The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee

This Dover edition, first published in 1973, is an unabridged republication of the Accompanying Paper, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, of the Fourteenth Annual Report (Part 2) of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-93, by J. W. Powell, Director, originally published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., in 1896.

The following plates, which appear in black and white in the present edition were in color in the original edition: LXXXV, LXXXVIII, CIII, CVII, CIX, CX.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-80557

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Say, shall not I at last attain

Some height, from whence the Past is clear,

In whose immortal atmosphere

I shall behold my dead again?

Bayard Taylor.

For the fires grow cold and the dances fail,

And the songs in their echoes die;

And what have we left but the graves beneath,

And, above, the waiting sky?

The Song of the Ancient People.

My Father, have pity on me!

I have nothing to eat,

I am dying of thirst—

Everything is gone!

Arapaho Ghoet Song.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Praise

Table of Figures

THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION

THE NARRATIVE

CHAPTER I - PARADISE LOST

CHAPTER II - THE DELAWARE PROPHET AND PONTIAC

CHAPTER III - TENSKWATAWA THE SHAWANO PROPHET

CHAPTER IV - TECUMTHA AND TIPPECANOE

CHAPTER V - KÄNAKÛK AND MINOR PROPHETS KÄNAKÛK

CHAPTER VI - THE SMOHALLA RELIGION OF THE COLUMBIA REGION SMOHALLA

CHAPTER VII - SMOHALLA AND HIS DOCTRINE

CHAPTER VIII - THE SHAKERS OF PUGET SOUND

CHAPTER IX - WOVOKA THE MESSIAH

CHAPTER X - THE DOCTRINE OF THE GHOST DANCE

CHAPTER XI - THE GHOST DANCE WEST OF THE ROCKIES

CHAPTER XII - THE GHOST DANCE EAST OF THE ROCKIES—AMONG THE SIOUX

CHAPTER XIII - THE SIOUX OUTBREAK—SITTING BULL AND WOUNDED KNEE

CHAPTER XIV - CLOSE OF THE OUTBREAK—THE GHOST DANCE IN THE SOUTH

CHAPTER XV - THE CEREMONY OF THE GHOST DANCE

CHAPTER XVI - PARALLELS IN OTHER SYSTEMS

THE SONGS - INTRODUCTORY

THE ARAPAHO

THE CHEYENNE

THE COMANCHE

THE PAIUTE, WASHO, AND PIT RIVER TRIBES - PAIUTE TRIBAL SYNONYMY

THE SIOUX

THE KIOWA AND KIOWA APACHE

THE CADDO AND ASSOCIATED TRIBES

AUTHORITIES CITED

INDEX

A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST

DOVER BOOKS ON NATIVE AMERICANS

Table of Figures

FIG. 56

FIG. 57—Greenville

FIG. 58

FIG. 59-Harrison

FIG. 60

FIG. 61—K

FIG. 62—Onsawkie

FIG. 63—Nakai

FIG. 64—Smohalla

FIG. 65—Charles

FIG. 66

FIG. 67—John

FIG. 68—Shaker

FIG. 69—Wovoka

FIG. 70—Navaho

FIG. 71—Viata

FIG. 72—A

FIG. 73—Red

FIG. 74—Short

FIG. 75—Kicking

FIG. 76—Red

FIG. 77—Sitting

FIG. 78-Sketch

FIG. 79

FIG. 80

FIG. 81

FIG. 82

FIG. 83

FIG. 84

FIG. 85

FIG. 86

FIG. 87

FIG. 88—Arapaho

FIG. 89

FIG. 90

FIG. 91

FIG. 92

FIG. 93

FIG. 94—Dog-soldier

FIG. 95

FIG. 96

FIG. 97

FIG. 98

FIG. 99

FIG. 100

FIG. 101—Paiute

FIG. 102—Native

FIG. 103—Jerking

FIG. 104

THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION

By JAMES MOONEY

INTRODUCTION

In the fall of 1890 the author was preparing to go to Indian Territory, under the auspices of the Bureau of Ethnology, to continue researches among the Cherokee, when the Ghost dance began to attract attention, and permission was asked and received to investigate that subject also among the wilder tribes in the western part of the territory. Proceeding directly to the Cheyenne and Arapaho, it soon became evident that there was more in the Ghost dance than had been suspected, with the result that the investigation, to which it had been intended to devote only a few weeks, has extended over a period of more than three years, and might be continued indefinitely, as the dance still.exists (in 1896) and is developing new features at every performance. The uprising among the Sioux in the meantime made necessary also the examination of a mass of documentary material in the files of the Indian Office and the War Department bearing on the outbreak, in addition to the study in the field of the strictly religious features of the dance.

The first visit of about four months (December, 1890-April, 1891) was made to the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Caddo, and Wichita, all living near together in the western part of what was then Indian Territory, but is now Oklahoma. These tribes were all more or less under the influence of the new religion. The principal study was made among the Arapaho, who were the most active propagators of the Messiah doctrine among the southern tribes and are especially friendly and cordial in disposition.

On returning to Washington, the author received a commission to make an ethnologic collection for the World’s Columbian Exposition, and, selecting the Kiowa for that purpose as a representative prairie tribe, started out again almost immediately to the same field. This trip, lasting three months, gave further opportunity for study of the Ghost dance among the same tribes. After returning and attending to the labeling and arranging of the collection, a study was made of all documents bearing on the subject in possession of the Indian Office and the War Department. Another trip was then made to the field for the purpose of investigating the dance among the Sioux, where it had attracted most attention, and among the Paiute, where it originated. On this journey the author visited the Omaha, Winnebago, Sioux of Pine Ridge, Paiute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho; met and talked with the messiah himself, and afterward, on the strength of this fact, obtained from the Cheyenne the original letter containing his message and instructions to the southern tribes. This trip occupied about three months.

