Chapter XII. The Ghost Dance East of the Rockies—Among the Sioux

In 1889 the Ogalala heard that the son of God had come upon earth in the west. They said the Messiah was there, but he had come to help the Indians and not the whites, and it made the Indians happy to hear this.—George Sword.

They signed away a valuable portion of their reservation, and it is now occupied by white people, for which they have received nothing. They understood that ample provision would be made for their support; instead, their supplies have been reduced and much of the time they have been living on half and two-thirds rations. Their crops, as well as the crops of white people, for two years have been almost a total failure. The disaffection is widespread, especially among the Sioux, while the Cheyennes have been on the verge of starvation and were forced to commit depredations to sustain life. These facts are beyond question, and the evidence is positive and sustained by thousands of witnesses.—General Miles.

Among the tribes east of the mountains and north of Oklahoma, it appears from official documents in the Indian Office and from other obtainable information that the Ghost dance and the doctrine, if known at all, were never accepted by the Blackfeet of Montana; the Ojibwa of Turtle mountain and Devils lake in North Dakota, or by the rest of the tribe farther to the east in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; the Omaha, Winnebago, and Ponka in Nebraska; the small band of Sauk and Fox in Iowa; the still smaller band of Sauk and Fox, the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Iowa, and Ojibwa in northeastern Kansas; or by the Sioux of Devils lake in North Dakota, Lake Traverse (Sisseton agency) and Flandreau in South Dakota, and Santee agency in Nebraska. All or most of these Sioux belong to the Santee or eastern division of the tribe, and have long been under civilizing influences. According to official statements the dance was not taken up by any of the Sioux of Crow Creek or Yankton agencies in South Dakota, but they were certainly more or less affected by it, as they knew all about it and are in constant communication with the wilder bands of Sioux which were concerned in the outbreak. I was informed by the Omaha and Winnebago in 1891 that they had been told of the new messiah by visiting Sioux from Pine Ridge agency in April, 1890, and later on by other Sioux from Yankton agency, but had put no faith in the story, and had never organized a Ghost dance. According to the agent in charge, the Crow of Montana were not affected. This, if true, is remarkable, in view of the fact that the Crow are a large tribe and comparatively primitive, and have living near them the wildest of the Ghost-dancing tribes, the northern Cheyenne especially occupying practically the same reservation. It is possible that their experience in the Sword-bearer affair in 1887, already mentioned, had a tendency to weaken their faith in later prophets. Dr George Bird Grinnell, a competent authority, states, in reply to a personal letter, that nothing was known about the dance by the Blackfeet of Montana or by the Blackfeet, Sarsi, or Plains Cree on the Canadian side of the boundary line.

Within the same general region, east of the Rocky mountains and north of Oklahoma, the doctrine and the dance were accepted by the Asiniboin (Fort Belknap and Fort Peck agencies), Grosventres (Arapaho subtribe, Fort Belknap agency), northern Cheyenne of Montana; the Arikara, Grosventres (Minitari), and Mandan of Fort Berthold agency, North Dakota; the Shoshoni and northern Arapaho on Wind River reservation in Wyoming, as already mentioned; and by the great body of the Sioux, at Fort Peck agency (Yanktonais), Montana, and at Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brulé, Pine Ridge, and Rosebud agencies in North Dakota and South Dakota. The whole number of Sioux concerned was about 20,000, of whom 16,000 belonged to the Teton division, among the wildest and most warlike of all the western tribes. A few Cheyenne are also associated with the Sioux at Pine Ridge.

The northern Arapaho and the Shoshoni of Wyoming were the medium by which the doctrine of the new messiah was originally communicated to all these tribes. In the spring of 1889, Nakash, “Sage,” the Arapaho chief already mentioned, crossed the mountains to investigate the reports of the new religion, and brought back a full confirmation of all that had been told them from the west. A visiting Grosventre, then among the Arapaho, heard the story and brought back the wonderful news to the Grosventres and Asiniboin of Fort Belknap, but although his account was received by some with unquestioning faith, the excitement had in it nothing of a dangerous character. (G. D., 18.)

