hundred buffaloes, the sight of a herd the next morning in
the northeast, toward the Frenchman, tempted their
hunters, and many of them went in pursuit, leaving the
old men, squaws and children to pack the ponies and
follow. No sooner were the hunters out of sight than a
band of Sioux, bloodthirsty enemies of the Pawnee,
pounced on the helpless remnant in the canon below.

About noon that day, while we were at work on our
building at Culbertson, we saw about thirty Indians dis-
mounted and lined up on the hill about three hundred
yards to the northwest of us, and making great effort to
attract our attention. Our party, six in number and well
armed, formed in line in front of them and laid our guns
on the ground, the Indians doing the same. Then one of
our party picked up his gun to indicate that only one of
them should take his gun. After some time they under-
stood that we wanted them to meet one of us half way,
which was done and they proved to be Pawnee. We
motioned for them to all come down, and by this time many
of the survivors of the battle were in sight and in less
than an hour about two hundred of them had gathered
around us. There were squaws, many of them with their
papooses strapped to their backs, and old men and young,
all crying and pleading for protection, making a pitiful
sight indeed. Their story was short. The attack was
made from the west bank of the canon, about the center
of the camp, separating the occupants, a part of whom
retreated northeast to the Frenchman and the rest down
the canon to the Republican. They met again at and
below the mouth of the Frenchman. The Sioux followed
them until long after dark. The fight or massacre occurred
about nine or ten o'clock on the morning of August 5, 1873.
The next morning we were on the battleground early, and
the sight that greeted us will never be forgotten. The
dead were scattered along the narrow canon, half a mile
or more. Seven bodies were piled in a pool of water, six



LAST BATTLE OF PAWNEE WITH SIOUX 167

behind a small knoll on the side of the canon, where they
had taken refuge. Men, women and children lay scattered
here and there, all scalped. One child about two years
old had been scalped alive. About the 24th of the month
a company of soldiers came from Ft. McPherson and buried
the victims, sixty-five in number, in one hole in the side of
the cailon, caving the bank in on them. The condition
of the bodies after lying in the hot sun for twenty days
must be imagined. We raised them up with a pitchfork,
tied one end of a rope around each body, fastened the
other end to the horn of a saddle and then dragged them
to the grave. Several bodies were found afterward along
the line of retreat, one of the wounded died near Culbertson,
another at Indianola, and perhaps many others on the
way to their reservation and after their arrival. Notwith-
standing that the history fakers of the East would have it
that the entire band was massacred, the loss did not exceed
one hundred. The most notable of the dead were Sky
Chief and Pawnee Mary, a white woman.

It has been said that the loss of the Sioux was never
known, but I think we have almost positive proof that only
six of them were killed. During the month of September
we were hunting on the Frenchman and camped one night
in the mouth of a cafion, about three miles west of the
place where Palisade is now situated. In this canon
there were many large trees containing a considerable
number of Indians, buried according to the Sioux custom
of placing their dead on scaffolds in trees. Upon examina-
tion we found six that had been dead only a short time,
and they had been killed with bullets. All of the Pawnee
were killed with arrows, for though the Sioux were well
armed with guns they doubtless preferred to use bows
and arrows, fearing that the reports of guns might bring
back the Pawnee hunters. To make sure that we had
found the Sioux that were killed in the fight we followed
their trail which led direct to the battle field.



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE

[Address of Mr. James Mooney of the Bureau of
American Ethnology at the annual meeting of the Nebraska
State Historical Society, January 18, 1910.]

