944 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [eth.asn.14 



the people, some who were standing and sitting fell like men sliot on 

 the (ield of battle, and I felt it like a tremor to run through my soul 

 and veins so that it took away my limb power, so that I fell to the floor, 

 and by faith saw a greater blessing than I had hitherto experienced." 

 At another place he says: "After talcing a cup of tea, I began to speak 

 to a vast audience, and I observed about thirty to have the jerks, 

 though they strove to keep as still as they could. These emotions 

 were involuntary and irresistible, as any unprejudiced mind might 

 see."' At Marysville ''many appeared to feel the word, but about fifty 

 felt the jerks. On Sunday, at Kuoxville, the governor being present, 

 about one hundred and fifty had the jerking exercise, among them a 

 circuit preacher, Johnson, who had opposed them a little while before. 

 Camp meeting commenced at Liberty. Here I saw the jerks, and some 

 danced. The people are taken with jerking irresistibly, and if they 

 strive, to resist it it worries them more than hard work. Their eyes, 

 when dancing, seem to be fixed upward as if upon an invisible object, 

 and they are lost to all below. I passed by a meeting house where I 

 observed the undergrowth had beeu cut down for a camp meeting, and 

 from fifty to a hundred saplings left breast high, which appeared to me 

 so Slovenish that I could not but ask my guide the cause, who observed 

 they were topped so high and left for the people to jerk by. This so 

 excited my attention that I went over the ground to view it, and found 

 where the people had laid hold of them and jerked so powerfully that 

 they kicked up the earth as a horse stamping flies. Persecutors are 

 more subject to tin' jerks than others, and they have cursed and swore 

 and damned it while jerking." Then he says: '• 1 have seen Presby- 

 terians, Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, Church of England, and Inde- 

 pendents exercised with the jerks — gentlemen and Indies, black and 

 white, rich and poor — without exception. Those naturalists who wish 

 to get it to philosophize upon it and the most godly are excepted from 

 the jerks. The wicked are more afraid of it than of the smallpox or 

 yellow fever.' 1 ' 



It is worthy of note that, according to his account, investigators who 

 wished to study the phenomenon were unable to come under the influ- 

 ence, even though they so desired. 



ADVENTISTS 



About 1831 William Miller, a licensed minister, began to preach the 

 advent of Christ and the destruction of the world, fixing the date for 

 the year 1S43. Like most others of his kind who have achieved noto- 

 riety, he based his prediction on the prophecies of the Bible, which 

 he figured out with mathematical exactness. He began preaching in 

 New York and New England, but afterward traveled southward, deliv- 

 ering, it is said, over three thousand lectures in support of his theory. 

 His predictions led to the formation of a new sect commonly known as 



