BOONETl THE GHOST SHIRT 



791 



reservation in Wyoming, and anything which concerns one tribe is 

 more or less talked of by the other. As the Sioux, Cheyenne, and other 

 eastern tribes make frequent visits to the Arapaho, and as these Arap- 

 aho have been the great apostles of the Ghost dance, it is easy to see 

 how an idea borrowed by the Shoshoni from the Mormons could liinl its 

 way through the Arapaho first to the Sioux and Cheyenne and after 

 ward to more remote tribes. Wovoka himself expressly disclaimed 

 any responsibility for the ghost shirt, and whites and Indians alike 

 agreed that it formed no part of the dance costume in Mason valley. 

 When I first went among the Cheyenne and neighboring tribes of Okla- 

 homa in January, 1891, the ghost shirt had not yet reached them. Soon 

 afterward the first one was brought down from the Sioux country by 

 a Cheveune named White Buffalo, who had been a Carlisle student, 

 but the Arapaho and Cheyenne, after debating the matter, refused to 

 allow it to be worn in the dance, on the ground that the doctrine of the 

 Ghost dance was one of peace, whereas the Sioux had made the ghost 

 shirt an auxiliary of war. In consequence of this decision such shirts 

 have never been worn by the dancers among the southern tribes. 

 Instead they wear in the dance their finest shirts and dresses of buck- 

 skin, covered with painted and beaded figures from the Ghost-dance 

 mythology and the visions of the trance. 



The Ghost dance is variously named among the different tribes. In 

 its original home among the Paiute it is called Naniguhwa, "dance in a 

 circle" (nuka, dance), to distinguish it from the other dances of the 

 tribe, which have only the ordinary up-and-down step without the 

 circular movement. The Shoshoni call it Tana'rayiln or Tamana'rayara, 

 which may be rendered "everybody dragging," in allusion to the man- 

 ner in which the dancers move around the circle holding hands, as 

 children do in their ring games. They insist that it is a revival of a 

 similar dance which existed among them fifty years ago. The Comanche 

 call it A'p-anvTca'm, "the Father's dance," or- sometimes the dance 

 « with joined hands." The Kiowa call it Mdnposo'ti yuan, " dance with 

 clasped hands," and the frenzy, guan d'dalka-i, -dance craziness." 

 The Caddo know it as I'd IcaU'mbawi'ut, "the prayer of all to the 

 Father," or as the Nanisana ka au'-shan, "niinisana dance," from nan- 

 inana, "my children," which forms the burden of so many of the ghost 

 songs' in the language of the Arapaho, from whom they obtained the 

 dance. By the Sioux, Arapaho, and most other prairie tribes it is 

 called the "spirit" or "ghost" dance (Sioux, Wana'ghi wa'chipi; Arap- 

 aho, Thigu'nawat), from the fact that everything connected with it 

 relates to the coming of the spirits of the dead from the spirit world, 

 and by this name it has become known among the whites. 