In a short time the news spread to the Cheyenne in Montana and the Sioux of the Dakotas, and in the fall of 1889 delegates from these two tribes arrived at Fort Washakie to learn more about the messiah in the west. The principal Cheyenne delegate was Porcupine, while Short Bull and Kicking Bear were the leaders of the Sioux party. After hearing the statements of the Arapaho and Shoshoni, it was decided that some of the Cheyenne should return and report to their tribe, while Porcupine and one or two others, with the Sioux delegates, several Shoshoni, and the Arapaho, Sitting Bull, and Friday, should go to Nevada, interview the messiah himself, and learn the whole truth of the matter. Accordingly, about November, 1889, Porcupine and his companions left Fort Washakie in Wyoming for Fort Hall reservation in Idaho, where they met the Shoshoni and Bannock and were well received and entertained by them. The tribes at this place were firm believers in the new doctrine, and Porcupine states that from there on to the end of the journey all the Indians they met were dancing the Ghost dance. After 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 Pyramid 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. He has much to say of the kindness of the whites they met west of the mountains, who, it will be remembered, were 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 Pyramid 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. D., 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 news of the appearance of the messiah. A council was called and Porcupine made a full report of the journey and delivered the divine message, talking five days in succession. The report aroused the wildest excitement among the Cheyenne, and after several long debates on the subject the Ghost dance was inaugurated at the various camps in accordance with the instructions from beyond the mountains. In June the matter came to the attention of the military officer on the reservation, who summoned Porcupine before him and obtained from him a full account of the journey and the doctrine. (See page 793.) Porcupine insisted strongly on the sacred character of the messiah and his message, and challenged any doubters to return with him to Nevada and investigate for themselves. He claimed also that the messiah could speak all languages. As a matter of fact, Wovoka speaks only his native Paiute and a little English, but due allowance must be made for the mental exaltation of the narrator.

Grinnell states that the failure of certain things to happen according to the predictions of the messiah, in September, 1890, caused a temporary loss of faith on the part of the Cheyenne, but that shortly afterward some visiting Shoshoni and Arapaho from Wyoming reported that in their journey as they came over they had met a party of Indians who had been dead thirty or forty years, but had been resurrected by the messiah, and were now going about as if they had never died. It is useless to speculate on the mental condition of men who could seriously report or believe such things; but, however that may be, the result was that the Cheyenne returned to the dance with redoubled fervor. (J. F. L., 5.)

The Sioux first heard of the messiah in 1889. According to the statement of Captain George Sword, of that tribe, the information came to the Ogalala (Sioux of Pine Ridge) in that year, through the Shoshoni and Arapaho. Later in the same year a delegation consisting of Good Thunder and several others started out to the west to find the messiah and to investigate the truth of the rumor. On their return they announced that the messiah had indeed come to help the Indians, but not the whites. Their report aroused a fervor of joyful excitement among the Indians and a second delegation was sent out in 1890, consisting of Good Thunder, Cloud Horse, Yellow Knife, and Short Bull. They confirmed the report of the first delegation, and on this assurance the Ghost dance was inaugurated among the Sioux at Pine Ridge in the spring of 1890.

The matter is stated differently and more correctly by William Selwyn, an educated Sioux, at that time employed as postmaster at Pine Ridge. He says there was some talk on the subject by Indians from western tribes who visited the agency in the fall of 1888 (?), but that it did not excite much attention until 1889, when numerous letters concerning the new messiah were received by the Indians at Pine Ridge from tribes in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Dakota, and Oklahoma. As Selwyn was postmaster, the Indians who could not read usually brought their letters to him to read for them, so that he was thus in position to get accurate knowledge of the extent and nature of the excitement. It may be remarked here that, under present conditions, when the various tribes are isolated upon widely separated reservations, the Ghost dance could never have become so widespread, and would probably have died out within a year of its inception, had it not been for the efficient aid it received from the returned pupils of various eastern government schools, who conducted the sacred correspondence for their friends at the different agencies, acted as interpreters for the delegates to the messiah, and in various ways assumed the leadership and conduct of the dance.

