828 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [eth.akn.14 



vation "instead of an increase, or even a reasonable supply for their 

 support, they have been compelled to live on half and two-thirds rations 

 and received nothing for the surrender of their lands." The testimony 

 from every agency is all to the same effect. 



There were other causes of dissatisfaction, some local and others gen- 

 eral and chronic, which need not be detailed here. Some of these are 

 treated in the documents appended to this chapter. Prominent among 

 them were the failure of Congress to make payment of the money due 

 I he Sioux for the lands recently ceded, or to have the new lines sur- 

 veyed promptly so that the Indians might know what was still theirs 

 and select their allotments accordingly ; failure to reimburse the friendly 

 Indians for horses confiscated fourteen years before; the tardy arrival 

 of annuities, consisting largely of winter clothing, which according to 

 the treaty were due by the 1st of August, but which seldom arrived until 

 the middle of winter: the sweeping and frequent changes of agency 

 employees from the agent down, preventing anything like a systematic 

 working out of any consistent policy, and almost always operating 

 against the good of the service, especially at Pine Ridge, where so brave 

 and efficient a man as McGillycuddy was followed by such a one as 

 Eoyer — and, finally, the Ghost dance. 



The Ghost dance itself, in the form which it assumed among the Sioux, 

 was only a symptom and expression of the real causes of dissatisfac- 

 tion, and with such a man as McGillycuddy or McLaughlin in charge 

 at Pine Ridge there would have been no outbreak, in spite of broken 

 promises and starvation, and the Indians could have been controlled 

 until Congress hail afforded relief. That it was not the cause of the 

 outbreak is sufficiently proved by the fact that there was no serious 

 trouble, excepting on the occasion of the attempt to arrest Sitting- 

 Bull, on any other of the Sioux reservations, and none at all among 

 any of the other Ghost-dancing tribes from the Missouri to the Sierras, 

 although the doctrine and the dance were held by nearly every tribe 

 within that area and are still held by the more important. Among the 

 Paiute, where the doctrine originated and the messiah has his home, 

 there was never the slightest trouble. It is significant that Commis- 

 sioner Morgan in his official statement of the causes of the outbreak 

 places the "messiah craze" eleventh in a list of twelve, the twelfth 

 being the alarm created by the appearance of troops. The Sioux out- 

 break of 1890 was due entirely to local grievances, recent or long stand- 

 ing. The remedy and preventive for similar trouble in the future 

 is sufficiently indicated in the appended statements of competent 

 authorities. 



