moonev] THE DANCE AMONG THE BANNOCK 807 



reported thai while they hoped their dead friends -would come back, and helieved 

 that dancing would help to bring them, yet they were friends of the government, 

 and friends of the whites, and my friends, and would not hold any more resurrection 

 dances without my consent. I'p to this date they have l<ept their word. I have no 

 hope of breaking up their dances altogether, but I have strong hopes of controlling 

 Ihem. (G. /'., 14.) 



The Bannock and Shoshoni of Fort Hall reservation in Idaho Lave 

 served as the chief medium of the doctrine between the tribes west 

 of tin- mountains and those of the plains. Situated almost on the sum- 

 mit of the great divide, they are within easy reach of the Painte to the 

 west, among whom the dance originated, and whose language the Ban- 

 nock speak, while at no great distance to the east, on Wind River 

 reservation in Wyoming, the remaining Shoshoni are confederated with 

 the Arapaho. who have been from the first the great apostles of the 

 doctrine among the prairie tribes. There is constant visiting back and 

 forth between the tribes of these two reservations, while the four rail- 

 roads coming in at Fort Hall, together with the fact of its close prox- 

 imity to the main line of the Union Pacific, tend still more to make it a 

 focus and halting' point for Indian travel. Almost every delegation 

 from the tribes east of the mountains stopped at this agency to obtain 

 the latest news from the messiah aud to procure interpreters from 

 among the Bannock to accompany them to Nevada. In a letter of 

 November 26, 1890, to the Indian Commissioner, the agent in charge 

 states that dining the preceding spring and summer his Indians had 

 been visited by representatives from about a dozen different reserva- 

 tions. In regard to the dance and the doctrine at Fort Hall, he also says 

 that the extermination and resurrection business was not a new thing 

 with his tribes by any means, but had been quite a craze with them 

 every few years for the last twenty years or more, only varying a little 

 according to the whim of particular medicine-men. (G. D., 15.) This 

 may have referred to the doctrine already mentioned as having been 

 taught by Tiivibo. 



Early in 1889 a Bannock from Fort Hall visited the Shoshoni and 

 Arapaho of Wind River reservation in Wyoming and brought them 

 the first knowledge of the new religion. He had just returned from a 

 visit to the Faiute country, where he said he had met messengers who 

 had told him that the dead people were coming back, and who had 

 commanded him to go aud tell all the tribes. "And so," said the 

 Shoshoni, '-he came here and told us all about it.'' Accordingly, in 

 the summer of that year a delegation of five Shoshoni, headed by 

 Tabinshi, with Xakash ("Sage"), an Arapaho, visited the messiah 

 of Mason valley, traveling most of the way by railroad and occupying 

 several days in the journey. They attended a Ghost dance, which, 

 according to their accounts, was a very large one, and after dancing 

 all night were told by the messiah that they would meet till their dead 

 in two years from that time at the turning of the leaves, i. e., in the 

 autumn of 1891. They were urged to dance frequently, -'because the 