A few months later, in the summer of 1892, another journey was made to the West, in the course of which the southern tribes and the Sioux were revisited, and some time was spent in Wyoming with the Shoshoni and northern Arapaho, the latter of whom were perhaps the most earnest followers of the messiah in the north. This trip consumed four months. After some time spent in Washington in elaborating notes already obtained, a winter trip (1892-93) was made under another commission from the World’s Fair to the Navaho and the Hopi or Moki, of New Mexico and Arizona. Although these tribes were not directly concerned in the Ghost dance, they had been visited by apostles of the new doctrine, and were able to give some account of the ceremony as it existed among the Havasupai or Cohonino and others farther to the west. On the return journey another short stay was made among the Kiowa and Arapaho. In the summer of 1893 a final visit, covering a period of five months, was made to the western tribes of Oklahoma, bringing the personal observation and study of the Ghost dance down to the beginning of 1894.

The field inves igation therefore occupied twenty-two months, involving nearly 32,000 miles of travel and more or less time spent with about twenty tribes. To obtain exact knowledge of the ceremony, the author took part in the dance among the Arapaho and Cheyenne. He also carried a kodak and a tripod camera, with which he made photographs of the dance and the trance both without and within the circle. Several months were spent in consulting manuscript documents and printed sources of information in the departments and libraries at Washington, and correspondence was carried on with persons in various parts of the country who might be able to give additional facts. From the beginning every effort was made to get a correct statement of the subject. Beyond this, the work must speak for itself.

As the Ghost dance doctrine is only the latest of a series of Indian religious revivals, and as the idea on which it is founded is a hope common to all humanity, considerate space has been given to a discussion of the primitive messiah belief and of the teachings of the various Indian prophets who have preceded Wovoka, together with brief sketches of several Indian wars belonging to the same periods.

In the songs the effort has been to give the spirit and exact rendering, without going into analytic details. The main purpose of the work is not linguistic, and as nearly every tribe concerned speaks a different language from all the others, any close linguistic study must be left to the philologist who can afford to devote a year or more to an individual tribe. The only one of these tribes of which the author claims intimate knowledge is the Kiowa.

iagyahona, Deoñ, Mary Zotom, and Eliza Parton of Anadarko, Oklahoma.

THE NARRATIVE

CHAPTER I

PARADISE LOST

There are hours long departed which memory brings Like blossoms of Eden to twine round the heart.

Moore.

The wise men tell us that the world is growing happier—that we live longer than did our fathers, have more of comfort and less of toil, fewer wars and discords, and higher hopes and aspirations. So say the wise men; but deep in our own hearts we know they are wrong. For were not we, too, born in Arcadia, and have we not—each one of us—in that May of life when the world was young, started out lightly and airily along the path that led through green meadows to the blue mountains on the distant horizon, beyond which lay the great world we were to conquer? And though others dropped behind, have we not gone on through morning brightness and noonday heart, with eyes always steadily forward, until the fresh grass began to be parched and withered, and the way grew hard and stony, and the blue mountains resolved into gray rocks and thorny cliffs? And when at last we reached the toilsome summits, we found the glory that had lured us onward was only the sunset glow that fades into darkness while we look, and leaves us at the very goal to sink down, tired in body and sick at heart, with strength and courage gone, to close our eyes and dream again, not of the fame and fortune that were to be ours, but only of the old-time happiness that we have left so far behind.

As with men, so is it with nations. The lost paradise is the world’s dreamland of youth. What tribe or people has not had its golden age, before Pandora’s box was loosed, when women were nymphs and dryads and men were gods and heroes? And when the race lies crushed and groaning beneath an alien yoke, how natural is the dream of a redeemer, an Arthur, who shall return from exile or awake from some long sleep to drive out the usurper and win back for his people what they have lost. The hope becomes a faith and the faith becomes the creed of priests and prophets, until the hero is a god and the dream a religion, looking to some great miracle of nature for its culmination and accomplishment. The doctrines of the Hindu avatar, the Hebrew Messiah, the Christian millennium, and the Hesûnanin of the Indian Ghost dance are essentially the same, and have their origin in a hope and longing common to all humanity.

Probably every Indian tribe, north and south, had its early hero god, the great doer or teacher of all first things, from the Inskeha and Manabozho of the rude Iroquoian and Algonquian to the Quetzalcoatl, the Bochica, and the Viracocha of the more cultivated Aztecs, Muyscas, and Quichuas of the milder southland. Among the roving tribes of the north this hero is hardly more than an expert magician, frequently degraded to the level of a common trickster, who, after ridding the world of giants and monsters, and teaching his people a few simple arts, retires to the upper world to rest and smoke until some urgent necessity again requires his presence below. Under softer southern skies the myth takes more poetic form and the hero becomes a person of dignified presence, a father and teacher of his children, a very Christ, worthy of all love and reverence, who gathers together the wandering nomads and leads them to their destined country, where he instructs them in agriculture, house building, and the art of government, regulates authority, and inculcates peaceful modes of life. Under him, the earth teemed with fruits and flowers without the pains of culture. An ear of Indian corn was as much as a single man could carry. The cotton, as it grew, took of its own accord the rich dyes of human art. The air was filled with intoxicating perfumes and the sweet melody of birds. In short, these were the halcyon days, which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations in the Old World. It was the golden age of Anahuac. (Prescott, 1.)¹ When at last his work is well accomplished, he bids farewell to his sorrowing subjects, whom he consoles with the sacred promise that he will one day return and resume his kingdom, steps into his magic boat by the seashore, and sails away out of their sight to the distant land of sunrise.

