818 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [eth.ann.M 



the Ghost dance. Alter stopping a few days at Fort Hall, they went 

 on again, accompanied by several Bannock and Shoshoni, and going 

 rapidly by railroad soon found themselves in the country of the Paiute, 

 and after stopping at one or two camps arrived at the agency at Pyra- 

 mid lake. Here the Paiute furnished them conveyances and guides to 

 the other agency farther south at Walker river. Porcupine is our 

 principal authority for the events of the trip, and although he claims 

 that he undertook this journey of a thousand miles without any definite 

 purpose or destination in view, it is evident enough from his own 

 narrative that he left Wyoming with the fixed intention of verifying 

 the rumors of a messiah. lie has much to say of the kindness of the 

 whites they met west of the mountains, who, it will be remembered, 

 weic largely .Mormons, who have always manifested a special interest 

 in the Indians. He also states that many of the whites took part with 

 the Indians in the dance. 



They were now in the messiah*s country. "The Fisheaters, near Pyr- 

 amid lake, told me that Christ had appeared on earth again. They 

 said Christ knew he was coming: that eleven of his children were also 

 coming from a far land. It appeared that Christ had sent for me to go 

 there, and that was why, unconsciously, I took my journey. It had 

 been foreordained. Christ had summoned myself and others from all 

 heathen tribes. There were more different languages than I had ever 

 heard before, and I did not understand any of them." The delegation of 

 which Porcupine was a member was probably the. one mentioned by the 

 agent in charge at Pyramid lake as having arrived in the spring of 1890, 

 and consisting of thirty-four Indians of different tribes. (G. 1)., 19.) 



In a few days preparations were made for a great dance near Walker 

 lake, with all the delegates from the various tribes and hundreds of 

 Indians in attendance. They danced two nights or longer, the messiah 

 himself — Wovoka — coming down from his home in Mason valley to 

 lead the ceremony. After the dance Wovoka went into a trance, and 

 on awaking announced to those assembled that he had been to the 

 other world and had seen the spirits of their dead friends and of his 

 own father and mother, and had been sent back to teach the people. 

 According to Porcupine he claimed to be the returned Christ and bore 

 on his body the scars of the crucifixion. He told them that the dead 

 were to be resurrected, and that as the earth was old and worn out it 

 would be renewed as it used to be and made better; that when this 

 happened the youth of everyone would be renewed with each return of 

 spring, and that they would live forever; that there would be universal 

 peace, and that any tribe that refused his message would be destroyed 

 from the face of the earth. 



It was early in the spring of 1890 when Porcupine and his Cheyenne 

 companions returned to their tribe at Tongue River agency in Montana 

 with the new s of the appearance of the messiah. A council was called 

 and Porcupine made a full report of the journey and delivered the 



