uoonkt] THE DOCTRINE OP THE DANCE 783 



the Ghost-dance doctrine instead of abandoning it as they had done, 

 they would have been spared the loss of thousands of dollars m horses, 

 tipis, wagons, and other property destroyed, with much of the mental 

 suffering and all of the physical laceration that resulted in conse- 

 quence of the recent fatal epidemic in the tribe, when for weeks and 

 months the sound of wailing went up night and morning, and in every 

 camp men and women could be seen daily, with dress disordered and 

 hair cut close to the scalp, with blood hardened in clots upon the skin, 

 or streaming from mutilated fingers and fresh gashes on face, and arms, 

 and legs. It preaches peace with the whites and obedience to author- 

 ity until the day of deliverance shall come. Above all, it forbids war — 

 " You must not fight." It is hardly possible for us to realize the tre- 

 mendous aud radical change which this doctrine works in the whole 

 spirit of savage life. The career of every Indian has been the war- 

 path. His proudest title has been that of warrior. His conversation 

 by day and his dreams by night have been of bloody deeds upon the 

 enemies of his tribe. His highest boast was in the number of his scalp 

 trophies, and his chief delight at home was in the war dance and the 

 scalp dance. The thirst for blood and massacre seemed inborn in every 

 man, woman, aud child of every tribe. Xow comes a prophet as a 

 messenger from God to forbid not only war, but all that savors of 

 war — the war dance, the scalp dance, aud even the bloody torture of 

 the sun dance — and his teaching is accepted and his words obeyed by 

 four-fifths of all the warlike predatory tribes of the mountains and the 

 great plains. Only those who have known the deadly hatred that once 

 animated Ute, Cheyenne, and Pawnee, one toward another, and are 

 able to contrast it with their present spirit of mutual brotherly love, 

 can know what the Ghost-dance religion has accomplished in bringing 

 the savage into civilization. It is such a revolution as comes but once 

 in the life of a race. 



The beliefs held among the various tribes in regard to the final 

 catastrophe are as fairly probable as some held on the same subject by 

 more orthodox authorities. As to the dance itself, with its scenes of 

 intense excitement, spasmodic action, and physical exhaustion eveu to 

 unconsciousness, such manifestations have always accompanied reli- 

 gious upheavals among primitive peoples, and are not entirely unknown 

 among ourselves. In a country which produces magnetic healers, 

 shakers, trance mediums, and the like, all these things may very easily 

 be paralleled without going far from home. 



In conclusion, we may say of the prophet and his doctrine what has 

 been said of one of his apostles by a careful and competent investi- 

 gator: "He has given these people a better religion than they ever 

 had before, taught them precepts which, if faithfully carried out, will 

 bring them into better accord with their white neighbors, and has 

 prepared the way for their final Christianization." (0. !>., 4, aud A. 

 G. 0., 5.) 



14 ETU-l'T 2 10 