Such was Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs, and such in all essential respects was the culture god of the more southern semicivilized races. Curiously enough, this god, at once a Moses and a messiah, is usually described as a white man with flowing beard. From this and other circumstances it has been argued that the whole story is only another form of the dawn myth, but whether the Indian god be an ancient deified lawgiver of their own race, or some nameless missionary who found his way across the trackless ocean in the early ages of Christianity, or whether we have here only a veiled parable of the morning light bringing life and joy to the world and then vanishing to return again from the east with the dawn, it is sufficient to our purpose that the belief in the coming of a messiah, who should restore them to their original happy condition, was well nigh universal among the American tribes.

This faith in the return of a white deliverer from the east opened the gate to the Spaniards at their first coming alike in Haiti, Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru. (Brinton, 1.) The simple native welcomed the white strangers as the children or kindred of their long-lost benefactor, immortal beings whose near advent had been foretold by oracles and omens, whose faces borrowed from the brightness of the dawn, whose glistening armor seemed woven from the rays of sunlight, and whose god-like weapons were the lightning and the thunderbolt. Their first overbearing demands awakened no resentment; for may not the gods claim their own, and is not resistance to the divine will a crime? Not until their most sacred things were trampled under foot, and the streets of the holy city itself ran red with the blood of their slaughtered princes, did they read aright the awful prophecy by the light of their blazing temples, and know that instead of the children of an incarnate god they had welcomed a horde of incarnate devils. The light of civilization would be poured on their land. But it would be the light of a consuming fire, before which their barbaric glory, their institutions, their very existence and name as a nation, would wither and become extinct. Their doom was sealed when the white man had set his foot on their soil. (Prescott, 2.)

The great revolt of the Pueblo Indians in August, 1680, was one of the first determined efforts made by the natives on the northern continent to throw off the yoke of a foreign oppressor. The Pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande and farther to the west, a gentile, peaceful race, had early welcomed the coming of the Spaniards, with their soldiers and priests, as friends who would protect them against the wild marauding tribes about them and teach them the mysteries of a greater medicine than belonged to their own kachinas. The hope soon faded into bitter disappointment. The soldiers, while rough and overbearing toward their brown-skin allies, were yet unable to protect them from the inroads of their enemies. The priests prohibited their dances and simple amusements, yet all their ringing of bells and chanting of hymns availed not to bring more rain on the crops or, to turn aside the vengeful Apache. What have we gained by all this? said the Pueblos one to another; not peace and not happiness, for these new rulers will not protect us from our enemies, and take from us all the enjoyments we once knew.

The pear was ripe. Popé, a medicine-man of the Tewa, had come back from a pilgrimage to the far north, where he claimed to have visited the magic lagoon of Shipapu, whence his people traced their origin and to which the souls of their dead returned after leaving this life. By these ancestral spirits he bad been endowed with occult powers and commanded to go back and rouse the Pueblos to concerted effort for deliverance from the foreign yoke of the strangers.

Wonderful beings were these spirit messengers. Swift as light and impalpable as thought, they passed under the earth from the magic lake to the secret subterranean chamber of the oracle and stood before him as shapes of fire, and spoke, telling him to prepare the strings of yucca knots and send them with the message to all the Pueblos far and near, so that in every village the chiefs might untie one knot from the string each day, and know when they came to the last knot that then was the time to strike.

From the Pecos, across the Rio Grande to Zuñi and the far-distant Hopi mesas, every Pueblo village accepted the yucca string and began secret preparation for the rising. The time chosen was the new moon of August, 1680, but, through a partial discovery of the plot, the explosion was precipitated on the 10th. So sudden and complete was the surprise that many Spaniards in the Pueblo country, priests, soldiers, and civilians, were killed, and the survivors, after holding out for a time under Governor Otermin at Santa Fé, fled to El Paso, and in October there remained not a single Spaniard in all New Mexico. (Bandelier, 1a, 1b.)

Despite their bitter disappointment, the southern nations continued to cherish the hope of a coming redeemer, who now assumed the character of a terrible avenger of their wrongs, and the white-skin conqueror has had bloody occasion to remember that his silent peon, as he toils by blue Chapala or sits amid the ruins of his former grandeur in the dark forests of Yucatan, yet waits ever and always the coming of the day which shall break the power of the alien Spaniard and restore to their inheritance the children of Anahuac and Mayapan. In Peru the natives refused to believe that the last of the Incas had perished a wanderer in the forests of the eastern Cordilleras. For more than two centuries they cherished the tradition that he had only retired to another kingdom beyond the mountains, from which he would return in his own good time to sweep their haughty oppressors from the land. In 1781 the slumbering hope found expression in a terrible insurrection under the leadership of the mestizo Condorcanqui, a descendant of the ancient royal family, who boldly proclaimed himself the long lost Tupac Amaru, child of the sun and Inca of Peru. With mad enthusiasm the Quichua highlanders hailed him as their destined deliverer and rightful sovereign, and binding around his forehead the imperial fillet of the Incas, he advanced at the head of an immense army to the walls of Cuzco, declaring his purpose to blot out the very memory of the white man and reestablish the Indian empire in the City of the Sun. Inspired by the hope of vengeance on the conqueror, even boys became leaders of their people, and it was only after a bloody struggle of two years’ duration that the Spaniards were able to regain the mastery and consigned the captive Inca, with all his family, to an ignominious and barbarous death. Even then so great was the feeling of veneration which he had inspired in the breasts of the Indians that notwithstanding their fear of the Spaniards, and though they were surrounded by soldiers of the victorious army, they prostrated themselves at the sight of the last of the children of the sun, as he passed along the streets to the place of execution. (Humboldt, 1.)

