These Indians, after the surrender of Sitting Bull, were not much in the public eye until occurred the famous Ghost dance, or Messiah craze, and that being the chief event since the Custer fight we must needs devote considerable space to it.
On several occasions during the past two centuries, in this country, Indian shamans, or priests, have prophesied the coming of an Indian Messiah. We shall at some future time consider this interesting subject in detail, but within the period embraced in this book, that peculiar craze which swept throughout the West and the South during the year 1890, and known as the Ghost Dance, is the chief religious event.
Mr. James Mooney of the Bureau of Ethnology, published a very comprehensive monograph, in 1896, entitled “The Ghost Dance Religion”, in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. I shall draw the information presented in this chapter partly from Mr. Mooney’s account, but more especially from my own investigation made in the winter of 1890 at Pine Ridge reservation, South Dakota, where among the Oglala Sioux the Messiah craze reached its culmination.
The music of the Oglala dances was taken down at the time by Mr. George E. Bartlett (Husté) and myself. Our work was not copyrighted, and soon found its way into various publications, and after being harmonized, our music was soon in general use. It is no more than fair to say that as I lay no claim to special skill as an ethnologist, Mr. Mooney, having more training and experience in such studies, was able to present the songs and their translations more accurately. I believe, in my original articles published in the _Illustrated American_ of New York in January and February, 1891, some of the Sioux word-syllables were not properly spaced, a number of accent marks omitted, and there were a few minor errors. But in the main the account as published was correct, although it was a “popular”, rather than a technical paper.
I did not investigate the Messiah in the West, although the new religion was inaugurated by him. The Sioux told me a great deal concerning him. He was known to them as Johnson, whereas Mooney gives as his proper name, Wovoka. In November, 1891, a year after the trouble at Pine Ridge, Mr. Mooney set out for Pine Ridge, where he spent considerable time, and then visited Walker Lake reservation in Nevada, where Wovoka (Johnson) lived. Here he obtained at first hand the information concerning the origin of the Messiah religion, and has presented us with a very valuable and interesting account.