The boy starting out in life is eager and enthusiastic
for every new enterprise. As responsibilities and cares
increase he tries to limit his duties, and after a time he
begins to count the disappointments and wonder whether
it is all worth while. Then, as the years go by, when his
wife is gone, his children buried or married away from
him and the old friends, who were his partners in the
things of life, are dead,— after a while he comes to the
place where his dearest joy is to sit down and dream of the
days that are past. This is a natural thing and universal
in its human application. If it has not come to each one
of us, it surely will come. This is the whole meaning of
the Indian ghost dance. It is the dwelling upon the
days that have gone before, with the hope that if the past
itself cannot return we may find something of it on the
other side. We have parallels in earlier periods of our
own history in the shape of religious revivals or spiritual
ecstacies which spread over great areas or among several
nations at once. There have been several similar revivals
of Indian thought and fervor in different parts of America
in aboriginal times. One notable instance occurs in the
history of Peru where, in 1781, a descendant of the ancient
Inca kings arose among the Indians, preaching the doctrine
that the old native empire was soon to be restored and
that the hated Spanish conquerers and the whole white
race would disappear from the earth. The result was a
terrible war ending at last in the capture and death of the
Inca and his chief supporters.

(168)



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE 169

When France surrendered Canada to England the
native tribes continued the struggle on their own account
for some years, owing largely to the influence of a prophet
who had arisen among them preaching a return to the old
Indian customs and warning them that they had lost their
lands and dominion because they had abandoned their
native customs for those of the white man. He taught
that the only way to recover their lost heritage was to
throw away the tools and customs of the white man and
return to the Indian dress and life, even discarding guns
for the old-time bow and arrow. It was a very hard thing
for them to do, but in a large measure they did it. That
doctrine was taken up by nearly every tribe from the
Alleghenies — then the Indian frontier — to the head-
waters of the Mississippi river. The result was Pontiac's
war. The same doctrine of return to the old Indian life
was revived by the Shawnee prophet forty years later,
leading up to the battle of Tippecanoe and the general
Indian aUiance against the Americans in the war of 1812.

About the year 1888 we began to hear of an Indian
prophet in Nevada who was preaching to the Indians some
new revelation that was not clearly understood among the
whites, but beUeved to be an incitement to a general up-
rising along the western frontier. The agents and inter-
preters, not knowing what it meant, as nobody did except
the Indians themselves, magnified the matter in such a
way that the western people became alarmed. The govern-
ment was worried about it, and the Indian office made
some inquiry, but with no great result. The war depart-
ment sent an officer to the Kiowa and Cheyenne of Okla-
homa to learn what it meant, and, altogether, it looked as
though there might be trouble.

Just at this crisis, in 1889, a treaty was negotiated
with the Sioux, by which they sold one-half of then- great
reservation, the remainder being cut up into five smaller



170 NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

reservations, and the ceded lands sold off to white settlers.
The terms of this treaty had not been yet carried out,
although the whites were already in possession of the
lands thrown open. In addition to this cause of dissatis-
faction, the rations were reduced without warning by
about twenty per cent, so that when news of the new
revelation reached the Sioux the ferment took on a critical
aspect. As I was about to go to Oklahoma on ethnologic
work, I asked to be allowed to look into the trouble. Per-
mission was granted, and I left Washington in December,
1890, the month in which the unrest among the Sioux
culminated in the killing of Sitting Bull and the massacre
of Wounded Knee. I went first to the Cheyenne and
Arapaho. The papers were saying that those tribes were
in such a threatening attitude on account of the news
from the north that it would be necessary to disarm them,
and that if it could not be done peaceably a great many
things were going to happen. It did not seem, however,
that there was occasion for so much alarm because we all
know how easy it is to exaggerate if you do not know.
The danger is always greater before you encounter it.