In the New World, as in the Old, the advent of the deliverer was to be heralded by signs and wonders. Thus in Mexico, a mysterious rising of the waters of Lake Tezcuco, three comets blazing in the sky, and a strange light in the east, prepared the minds of the people for the near coming of the Spaniards. (Prescott, 3.) In this connection, also, there was usually a belief in a series of previous destructions by flood, fire, famine, or pestilence, followed by a regeneration through the omnipotent might of the savior. The doctrine that the world is old and worn out, and that the time for its renewal is near at hand, is an essential part of the teaching of the Ghost dance. The number of these cycles of destruction was variously stated among different tribes, but perhaps the most sadly prophetic form of the myth was found among the Winnebago, who forty years ago held that the tenth generation of their people was near its close, and that at the end of the thirteenth the red race would be destroyed. By prayers and ceremonies they were then endeavoring to placate their angry gods and put farther away the doom that now seems rapidly closing in on them. (Schooloraft, Ind. Tribes, 1.)

CHAPTER II

THE DELAWARE PROPHET AND PONTIAC

Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you: Put off entirely the customs which you have adopted since the white people came among us.—The Delaroare Prophet.

This is our land, and not yours.—The Confederate Tribes, 1752.

The English advances were slow and halting, for a long period almost imperceptible, while the establishment of a few small garrisons and isolated trading stations by the French hardly deserved to be called an occupancy of the country. As a consequence, the warlike northern tribes were slow to realize that an empire was slipping from their grasp, and it was not until the two great nations prepared for the final struggle in the New World that the native proprietors began to read the stars aright. Then it was, in 1752, that the Lenape chiefs sent to the British agent the pointed interrogatory: The English claim all on one side of the river, the French claim all on the other—where is the land of the Indians? (Bancroft, 1.) Then, as they saw the French strengthening themselves along the lakes, there came a stronger protest from the council ground of the confederate tribes of the west: This is our land and not yours. Fathers, both you and the English are white; the land belongs to neither the one nor the other of you, but the Great Being above allotted it to be a dwelling place for us; so, fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have desired our brothers, the English. A wampum belt gave weight to the words. (Bancroft, 2.) The French commander’s reply was blunt, but more practiced diplomats assured the red men that all belonged to the Indian, and that the great king of the French desired only to set up a boundary against the further encroachments of the English, who would otherwise sweep the red tribes from the Ohio as they had already driven them from the Atlantic. The argument was plausible. In every tribe were French missionaries, whose fearless courage and devotion had won the admiration and love of the savage; in every village was domiciliated a hardy voyageur, with his Indian wife and family of children, in whose veins commingled the blood of the two races and whose ears were attuned alike to the wild songs of the forest and the rondeaus of Normandy or Provence. It was no common tie that bound together the Indians and the French, and when a governor of Canada and the general of his army stepped into the circle of braves to dance the war dance and sing the war song with their red allies, thirty-three wild tribes declared on the wampum belt, The French are our brothers and their king is our father. We will try his hatchet upon the English (Bancroft, 3), and through seven years of blood and death the lily and the totem were borne abreast until the flag of France went down forever on the heights of Quebec.

For some time after the surrender the unrest of the native tribes was soothed into a semblance of quiet by the belief, artfully inculcated by their old allies, that the king of France, wearied by his great exertions, had fallen asleep for a little while, but would soon awake to take vengeance on the English for the wrongs they bad inflicted on his red children. Then, as they saw English garrisons occupying the abandoned posts and English traders passing up the lakes even to the sacred island of the Great Turtle, the despairing warriors said to one another, We have been deceived. English and French alike are white men and liars. We must turn from both and seek help from our Indian gods.

In 1762 a prophet appeared among the Delaware, at Tuscarawas, on the Muskingum, who preached a union of all the red tribes and a return to the old Indian life, which he declared to be the divine command, as revealed to himself in a wonderful vision. From an old French manuscript, written by an anonymous eyewitness of the scene which he describes, we have the details of this vision, as related by Pontiac to his savage auditors at the great council of the tribes held near Detroit in April, 1763. Parkman gives the story on the authority of this manuscript, which he refers to as the Pontiac manuscript, and states that it was long preserved in a Canadian family at Detroit, and afterward deposited with the Historical Society of Michigan. It bears internal evidence of genuineness, and is supposed to have been written by a French priest. (Parkman, 1.) The vision, from the same manuscript, is related at length in Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches.

According to the prophet’s story, being anxious to know the Master of Life, he determined, without mentioning his desire to anyone, to undertake a journey to the spirit world. Ignorant of the way, and not knowing any person who, having been there, could direct him, he performed a mystic rite in the hope of receiving some light as to the course he should pursue. He then fell into a deep sleep, in which he dreamed that it was only necessary to begin his journey and that by continuing to walk forward he would at last arrive at his destination.