In the fall of 1889, at a council held at Pine Ridge by Red Cloud, Young Man Afraid, Little Wound, American Horse, and other Sioux chiefs, a delegation was appointed to visit the western agencies to learn more about the new messiah. The delegates chosen were Good Thunder, Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Broken Arm, from Pine Ridge; Short Bull and another from Rosebud, and Kicking Bear from Cheyenne River agency. They started on their journey to the west, and soon began to write from Wyoming, Utah, and beyond the mountains, confirming all that had been said of the advent of a redeemer. They were gone all winter, and their return in the spring of 1890 aroused an intense excitement among the Sioux, who had been anxiously awaiting their report. All the delegates agreed that there was a man near the base of the Sierras who said that he was the son of God, who had once been killed by the whites, and who bore on his body the scars of the crucifixion. He had now returned to punish the whites for their wickedness, especially for their injustice toward the Indians. With the coming of the next spring (1891) he would wipe the whites from the face of the earth, and would then resurrect all the dead Indians, bring back the buffalo and other game, and restore the supremacy of the aboriginal race. He had before come to the whites, but they had rejected him. He was now the God of the Indians, and they must pray to him and call him “father,” and prepare for his awful coming. Selwyn’s account of this delegation, which was accompanied by representatives of several other tribes, including Porcupine the Cheyenne, and Sitting Bull the Arapaho, agrees with the statements of the Arapaho as given in chapter xiv. Three of the Sioux delegates found their way to Umatilla reservation in Oregon and remained there several days discussing the new doctrine. (Comr., 30—Dorchester, 529.)

The delegates made their report at Pine Ridge in April, 1890. A council was at once called to discuss the matter, but Selwyn informed the agent, Colonel Gallagher, who had Good Thunder and two others arrested and imprisoned. They were held in confinement two days, but refused to talk when questioned. The intended council was not held, but soon afterward Kicking Bear returned from a visit to the northern Arapaho in Wyoming with the news that those Indians were already dancing, and could see and talk with their dead relatives in the trance. The excitement which the agent had thought to smother by the arrest of the leaders broke out again with added strength. Red Cloud himself, the great chief of the Ogalala, declared his adhesion to the new doctrine and said his people must do as the messiah had commanded. Another council was called on White Clay creek, a few miles from Pine Ridge agency, and the Ghost dance was formally inaugurated among the Sioux, the recent delegates acting as priests and leaders of the ceremony.

As the result of all he could learn, Selwyn, in November, 1890, warned the agent in charge of Yankton agency that the Indians intended a general outbreak in the spring. Six months earlier, and before Porcupine’s statement had been made to the officer at Camp Crook, a letter dated May 29, 1890, had been addressed to the Interior Department from a citizen of Pierre, South Dakota, stating that the Sioux, or a portion of them, were secretly planning for an outbreak in the near future. This was the first intimation of trouble ahead. (G. D., 20.)

Wonderful things were said of the messiah by the returned delegates. It was claimed that he could make animals talk and distant objects appear close at hand, and that he came down from heaven in a cloud. He conjured up before their eyes a vision of the spirit world, so that when they looked they beheld an ocean, and beyond it a land upon which they saw “all the nations of Indians coming home,” but as they looked the vision faded away, the messiah saying that the time had not yet come. Curiously enough, although he came to restore the old life, he advised his hearers to go to work and to send their children to school. Should the soldiers attempt to harm him, he said he need only stretch out his arms and his enemies would become powerless, or the ground would open and swallow them. On their way home if they should kill a buffalo—the messiah had evidently not read Allen’s monograph—they must cut off its head and tail and feet and leave them on the ground and the buffalo would come to life again. They must tell their people to follow his instructions. Unbelievers and renegade Indians would be buried under the new earth which was to come upon the old. They must use the sacred red and white paint and the sacred grass (possibly sagebrush) which he gave them, and in the spring, when the green grass came, their people who were gone before would return, and they would see their friends again.

