i82 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. IX. 



ceremony still gives to the tribe, in spite of the curtailment or abridg- 

 ment of a certain independence which characterized the older per- 

 formances. 



That the majority of Cheyenne of middle life, and even a very large 

 number of the young men who have been educated in the reservation or 

 non-reservation schools, still have faith in the power of the Sun Dance 

 to continue the life and health of the tribe, there is no doubt. To 

 illustrate the fact that the Cheyenne still believe in the ceremonies of 

 the Sun Dance and in the danger of speaking disrespectfully of the 

 lodge, may be cited the following statement of Roman-Nose, made 

 during the ceremony of 1903 : "Agent White said that the Sun Dance 

 was no good. Soon after that he was at the telephone and lightning 

 stunned him for half a day. Again, Agent White said that the Sun 

 Dance was all nonsense. Shortly after this one of his clerks received 

 a shock from lightning. So it is proved that lightning or trouble of 

 some sort is sure to befall any one who talks slightingly of the Sun 

 Dance lodge, or who displeases the great medicine-spirit." 



That the Sun Dance has been given up in one tribe and not in 

 another does not mean that the tribe which no longer continues the 

 ceremony does not believe in its efficacy, for the history of the 

 ceremony in such tribes reveals the fact that it was abandoned owing 

 to pressure from without, and not from lack of desire to retain the 

 ceremony within the tribe. 



In the second place, it will be of interest to compare the Sun 

 Dance of the Cheyenne with that of the Arapaho. It may be stated 

 at once that the ceremonies seem to be the same in their general con- 

 struction; that differences such as exist are no greater, for example, 

 than those in the performance of the same ceremony in villages on the 

 different mesas among the Hopi. The Arapaho ceremony is, un- 

 doubtedly, more complicated than that of the Cheyenne, due, pre- 

 sumably, to the introduction of elements originally foreign to the 

 ceremony. These introduced elements, and points of dissimilarity 

 between the two ceremonies are not, however, so radical as to make 

 it probable that the ceremonies are morphologically distinct. A 

 brief comparative view of the two ceremonies brings out very clearly 

 their fundamental unity. Thus each ceremony results from a vow, the 

 one making the vow selecting a chief priest to conduct the rites of the 

 ceremony, to whom, on either one or two nights of the ceremony, he 

 offers his wife. Continuing the comparative view, from this point, 

 it may be noted that the time and duration of the ceremony, the 

 formation of the camp-circle, the position of the Lone-tipi, and the 

 construction and general character of the Sun Dance lodge, are prac- 