Early the next morning, taking his gun, ammunition, and kettle, he started off, firmly convinced that by pressing onward without discouragement he should accomplish his object. Day after day he proceeded without incident, until at sunset of the eighth day, while preparing to encamp for the night by the side of a small stream in a little opening in the forest, he noticed, running out from the edge of the prairie, three wide and well-trodden paths. Wondering somewhat that they should be there, he finished his temporary lodging and, lighting a fire, began to prepare his supper. While thus engaged, be observed with astonishment that the paths became more distinct as the night grew darker. Alarmed at the strange appearance, he was about to abandon his encampment and seek another at a safer distance, when he remembered his dream and the purpose of his journey. It seemed to him that one of these roads must lead to the place of which he was in search, and he determined, therefore, to remain where he was until morning, and then take one of the three and follow it to the end. Accordingly, the next morning, after a hasty meal, he left his encampment, and, burning with the ardor of discovery, took the widest path, which he followed until noon, when he suddenly saw a large fire issuing apparently from the earth. His curiosity being aroused, he went toward it, but the fire increased to such a degree that he became frightened and turned back.

He now took the next widest of the three paths, which he followed as before until noon, when a similar fire again drove him back and compelled him to take the third road, which he kept a whole day without meeting anything unusual, when suddenly he saw a precipitous mountain of dazzling brightness directly in his path. Recovering from his wonder, he drew near and examined it, but could see no sign of a road to the summit. He was about to give way to disappointment, when, looking up, he saw seated a short distance up the mountain a woman of bright beauty and clad in snow-white garments, who addressed him in his own language, telling him that on the summit of the mountain was the abode of the Master of Life, whom he had journeyed so far to meet. But to reach it, said she, you must leave all your cumbersome dress and equipments at the foot, then go and wash in the river which I show you, and afterward ascend the mountain.

He obeyed her instructions, and on asking how he could hope to climb the mountain, which was steep and slippery as glass, she replied that in order to mount he must use only his left hand and foot. This seemed to him almost impossible, but, encouraged by the woman, he began to climb, and at length, after much difficulty, reached the top. Here the woman suddenly vanished, and he found himself alone without a guide. On looking about, he saw before him a plain, in the midst of which were three villages, with well-built houses disposed in orderly arrangement. He bent his steps toward the principal one, but after going a short distance he remembered that he was naked, and was about to turn back when a voice told him that as he had washed himself in the river he might go on without fear. Thus bidden, he advanced without hesitation to the gate of the village, where he was admitted and saw approaching a handsome man in white garments, who offered to lead him into the presence of the Master of Life. Admiring the beauty of everything about him, he was then conducted to the Master of Life, who took him by the hand and gave him for a seat a hat bordered with gold. Afraid of spoiling the hat, he hesitated to sit down until again told to do so, when he obeyed, and the Master of Life thus addressed him:

I am the Master of Life, whom yon wish to see and with whom you wish to speak. Listen to what I shall tell you for yourself and for all the Indians.

He then commanded him to exhort his people to cease from drunkenness, wars, polygamy, and the medicine song, and continued:

The land on which you are, I have made for you, not for others. Wherefore do you suffer the whites to dwell upon your lands? Can you not do without them? I know that those whom yon call the children of your Great Father [the King of France] supply your wants; but were you not wicked as you are you would not need them. You might live as you did before you knew them. Before those whom you call your brothers [the French] had arrived, did not your bow and arrow maintain you? You needed neither gun, powder, nor any other object. The flesh of animals was your food; their skins your raiment. But when I saw you inclined to evil, I removed the animals into the depths of the forest that yon might depend on your brothers for your necessaries, for your clothing. Again become good and do my will and I will send animals for your sustenance. I do not, however, forbid suffering among you your Father’s children. I love them; they know me; they pray to me. I supply their own wants, and give them that which they bring to you. Not so with those who are come to trouble your possessions [the English]. Drive them away; wage war against them; I love them not; they know me not; they are my enemies; they are your brothers’ enemies. Send them back to the lands I have made for them. Let them remain there. (Schoolcraft, Alg. Res., 1.)

The Master of Life then gave him a prayer, carved in Indian hieroglyphics upon a wooden stick, which he was told to deliver to his chief on returning to earth. (Parkman, 2.) His instructor continued:

Learn it by heart, and teach it to all the Indians and children. It must be repeated morning and evening. Do all that I have told thee, and announce it to all the Indians as coming from the Master of Life. Let them drink but one draught, or two at most, in one day. Let them have but one wife, and discontinue running after other people’s wives and daughters. Let them not fight one another. Let them not sing the medicine song, for in singing the medicine song they speak to the evil spirit. Drive from your lands those dogs in red clothing; they are only an injury to you. When you want anything, apply to me, as your brothers do, and I will give to both. Do not sell to your brothers that which I have placed on the earth as food. In short, become good, and you shall want nothing. When you meet one another, bow and give one another the [left] hand of the heart. Above all, I command thee to repeat morning and evening the prayer which I have given thee.

The Indian received the prayer, promising to do as he had been commanded and to recommend the same course to others. His former conductor then came and, leading him to the foot of the mountain, bid him resume his garments and go back to his village. His return excited much surprise among his friends, who had supposed him lost. They asked him where he had been, but as he had been commanded to speak to no one until he had seen the chief, he motioned with his hand to signify that he had come from above. On entering the village he went at once to the wigwam of the chief, to whom he delivered the prayer and the message which he had received from the Master of Life. (Schoolcraft, Alg. Res., 2.)