At the Cheyenne agency I found things going on in
the ordinary routine, except that the Indians were engaged
in the ghost dance day and night. There was hardly a
day when they did not dance, except that just at this
particular period they had stopped for a while on account
of a deep snow which compelled them to stay in their
tipis. I began my inquiry in those two tribes because they
were particularly interested in the new religion, and also
because they had a large number of educated young men
who could act as interpreters. Education seems to have
stuck to the young men of the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
They are more intelligent and reliable than those of some
other tribes. The Arapaho are a particularly friendly
people. Those of you who are acquainted with the history



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE 171

of that tribe remember that it was generally on the friendly
side in the pioneer times; and as a tribe the Arapaho
never made war against the government, notwithstanding
that there are many brave men among them. They have
no hostile record, but they have been able to see that
civilization is superior to savagery and that it had come to
stay, and they have honestly tried to meet it half way and
adopt it. They are naturally accommodating, kindly, and
of friendly disposition. The Cheyenne, living with them
upon the same reservation, are a people of good intellectual
power, but of very different temperament. They are a
pugnacious people, stand upon their dignity, and always
want to know what you want to do it for. It is hard to
convince them and get their consent to a proposition.

I found the two tribes thoroughly devoted to this
new Indian religion. All the older ones, all the middle-
aged, down to the boys and girls, even little children who
were not much more than able to stand upon their feet,
were in the dance day and night. They knew reports had
gone abroad to the effect that they were contemplating
mischief, but they knew the stories were untrue, so when they
found that I had come out from Washington to investigate
and to report the real truth, they were very anxious to
explain conditions to me, so that Washington might know
why they were dancing and that they were not going to
hurt anybody.

There was a camp of Indian policemen over near the
agency; and as the Arapaho police considered themselves
a part of Washington, several of them invited me to come
to their tipis at night where they would explain the religion
and give me the songs. So with the help of these young
men as interpreters and a half dozen of my police friends —
and they are my friends today after all these years — I
got the story and the songs. Among the interpreters I
may name Robert Burns, a Cheyenne, clerk at the agency,



172 NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

and one of the best specimens of an educated Indian I
ever knew. His father had been killed at the Chivington
massacre. Among others were Jesse Bent, an Arapaho,
with a strain of white blood from the Bent family; Grant
Left Hand, son of the old head chief of the Arapaho; Paul
Boynton, half Cheyenne and half Arapaho; and Clever
Warden, nephew of the noted Arapaho chief, Powder Face.
Altogether, about half a dozen of these young men volun-
teered to help me. I did not have to ask them. They
said, "We will help you. We are glad you are interested
and we want the white people to understand." So we
went out to the camp and they told me about the doctrine
and the visions, sang the songs and explained them. They
would give me one of the songs of the dance, reciting it
word by word, while I wrote it down in the special alphabet
which we have for recording Indian words, and repeating
it patiently until I had it right. After we had been at
work for a week or two I began to think about the business
end of it and asked the police what I owed them. They
said they did not want anything, that they were glad
Washington had sent somebody out there to go back and
tell the truth about their dance. So not one of them
received a dollar or would take a dollar for his services.
As a rule, of course, my Indian workers are paid for all they
do, and never refuse money. Black Coyote, the head man
of the Arapaho police, was one of those who had made a
pilgrimage to the messiah in Nevada and received a message
to teach the new religion to his people. The Arapaho are
people of a spiritual tendency; and they were so much
interested by the new religion that they took it upon
themselves to be missionaries among the other tribes. As
the Arapaho language is particularly suited to singing, the
tribal songs were being sung by all the tribes in that section,
whatever their language might be, including the Cheyenne,
Arapaho, Caddo, Wichita, Kiowa, Comanche and one or
two smaller tribes.



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE 173

After being some time with the Cheyenne and Arapaho
I went down to the Kiowa and found there one of the head
men who had recently been to see the messiah in Nevada.
He was not so favorably impressed and came back and
reported adversely, so the Kiowa had temporarily lost con-
fidence in the revelation, but later they took it up again.
Their neighbors, the Caddo and Wichita, were heart and
soul in the movement, but the Comanche never took much
interest in it. The Cheyenne were not much interested
because in the first place, as I have said, they are par-
ticularly proud and indisposed to take suggestions or advice
from anybody else. Again, they have a very sacred medi-
cine of their own, a bundle of "medicine arrows" around
which all the ceremonial of the tribe centers. The Arapaho
"medicine" is a sacred pipe which is kept by the band in
Wyoming. The Comanche are skeptics by nature with
very little ceremonial organization or ritual and no sun
dance. They are a sort of Indian democrats, every man
for himself. The Kiowa are strongly centralized, with
their own tribal medicine and sun dance. They are open
to suggestion and they took up this religion, dropped it
when their delegate reported against it, and afterwards
they lost confidence in him and his report and went back
again to the ghost dance. The smaller tribes, having
nearly lost their own old forms, were glad to take up the
new ritual.