Now comes the most remarkable part, quoting from the statement given to Captain Sword:

The people from every tipi send for us to visit them; they are people who died many years ago. Chasing Hawk, who died not long ago, was there and we went to his tipi. He was living with his wife, who was killed in war long ago. They live in a buffalo skin tipi—a very large one—and he wanted all his friends to go there to live. A son of Good Thunder, who died in war long ago, was one who also took us to his tipi, so his father saw him. When coming we come to a herd of buffaloes. We killed one and took everything except the four feet, head, and tail, and when we came a little ways from it there was the buffaloes come to life again and went off. This was one of the messiah’s word came to truth. The messiah said, “I will short your journey when you feel tired of the long ways, if you call upon me.” This we did when we were tired. The night came upon us, we stopped at a place and we called upon the messiah to help us because we were tired of long journey. We went to sleep and in the morning we found ourselves at a great distance from where we stopped.

It is useless to assert that these men, who had been selected by the chiefs of their tribe to investigate and report upon the truth or falsity of the messiah rumors, were all liars, and that all the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other delegates who reported equally wonderful things were liars likewise. They were simply laboring under some strange psychologic influence as yet unexplained. The story of the revivified buffalo became so widely current as to form the subject of a Kiowa ghost song.

Having mentioned some characteristics of the Ghost dance west of the Rockies, we shall notice here some of the peculiar features of the dance as it existed among the Sioux. The ceremony will be described in detail later on.

Before going into the dance the men, or at least the leaders, fasted for twenty-four hours, and then at sunrise entered the sweat-house for the religious rite of purification preliminary to painting themselves for the dance. The sweat-house is a small circular framework of willow branches driven into the ground and bent over and brought together at the top in such a way that when covered with blankets or buffalo robes the structure forms a diminutive round-top tipi just high enough to enable several persons to sit or to stand in a stooping posture inside. The doorway faces the east, as is the rule in Indian structures, and at the distance of a few feet in front of the doorway is a small mound of earth, on which is placed a buffalo skull, with the head turned as if looking into the lodge. The earth of which the mound is formed is taken from a hole dug in the center of the lodge. Near the sweat-house, on the outside, there is frequently a tall sacrifice pole, from the top of which are hung strips of bright-colored cloth, packages of tobacco, or other offerings to the deity invoked by the devotee on any particular occasion.

The sweat bath is in frequent use, both as a religious rite of purification and as a hygienic treatment. Like everything else in Indian life, even the sanitary application is attended with much detail of religious ceremony. Fresh bundles of the fragrant wild sage are strewn upon the ground inside of the sweat-house, and a fire is kindled outside a short distance away. In this fire stones are heated by the medicine-men, and when all is ready the patient or devotee, stripped to the breechcloth, enters the sweat-house. The stones are then handed in to him by the priests by means of two forked sticks, cut especially for the purpose, and with two other forked sticks he puts the stones into the hole already mentioned as having been dug in the center of the lodge. Water is then passed in to him, which he pours over the hot stones until the whole interior is filled with steam; the blankets are pulled tight to close every opening, and he sits in this aboriginal Turkish bath until his naked body is dripping with perspiration. During this time the doctors outside are doing their part in the way of praying to the gods and keeping up the supply of hot stones and water until in their estimation he has been sufficiently purified, physically or morally, when he emerges and resumes his clothing, sometimes first checking the perspiration and inducing a reaction by a plunge into the neighboring stream. The sweat bath in one form or another was common to almost every tribe in the United States, but as an accompaniment to the Ghost dance it seems to have been used only by the Sioux. It may have been used in this connection among the Shoshoni or northern Cheyenne, but was not among any of the tribes of the southern plains. The Ghost-dance sweat-house of the Sioux was frequently made sufficiently large to accommodate a considerable number of persons standing inside at the same time.