Although the story as here given bears plain impress of the white man’s ideas, it is essentially aboriginal. While the discrimination expressed by the Master of Life in favor of the French and against the English may have been due to the fact that the author of the manuscript was a Frenchman, it is more probable that we have here set forth only the well-known preference of the wild tribes. The occupancy of a region by the English always meant the speedy expulsion of the natives. The French, on the contrary, lived side by side with the red men, joining in their dances and simple amusements, and entering with fullest sympathy into their wild life, so that they were regarded rather as brethren of an allied tribe than as intruders of an alien race. This feeling is well indicated in the prophet’s narrative, where the Indians, while urged to discard everything that they have adopted from the whites, are yet to allow the French to remain among them, though exhorted to relentless war on the English. The difference received tragic exemplification at Michilimackinac a year later, when a handful of French traders looked on unarmed and unhurt while a crew of maddened savages were butchering, scalping, and drinking the blood of British soldiers. The introduction of the trivial incident of the hat is characteristically Indian, and the confounding of dreams and visions with actual happenings is a frequent result of mental exaltation of common occurrence in the history of religious enthusiasts. The Delaware prophet regards the whole experience as an actual fact instead of a distempered vision induced by long fasts and vigils, and the hieroglyphic prayer—undoubtedly graven by himself while under the ecstasy—is to him a real gift from heaven. The whole story is a striking parallel of the miraculous experiences recounted by the modern apostles of the Ghost dance. The prayer-stick also and the heavenly map, later described and illustrated, reappear in the account of Känakûk, the Kickapoo prophet, seventy years afterward, showing in a striking manner the continuity of aboriginal ideas and methods.

The celebrated missionary, Heckewelder, who spent fifty years among the Delawares, was personally acquainted with this prophet and gives a detailed account of his teachings and of his symbolic parchments. He says:

In the year 1762 there was a ramons preacher of the Delaware nation, who resided at Cayahaga, near Lake Erie, and travelled about the country, among the Indians, endeavouring to persuade them that he had been appointed by the Great Spirit to instruct them in those things that were agreeable to him, and point out to them the offences by which they had drawn his displeasure on themselves, and the means by which they might recover his favour for the future. He had drawn, as he pretended, by the direction of the Great Spirit, a kind of map on a piece of deerskin, somewhat dressed like parchment, which he called the great Book or writing. This, he said, he had been ordered to shew to the Indians, that they might see the situation in which the Mannitto had originally placed them, the misery which they had brought upon themselves by neglecting their duty, and the only way that was now left them to regain what they had lost. This map he held before him while preaching, frequently pointing to particular marks and spots upon it, and giving explanations as he went along.

The size of this map was about fifteen inches square, or, perhaps, something more. An inside square was formed by lines drawn within it, of about eight inches each way; two of these lines, however, were not closed by about half an inch at the corners. Across these inside lines, others of about an inch in length were drawn with sundry other lines and marks, all which was intended to represent a strong inaccessible barrier, to prevent those without from entering the space within, otherwise than at the place appointed for that purpose. When the map was held as he directed, the corners which were not closed lay at the left-hand side, directly opposite to each other, the one being at the southeast by south, and the nearest at the northeast by north. In explaining or describing the particular points on this map, with his fingers always painting to the place he was describing, he called the space within the inside lines the heavenly regions, or the place destined by the Great Spirit for the habitation of the Indians in future life. The spare left, open at the southeast corner he called the avenue, which had been intended for the Indians to enter into this heaven, but which was now in the possession of the white, people; wherefore the Great Spirit had since caused another avenue to be made on the opposite side, at which, however, it was both difficult and dangerous for them to enter, there being many impediments in their way, besides a large ditch leading to a gulf below, over which they had to leap; but the evil spirit kept at this very spot a continual watch for Indians, and whoever he laid hold of never could get away from him again, but was carried to his regions, where there was nothing but extreme poverty; where the ground was parched up by the heat for want of rain, no fruit came to perfection, the game was almost starved for want. of pasture, and where the evil spirit, at his pleasure, transformed men into horses and dogs, to be ridden by him and follow him in his hunts and wherever he went.

The space on the outside of this interior square was intended to represent the country given to the Indians to hunt, fish, and dwell in while in this world; the east side of it was called the ocean or great salt-water lake. Then the preacher, drawing the attention of his hearers particularly to the southeast avenne, would say to them, "Look here! See what we have lost by neglert and disobedience; by being remiss in the expression of our gratitude to the Great Spirit for what he has bestowed upon us; by neglecting to make to him sufficient sacrifices; by looking upon a people of a different color from our own, who had come across a great lake, as if they were a part of ourselves; by suffering them to sit down by our side, and looking at them with indifference, while they were not only taking our country from us, but this (pointing to the spot), this, our own avenue, leading into those beautiful regions which were destined for us. Such is the sad condition to which we are reduced. What is now to be done, and what remedy is to be applied? I will tell you, may friends. Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you! You are to make sacrifices, in the manner that I shall direct; to put off entirely from yourselves the customs which you have adopted since the white people came among us. You are to return to that former happy state, in which we lived in peace and plenty, before these strangers came to disturb us; and, above all, you must abstain from drinking their dearly beson, which they have forced upon us, for the sake of incrensing their gains and diminishing our numbers. Then will the Great Spirit give success to our arms; then he will give us strength to conquer our enemies, to drive them from hence, and recover the passage to the heavenly regions which they have taken from us."