I am speaking of the dance as a religion because it is
the ritual part of the religion itself. It should be under-
stood also that this ghost dance religion was not an old
institution among these people, but was an entirely new
Indian religion. The older people doubted; but afterward
some accepted while others continued to regret it, causing
a good deal of feeling between the two parties. Later it
was accepted by nearly all the tribes of the plains from the
Saskatchewan river on the north down to Texas, and from the



174 NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Missouri river on the east to the Sierra Nevada and Cali-
fornia on the west. It never made much headwaj^ in
Cahfornia, Arizona or New Mexico. Neither did the
Omaha or Winnebago take much stock in it. In pursuing
the investigation I visited most of the western tribes, so
that I was able to map out the area of the dance.

While talking in the Arapaho tipis when the snow was
too deep for dancing, the Indians told me many strange
things which I could not understand, about trances and
visions, until one of the educated young men related his
own experience in the dance, which at once convinced me
that hypnotism was its basis and stimulus. When the
Indians began dancing again I went out with them, day
after day and night after night. I saw the dance among
the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Caddo and Wichita, and
in order to know and understand it more thoroughly I
made myself a part of it.

At that time these tribes were very strict in the cere-
monial. They were taught that they must return as nearly
as possible to the old Indian dress and customs; so they
discarded hats in the dance. The Kiowa and Comanche
at that time did not wear hats, but the Cheyenne and
Arapaho did, excepting in the dance. Those who were
recognized as masters of the ceremony and particularly
those who had been to see the messiah, the originator of the
doctrine, wore crow feathers instead of hats; and some
of the older women who were recognized as leaders in the
same way were also privileged to wear the feathers. The
fact that women were permitted to enter the circle and
perform in the same way as the medicine men themselves
showed that the ghost dance religion was a new departure
among Indians. The dancers wore full suits of buckskin,
but did not wear hats. In those days every man, woman
and child had a buckskin suit. Their faces were painted
in various colors and patterns. The women wore shawls



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE 175

oraamented with ribbons and trimmed with little bells
which jingled as they danced, broad belts studded with
metal disks, and straps covered with German silver hanging
at the side like sabers. They would begin the dance,—
perhaps five hundred in one great circle — in the afternoon
and keep it up until sundown; and after supper they would
get together again and dance until about midnight and
then disperse. In the dance they would sing songs that
expressed the ideas of the new religion. They circled
slowly around at first, but intermittently standing still
with hands hanging by their sides. Then one of the leaders
would start the song which all would repeat in a low tone
and standing still. Then they would join hands and
begin slowly circling around, singing as they went, the
chorus gradually becoming louder until it could be heard
several miles away. The performance had a weird aspect.
The effect of the rythmic movement in a great circle,
enhanced by strikingly picturesque apparel and loud,
piercing song and all in the glamor of the boundless moon-
lit prairie can only be feebly imagined. Inside the circle
the leaders were going through their part of the per-
formance.

