Chaptee X 

 THE DOCTRINE OF THE GHOST DANCE 



Yon must not light. Do no harm to anyone. 1><> cigUI always.— Woroka. 



The great underlying principle of the Ghost dance doctrine is that 

 the time will come when the whole Indian race, living and .lead, will be 

 reunited upon a regenerated earth, to live a life of aboriginal happiness, 

 forever free from death, disease, and misery. On this foundation each 

 tribe has built a structure from its own mythology, and each apostle 

 and believer has tilled in the details according to his own mental 

 capacity or ideas of happiness, with such additions as come to him 

 from the trance. Some changes, also, have undoubtedly resulted from 

 the transmission of the doctrine through the imperfect medium of the 

 sign language. The differences of interpretation are precisely such as 

 we find in Christianity, with its hundreds of sects and innumerable 

 shades of individual opinion. The white race, being alien and secondary 

 and hardly real, has no part in this scheme of aboriginal regeneration, 

 and will be left behind with the other things of earth that have served 

 their temporary purpose, or else will cease entirely to exist. 



All this is to be brought about by an overruling spiritual power 

 that needs no assistance from human creatures; and though certain 

 medicine-men were disposed to anticipate the Indian millennium by 

 preaching resistance to the further encroachments of the whites, such 

 teachings form no part of the true doctrine, and it was only where 

 chronic dissatisfaction was aggravated by recent grievances, as among 

 the Sioux, that the movement assumed a hostile expression. On the 

 contrary, all believers were exhorted to make themselves worthy of the 

 predicted happiness by discarding all things warlike and practicing 

 honesty, peace, and good will, not only among themselves, but also 

 toward the whites, so long as they were together. Some apostles have 

 even thought that all race distinctions are to be obliterated, and that 

 the whites are to participate with the Indians in the coming felicity; 

 but it seems unquestionable that this is equally contrary to the doctrine 

 as originally preached. 



Different dates have been assigned at various times for the fulfill- 

 ment of the prophecy. Whatever the year, it has generally been held, 

 for very natural reasons, that the regeneration of the earth and the 

 renewal of all life would occur in the early spring. In some cases July, 

 and particularly the 4th of July, was the expected time. This, it may 

 be noted, was about the season when the great annual ceremony of the 



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