Such was in general the substance of his discourses. After having diluted more or less on the various topics which I have mentioned, he commonly concluded in this manner: And now, my friends, in order that what I have told you may remain firmly impressed on your minds, and to refresh your memories from time to time, I advise you to preserve, in every family at least, such a book or writing as this, which I will finish off for yon, provided you bring me the price, which is only one buckskin or two doeskins apiece. The price was of course bought (sic), and the book purchased. In some of those maps, the figure of a deer or turkey, or both, was placed in the heavenly regions, and also in the dreary region of the evil spirit. The former, however, appeared fat and plump, while the latter seemed to have nothing but skin and bones. (Heckewelder, 1.)

From the narrative of John McCullough, who had been taken by the Indians when a child of 8 years, and lived for some years as an adopted son in a Delaware family in northeastern Ohio, we gather some additional particulars concerning this prophet, whose name seems to be lost to history. McCullough himself, who was then but a boy, never met the prophet, but obtained his information from others who had, especially from his Indian brother, who went to Tuscarawas (or Tuscalaways) to see and hear the new apostle on his first appearance.

It was said by those who went to see him that he had certain hieroglyphics marked on a piece of parchment, denoting the probation that human beings were subjected to whilst they were living on earth, and also denoting something of a future state. They informed me that he was almost constantly crying whilst he was exhorting them. I saw a copy of his hieroglyphics, as numbers of them had got them copied and undertook to preach or instruct others. The first or principal doctrine they taught them was to purify themselves from sin, which they taught they could do by the use of emetics and abstinence from carnal knowledge of the different sexes; to quit the use of firearms, and to live entirely in the original state that they were in before the white people found out their country. Nay, they taught that that fire was not pure that was made by steel and flint, but that they should make it by rubbing two sticks together. , .. It was said that their prophet taught them, or made them believe, that he had his instructions immediately from Keesh-she-la mil-lang-up, or a being that thought us into being, and that by following his instructions they would, in a few years, be able to drive the white people out of their country.

I knew a company of them who had secluded themselves for the purpose of purifying from sin, as they thought they could do. I believe they made no use of firearms. They had been out more than two years before I left them.... It was said that they made use of no other weapons than their bows and arrows. They also taught, in shaking hands, to give the left hand in token of friendship, as it denoted that they gave the heart along with the hand. (Pritts, 1.)

The religious ferment produced by the exhortations of the Delaware prophet spread rapidly from tribe to tribe, until, under the guidance of the master mind of the celebrated chief, Pontiac, it took shape in a grand contederacy of all the northwestern tribes to oppose the further progress of the English. The coast lands were lost to the Indians. The Ohio and the lakes were still theirs, and the Alleghanies marked a natural boundary between the two sections. Behind this mountain barrier Pontiac determined to make his stand. Though the prospect of a restoration of the French power might enable him to rally a following, he himself knew he could expect no aid from the French, for their armies had been defeated and their garrisons were already withdrawn; but, relying on the patriotism of his own red warriors, when told that the English were on their way to take possession of the abandoned posts, he sent back the haughty challenge, I stand in the path.

To Pontiac must be ascribed the highest position among the leaders of the Algonquian race. Born the son of a chief, he became in turn the chief of his own people, the Ottawa, whom it is said he commanded on the occasion of Braddock’s defeat. For this or other services in behalf of the French he had received marks of distinguished consideration from Montcalm himself. By reason of his natural ability, his influence was felt and respected wherever the name of his tribe was spoken, while to his dignity as chief he added the sacred character of high priest of the powerful secret order of the Midé. (Parkman, 3.) Now, in the prime of manhood, he originated and formulated the policy of a confederation of all the tribes, an idea afterward taken up and carried almost to a successful accomplisliment by the great Tecumtha. As principal chief of the lake tribes, he summoned them to the great council near Detroit, in April, 1763, and, as high priest and keeper of the faith, he there announced to them the will of the Master of Life, as revealed to the Delaware prophet, and called on them to unite for the recovery of their ancient territories and the preservation of their national life. Under the spell of his burning words the chiefs listened as to an oracle, and cried out that he had only to declare his will to be obeyed. (Parkman, 4.) His project being unanimously approved, runners were sent out to secure the cooperation of the more remote nations, and in a short time the confederation embraced every important tribe of Algonquian lineage, together with the Wyandot, Seneca, Winnebago, and some of those to the southward. (Parkman, 5.)

Only the genius of a Pontiac could have molded into a working unit such an aggregation of diverse elements of savagery. His executive ability is sufficiently proven by his creation of a regular commissary department based on promissory notes—hieroglyphics graven on birchbark and signed with the otter, the totem of his tribe; his diplomatic bent appeared in his employment of two secretaries to attend to this unique correspondence, each of whom he managed to keep in ignorance of the business transacted by the other (Parkman, 6); while his military capacity was soon to be evinced in the carefully laid plan which enabled his warriors to strike simultaneously a crushing blow at every British post scattered throughout the 500 miles of wilderness from Pittsburg to the straits of Mackinaw.