After the sweating ceremony the dancer was painted by the medicine-men who acted as leaders, of whom Sitting Bull was accounted the greatest among the Sioux. The design and color varied with the individual, being frequently determined by a previous trance vision of the subject, but circles, crescents, and crosses, representing respectively the sun, the moon, and the morning star, were always favorite figures upon forehead, face, and cheeks. As this was not a naked dance, the rest of the body was not usually painted. After the painting the dancer was robed in the sacred ghost shirt already described. This also was painted with, symbolic figures, among which were usually represented sun, moon, or stars, the eagle, magpie, crow, or sage-hen, all sacred to the Ghost dance among the Sioux. In connection with the painting the face and body were rubbed with the sweet-smelling vernal grass (Hierochloe), used for this purpose by many of the prairie tribes, and sometimes also burned as incense in their sacred ceremonies or carried as a perfume in small pouches attached to the clothing.

The painting occupied most of the morning, so that it was about noon before the participants formed the circle for the dance. Among the Sioux, unlike the southern and western tribes generally, a small tree was planted in the center of the circle, with an American flag or colored streamers floating from the top. Around the base of this tree sat the priests. At a great dance at No Water’s camp on White river near Pine Ridge, shortly before the arrival of the troops, a young woman standing within the circle gave the signal for the performance by shooting into the air toward the cardinal points four sacred arrows, made after the old primitive fashion with bone heads, and dipped in the blood of a steer before being brought to the dance. These were then gathered up and tied to the branches of the tree, together with the bow, a gaming wheel and sticks, and a peculiar staff or wand with horns. (See plates xc, xci.) Another young woman, or the same one, remained standing near the tree throughout the dance, holding a sacred redstone pipe stretched out toward the west, the direction from which the messiah was to appear.

At the beginning the performers, men and women, sat on the ground in a large circle around the tree. A plaintive chant was then sung, after which a vessel of some sacred food was passed around the circle until everyone had partaken, when, at a signal by the priests, the dancers rose to their feet, joined hands, and began to chant the opening song and move slowly around the circle from right to left. The rest of the performance, with its frenzies, trances, and recitals of visions, was the same as with the southern tribes, as will be described in detail hereafter. Like these tribes also, the Sioux usually selected Sunday, the great medicine day of the white man, for the ceremony.

We come now to the Sioux outbreak of 1890, but before going into the history of this short but costly war it is appropriate to state briefly the causes of the outbreak. In the documentary appendix to this chapter these causes are fully set forth by competent authorities—civilian, military, missionary, and Indian. They may be summarized as (1) unrest of the conservative element under the decay of the old life, (2) repeated neglect of promises made by the government, and (3) hunger.

The Sioux are the largest and strongest tribe within the United States. In spite of wars, removals, and diminished food supply since the advent of the white man, they still number nearly 26,000. In addition to these there are about 600 more residing in Canada. They formerly held the headwaters of the Mississippi, extending eastward almost to Lake Superior, but were driven into the prairie about two centuries ago by their enemies, the Ojibwa, after the latter had obtained firearms from the French. On coming out on the buffalo plains they became possessed of the horse, by means of which reinforcement to their own overpowering numbers the Sioux were soon enabled to assume the offensive, and in a short time had made themselves the undisputed masters of an immense territory extending, in a general way, from Minnesota to the Rocky mountains and from the Yellowstone to the Platte. A few small tribes were able to maintain their position within these limits, but only by keeping close to their strongly built permanent villages on the Missouri. Millions of buffalo to furnish unlimited food supply, thousands of horses, and hundreds of miles of free range made the Sioux, up to the year 1868, the richest and most prosperous, the proudest, and withal, perhaps, the wildest of all the tribes of the plains.

