, while standing alone on the ramparts of Mélun, that the voices first told her that she would be taken before midsummer. From that time the warning was constantly repeated, and although she told no one and still exposed herself fearlessly, she no longer assumed the responsibility of command. Two months later she was in the hands of her enemies.