The history of this war, so eloquently told by Parkman, reads like some old knightly romance. The warning of the Indian girl; the concerted attack on the garrisons; the ball play at Mackinac on the king’s birthday, and the massacre that followed; the siege of Fort Pitt and the heroic defense of Detroit; the bloody battle of Bushy run, where the painted savage recoiled before the kilted Highlander, as brave and almost as wild; Bouquet’s march into the forests of the Ohio, and the submission of the vanquished tribes—all these things must be passed over here. They have already been told by a master of language. But the contest of savagery against civilization has but one ending, and the scene closes with the death of Pontiac, a broken-spirited wanderer, cut down at last by a hired assassin of his own race, for whose crime the blood of whole tribes was poured out in atonement. (Parkman, 7.)

CHAPTER III

TENSKWATAWA THE SHAWANO PROPHET

I told all the redskins that the way they were in was not good, and that they ought to abandon it.—Tenskwatawa.

A very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him.—Catin.

Forty years had passed away and changes had come to the western territory. The cross of Saint George, erected in the place of the lilies of France, had been supplanted by the flag of the young republic, which in one generation had extended its sway from the takes to the gulf and from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains. By treaties made in 1768 with the Iroquois and Cherokee, the two leading Indian confederacies in the east, the Ohio and the Kauawha had been fixed as the boundary between the two races, the Indians renouncing forever their claims to the seaboard, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna, while they were confirmed in their possession of the Alleghany, the Ohio, and the great northwest. But the restless borderer would not be limited, and encroachments on the native domain were constantly being made, resulting in a chronic warfare which kept alive the spirit of resentment. The consequence was that in the final struggle of the Revolution the Indian tribes ranged themselves on the British side. When the war ended and a treaty of peace was made between the new government and the old, no provision was made for the red allies of the king, and they were left to continue the struggle single-handed. The Indians claimed the Ohio country as theirs by virtue of the most solemn treaties, but pioneers had already occupied western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Kentucky, and were listening with eager attention to the reports brought back by adventurous hunters from the fertile lands of the Muskingum and the Scioto. They refused to be bound by the treaties of a government they had repudiated, and the tribes of the northwest were obliged to fight to defend their territories. Under the able leadership of Little Turtle they twice rolled back the tide of white invasion, defeating two of the finest armies ever sent into the western country, until, worn out by twenty years of unceasing warfare, and crushed and broken by the decisive victory of Wayne at the Fallen Timbers, their villages in ashes and their cornfields cut down, the dispirited chiefs met their conqueror at Greenville in 1795 and signed away the rights for which they had so long contended.

FIG. 56—Tenskwatawa the Shawano prophet. 1808 and 1831.

EXPLANATION OF FIGURE 56

The first portrait is taken from one given in Lossing’s American Revolution and War of 1812, m (1875), page 189, and thus described: The portrait of the Prophet is from n pencil sketch made by Pierre Le Dru, a young French trader, at Vincennes, in 1808. He made a sketch of Tecumtha at about the same time, both of which I found in possession of his son at Quebec in 1848, and by whom I was kindly permitted to copy them. The other is a copy of the picture painted by Catlin in 1831, after the trihe had removed to Kansas. The artist describes him as blind in his left (?) eye, and painted him holding his medicine fire in his right hand and his sacred string of beans in the other.

FIG. 57—Greenville treaty medal, obverse and reverse.

By this treaty, which marks the beginning of the end with the eastern tribes, the Indians renounced their claims to all territory east of a line running in a general way from the mouth of the Cuyahoga on Lake Erie to the mouth of the Kentucky on the Ohio, leaving to the whites the better portion of Ohio valley, including their favorite hunting ground of Kentucky. The Delaware, the Wyandot, and the Shawano, three of the leading tribes, were almost completely shorn of their ancient inheritance and driven back as refugees among the Miami.

The Canadian boundary had been established along the lakes; the Ohio was lost to the Indians; for them there was left only extermination or removal to the west. Their bravest warriors were slain. Their ablest chieftain, who had led them to victory against St Clair, had bowed to the inevitable, and was now regarded as one with a white man’s heart and a traitor to his race. A brooding dissatisfaction settled down on the tribes. Who shall deliver them from the desolation that has come on them?

Now arose among the Shawano another prophet to point out to his people the open door leading to happiness. In November, 1805, a young man named Laulewasikaw (Lalawe’thika, a rattle or similar instrument—Gatschet), then hardly more than 30 years of age, called around him his tribesmen and their allies at their ancient capital of Wapakoneta, within the present limits of Ohio, and there announced himself as the bearer of a new revelation from the Master of Life, who had taken pity on his red children and wished to save them from the threatened destruction. He declared that he had been taken up to the spirit world and had been permitted to lift the veil of the past and the future—had seen the misery of evil doers and learned the happiness that awaited those who followed the precepts of the Indian god. He then began an earnest exhortation, denouncing the witchcraft practices and medicine juggleries of the tribe, and solemnly warning his hearers that none who had part in such things would ever taste of the future happiness. The firewater of the whites was poison and accursed; and those who continued its use would after death be tormented with all the pains of fire, while flames would continually issue from their mouths. This idea may have been derived from some white man’s teaching or from the Indian practice of torture by fire. The young must cherish and respect the aged and infirm. All property must be in common, according to the ancient law of their ancestors. Indian women must cease to intermarry with white men; the two races were distinct and must remain so. The white man’s dress, with his flint-and-steel, must be discarded for the old time buckskin and the firestick. More than this, every tool and every custom derived from the whites must be put away, and they must return to the methods which the Master of Life had taught them. When they should do all this, lie promised that they would again be taken into the divine favor, and find the happiness which their fathers had known before the coming of the whites. Finally, in proof of his divine mission, he announced that he had received power to cure all diseases and to arrest the hand of death in sickness or on