672 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [eth.ank.i4 



ground of Kentucky. The Delaware, the Wyandot, and the Shawano, 

 three of the leading tribes, were almost completely shorn of their ancient 

 inheritance and driven back as refugees among the Miami. 



The Canadian boundary hail been established along the lakes; the 

 Ohio was lost to the Indians; for them there was left only extermina- 

 tion or removal to the west. Their bravest warriors were slain. Their 

 ablest chieftain, who had led them to victory against St Clair, had 

 bowed to the inevitable, and was now regarded as one with a white 

 man's heart and a traitor to his race. A brooding dissatisfaction set- 

 tled down on the tribes. Who shall deliver them from the desolation 

 that has come on them ? 



Now arose among the Shawano another prophet to point out to his 

 people the ••op.-n door" leading to happiness. In November, 1805, a 

 young man named Laulewasikawi Lalawe'thika, a rattleor similar instru- 

 ment— G'a£scfte<), then hardly more than 30 years of age. called around 

 him his tribesmen and their allies at their ancient capital of Wapa- 

 koneta. within the present limits of Ohio, and there announced himself 

 as the bearer of a new revelation from the Master of Life, who had 

 taken pity on his red children and wished to save them from the 

 threatened destruction. He declared that he had been taken up to the 

 spirit world and had been permitted to lift the veil of the past and the 

 future — had seen the misery of evil doers and learned the happiness 

 that awaited those who followed the precepts of the Indian god. He 

 then began au earnest exhortation, denouncing the witchcraft practices 

 and medicine juggleries of the tribe, and solemnly warning his hearers 

 that none who had part in such things would ever taste of the future 

 happiness. The firewater of the whites was poison and accursed; and 

 those who continued its use would after death be tormented with all 

 the pains of fire, while flames would continually issue from their mouths. 

 This idea may have been derived from some white man's teaching or 

 from the Indian practice of torture by fire. The young must cherish 

 and respect the aged and infirm. All property must be in common, 

 according to the ancient law of their ancestors. Indian women must 

 cease to intermarry with w.hite men; the two races were distinct and 

 must remain so. The white man's dress, with his tlint-and-steel, must 

 be discarded for the old time buckskin and the hrestick. More than 

 this, every tool and every custom derived from the whites must be. put 

 away, and they must return to the methods which the Master of Life 

 had taught them. When they should do all this, he promised that they 

 would again be taken into the divine favor, and find the happiuess 

 which their fathers had known before the coming of the whites. Finally, 

 in proof of Ids divine mission, he announced that lie had received power 

 to cure all diseases and to arrest the hand of death in sickness or on 

 the battlefield. (Drake, Teeumseh, 1. To avoid repetition, it maybe 

 stated that, except when otherwise noted, the principal facts concern- 

 ing Tecutntha and the prophet are taken from Drake's work, the most 