I shall now explain the meaning of it all as preached
by the messiah, a young Piute, who lived in Nevada. He
taught that the whole human race was of one kindred,
and particularly that the Indians of the several tribes
were all brothers and must give up tribal warfare and all
thought of warfare with the whites. You can imagine
what it meant to tell an Indian that he must quit thinking
about war. It is all right for missionaries to tell him
that, but when an Indian preached to Indians that they
must quit fighting, that they must not kill one another,
that they must not touch a white man, you can imagine
what an entire change of the point of view of life that in-
volved. It meant that they must forego the war dance and



176 NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

the carrying of weapons in the ghost dance and, instead,
cultivate a peaceful attitude of mind. The prophet taught
that if they did these things, if they returned to the Indian
dress and manner of life, if they wore the sacred feathers
and danced this dance and sang these songs, and performed
all the other requirements, after a while this old world
would be done away with and instead of it there would
be a new world which was being prepared for them, with
their dead children, their fathers, mothers, and com-
panions who had gone before, with the buffalo and other
game, and the old Indian life in its entirety. The new
world was already advancing from the west, and when it
came it would push the white people before it to their
own proper country across the ocean, and leave this country
to the Indians, the original owners. When it arrived the
feathers that the dancers wore on their heads would turn
into wings by which they would mount up to the new
earth. All this was to come without fighting, or any
effort upon their part; they should only watch and pray
in anticipation of it; and by doing as instructed, dancing
and singing the songs, they would be enabled to see visions
of what was to come, and to meet in advance and talk
with their friends who had gone before. Consequently,
they were all anxious to see the visions which appeared
through the medium of hypnotism.

The self-appointed leaders, generally men but some-
times women, stood inside the circle as the dancers went
round and round. All the songs were adapted to produce
a sort of spiritual exaltation. They were sung with a
certain formal step and measure, — rising and falling, and
finally leading up to the highest pitch of excitement. As
the dancers went round and round, first one and then
another of the more sensitive subjects, perhaps those most
anxiously praying to see some dead friends, would begin
to lose control of themselves. As soon as this became



THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE 177

noticeable one of the men inside the circle would come
over to the subject, holding in his hand a black scarf, sug-
gestive of a crow, the crow being regarded as a messenger
from the spirit world. He would wave this scarf before
the eyes of the subject until the latter would break away
from his partners and stagger into the ring. Then stand-
ing in front of the subject the hypnotizer would shake the
black scarf in his face, crying, Huh! Huh! Huh! until it
would have required a good deal of an effort even for a
white man to keep his senses.

On two occasions my partner in the dance, a woman
in each case, was seized in that way so that I was able to
mark the phenomenon. The first indication would be a
slight tremor of the hand, soon becoming more pronounced
until it was evident that the subject was under very strong
excitement. In a Httle while she would loose her hold,
break away and stagger into the circle. Then the leader,
or, perhaps, two or three together, would come over to
her and work for the purpose of bringing her into a trance
condition so that she might have one of the visions and
be able to tell her experience at the next dance. The last
stage was usually a strong shaking of the whole body,
particularly the arms, increasing in violence until finally
rigidity followed. I saw subjects standing rigid for ten
minutes with one arm uphfted and eyes closed, while some
five hundred people were circling around, until at last they
fell unconscious. That condition might last for half an
hour. I have seen young men and women in all stages
of the trance, — sometimes as many as twenty scattered
about, some trembling, some rigid, and some stretched
out unconscious on the ground. Those in the trance were
left undisturbed so that there should be no interference
with the vision. There was no fear that they would not
come out of it safely. The exhibition was very weird and
uncanny, but there was nothing dangerous in the excitement.

12



178 NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

As the unconsciousness passed off, usually the subject
would groan a few times, then gradually sit up, and after
a while be able to get up and stagger away through the
circle and probably go home. It was then assumed that
the subject or victim had experienced a vision; and under
the circumstances, doubtless, there generally was a vision
of what was believed to be coming in the near future.
The successful subject would incorporate his fancies into
a song which he would sing at the next dance. It is very
easy for an Indian to make up a song — all he needs is
rhythm; he does not require rhyme. The new song would
be taken up and sung for some weeks, perhaps until it
was superseded, after a while, by a new one. There were
specific opening and closing songs, but all the others varied
according to the fancies of the dancer.

I studied the dance in some twenty tribes in several
different states and territories, — among them, the
northern Arapaho. In this inquiry I visited Pine Ridge,