790 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [eth.ann.14 



regard to the painting, the designs on some being very simple, while 

 the others were fairly covered with representations of sun, moon, stars, 

 the sacred things of their mythology, and the visions of the trance. The 

 feathers attached to the garment were always those of the eagle, and 

 the thread used in the sewing was always the old-time sinew. In some 

 cases the fringe or other portions were painted with the sacred red 

 paint of the messiah. The shirt was firmly believed to be impenetrable 

 to bullets or weapons of any sort. When one of the women shot in the 

 Wounded Knee massacre was approached as she lay in the church and 

 told that she must let them remove her ghost shirt in order the better 

 to get at her wound, she replied: "Yes; take it off. They told me a 

 bullet would not go through. Now I don't want it any more." 



The protective idea in connection with the ghost shirt does not seem 

 to be aboriginal. The Indian warrior habitually went into battle naked 

 above the waist. His protecting "medicine" was a feather, a tiny bag 

 of some sacred powder, the claw of an animal, the head of a bird, or 

 some other small object which could be readily twisted into his hair or 

 hidden between the covers of his shield without attracting attention. 

 Its virtue depended entirely on the ceremony of the consecration and 

 not on size or texture. The war paint had the same magic power of 

 protection. To cover the body in battle was not in accordance with 

 Indian usage, which demanded that the warrior should be as free and 

 unincumbered in movement as possible. The so-called "war shirt" was 

 worn chiefly in ceremonial dress parades and only rarely on the war- 

 path. 



Dreams are but incoherent combinations of waking ideas, and there 

 is a hint of recollection even in the wildest visions of sleep. The ghost 

 shirt may easily have been an inspiration from a trance, while the 

 trance vision itself was the result of ideas derived from previous obser- 

 vation or report. The author is strongly inclined to the opinion that 

 the idea of an invulnerable sacred garment is not original with the 

 Indians, but, like several other important points pertaining to the 

 Ghost-dance doctrine, is a practical adaptation by them of ideas derived 

 from contact with some sectarian body among the whites. It may have 

 been suggested by the "endowment robe" of the Mormons, a seamless 

 garment of white muslin adorned with symbolic figures, which is worn 

 by their initiates as the most sacred badge of their faith, and by many 

 of the believers is supposed to render the wearer invulnerable. The 

 Mormons have always manifested a particular interest in the Indians, 

 whom they regard as the Lamanites of their sacred writings, and hence 

 have made special eftbrts for their evangelization, with the result that 

 a considerable number of the neighboring tribes of Ute, Paiute, Ban- 

 nock, and Shoshoni have been received into the Mormon church and 

 invested with the endowment robe. (See the appendix to this chapter: 

 "The Mormons and the Indians;" also "Tell It All," by Mrs T. B. H. 

 Stenhouse.) The Shoshoni and northern Arapaho occupy the same 