In that year, in pursuance of a policy inaugurated for bringing all the plains tribes under the direct control of the government, a treaty was negotiated with the Sioux living west of the Missouri by which they renounced their claims to a great part of their territory and had “set apart for their absolute and undisturbed use and occupation”—so the treaty states—a reservation which embraced all of the present state of South Dakota west of Missouri river. At the same time agents were appointed and agencies established for them; annuities and rations, cows, physicians, farmers, teachers, and other good things were promised them, and they agreed to allow railroad routes to be surveyed and built and military posts to be established in their territory and neighborhood. At one stroke they were reduced from a free nation to dependent wards of the government. It was stipulated also that they should be allowed to hunt within their old range, outside the limits of the reservation, so long as the buffalo abounded—a proviso which, to the Indians, must have meant forever.

The reservation thus established was an immense one, and would have been ample for all the Sioux while being gradually educated toward civilization, could the buffalo have remained and the white man kept away. But the times were changing. The building of the railroads brought into the plains swarms of hunters and emigrants, who began to exterminate the buffalo at such a rate that in a few years the Sioux, with all the other hunting tribes of the plains, realized that their food supply was rapidly going. Then gold was discovered in the Black hills, within the reservation, and at once thousands of miners and other thousands of lawless desperadoes rushed into the country in defiance of the protests of the Indians and the pledges of the government, and the Sioux saw their last remaining hunting ground taken from them. The result was the Custer war and massacre, and a new agreement in 1876 by which the Sioux were shorn of one-third of their guaranteed reservation, including the Black hills, and this led to deep and widespread dissatisfaction throughout the tribe. The conservatives brooded over the past and planned opposition to further changes which they felt themselves unable to meet. The progressives felt that the white man’s promises meant nothing.

On this point Commissioner Morgan says, in his statement of the causes of the outbreak:

Prior to the agreement of 1876 buffalo and deer were the main support of the Sioux. Food, tents, bedding were the direct outcome of hunting, and with furs and pelts as articles of barter or exchange it was easy for the Sioux to procure whatever constituted for them the necessaries, the comforts, or even the luxuries of life. Within eight years from the agreement of 1876 the buffalo had gone and the Sioux had left to them alkali land and government rations. It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of the calamity, as they viewed it, which happened to these people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo and the large diminution in the numbers of deer and other wild animals. Suddenly, almost without warning, they were expected at once and without previous training to settle down to the pursuits of agriculture in a land largely unfitted for such use. The freedom of the chase was to be exchanged for the idleness of the camp. The boundless range was to be abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of plenty to be supplanted by limited and decreasing government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent. (Comr., 28.)

It took our own Aryan ancestors untold centuries to develop from savagery into civilization. Was it reasonable to expect that the Sioux could do the same in fourteen years?

The white population in the Black hills had rapidly increased, and it had become desirable to open communication between eastern and western Dakota. To accomplish this, it was proposed to cut out the heart of the Sioux reservation, and in 1882, only six years after the Black hills had been seized, the Sioux were called on to surrender more territory. A commission was sent out to treat with them, but the price offered—only about 8 cents per acre—was so absurdly small, and the methods used so palpably unjust, that friends of the Indians interposed and succeeded in defeating the measure in Congress. Another agreement was prepared, but experience had made the Indians suspicious, and it was not until a third commission went out, under the chairmanship of General Crook, known to the Indians as a brave soldier and an honorable man, that the Sioux consented to treat. (Welsh, 1.) The result, after much effort on the part of the commission and determined opposition by the conservatives, was another agreement, in 1889, by which the Sioux surrendered one-half (about 11,000,000 acres) of their remaining territory, and the great reservation was cut up into five smaller ones, the northern and southern reservations being separated by a strip 60 miles wide.

Then came a swift accumulation of miseries. Dakota is an arid country with thin soil and short seasons. Although well adapted to grazing it is not suited to agriculture, as is sufficiently proven by the fact that the white settlers in that and the adjoining state of Nebraska have several times been obliged to call for state or federal assistance on account of failure of crops. To wild Indians hardly in from the warpath the problem was much more serious. As General Miles points out in his official report, thousands of white settlers after years of successive failures had given up the struggle and left the country, but the Indians, confined to reservations, were unable to emigrate, and were also as a rule unable to find employment, as the whites might, by which they could earn a subsistence. The buffalo was gone. They must depend on their cattle, their crops, and the government rations issued in return for the lands they had surrendered. If these failed, they must starve. The highest official authorities concur in the statement that all of these did fail, and that the Indians were driven to outbreak by starvation. (See appendix to this chapter.)

In 1888 their cattle had been diminished by disease. In 1889 their crops were a failure, owing largely to the fact that the Indians had been called into the agency in the middle of the farming season and kept there to treat with the commission, going back afterward to find their fields trampled and torn up by stock during their absence. Then followed epidemics of measles, grippe, and whooping cough, in rapid succession and with terribly fatal results. Anyone who understands the Indian character needs not the testimony of witnesses to know the mental effect thus produced. Sullenness and gloom, amounting almost to despair, settled down on the Sioux, especially among the wilder portion. “The people said their children were all dying from the face of the earth, and they might as well be killed at once.” Then came another entire failure of crops in 1890, and an unexpected reduction of rations, and the Indians were brought face to face with starvation. They had been expressly and repeatedly told by the commission that their rations would not be affected by their signing the treaty, but immediately on the consummation of the agreement Congress cut down their beef rations by 2,000,000 pounds at Rosebud, 1,000,000 at Pine Ridge, and in less proportion at other agencies. Earnest protest against this reduction was made by the commission which had negotiated the treaty, by Commissioner Morgan, and by General Miles, but still Congress failed to remedy the matter until the Sioux had actually been driven to rebellion. As Commissioner Morgan states, “It was not until January, 1891, after the troubles, that an appropriation of $100,000 was made by Congress for additional beef for the Sioux.” The protest of the commission, a full year before the outbreak, as quoted by Commissioner Morgan (see page 829), is strong and positive on this point.

Commissioner Morgan, while claiming that the Sioux had before been receiving more rations than they were justly entitled to according to their census number, and denying that the reduction was such as to cause even extreme suffering, yet states that the reduction was especially unwise at this juncture, as it was in direct violation of the promises made to the Indians, and would be used as an argument by those opposed to the treaty to show that the government cared nothing for the Indians after it had obtained their lands. It is quite possible that the former number of rations was greater than the actual number of persons, as it is always a difficult matter to count roving Indians, and the difficulties were greater when the old census was made. The census is taken at long intervals and the tendency is nearly always toward a decrease. Furthermore, it has usually been the policy with agents to hold their Indians quiet by keeping them as well fed as possible. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the issue is based on the weight of the cattle as delivered at the agency in the fall, and that months of exposure to a Dakota winter will reduce this weight by several hundred pounds to the animal. The official investigation by Captain Hurst at Cheyenne River agency shows conclusively that the essential food items of meat, flour, and coffee were far below the amount stipulated by the treaty. (See page 837.)

In regard to the effect of this food deficiency Bishop Hare says: “The people were often hungry and, the physicians in many cases said, died, when taken sick, not so much from disease as for want of food.” General Miles says: “The fact that they had not received sufficient food is admitted by the agents and the officers of the government who have had opportunities of knowing,” and in another place he states that in spite of crop failures and other difficulties, after the sale of the reservation “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 general 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 the Sioux for the lands recently ceded, or to have the new lines surveyed 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 Royer—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 dissatisfaction, 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 had 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 Commissioner 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 outbreak of 1890 was due entirely to local grievances, recent or long standing. The remedy and preventive for similar trouble in the future is sufficiently indicated in the appended statements of competent authorities.