Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 45

On waking up, he said that he had been to heaven, had visited G.o.d and the spirits, and had received command to preach a new gospel.

The Pai-Utes were glad to believe whatever he claimed for himself. He seemed to hypnotize them. The word that Wo-vo-ka was the Messiah and could perform miracles spread through the Pai-Utes of Nevada and the Utes of Utah; it crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California on the west, and the Rocky Mountains into Wyoming on the east; and it kept going, east and north and south.

This spring Good Thunder, Short Bull, Cloud Horse and Yellow Knife journeyed to see the Messiah again.

When they came back they reported that he had appeared to them out of some smoke. He welcomed them, and showed them a land that bridged the ocean, and upon the land all the Indians of all nations were on their way home again.

They saw lodges, of buffalo hides, in which the dead were living. They talked with dead Sioux whom they had known.

The Messiah had given them red and white paint, that would ward off sickness, renew youth, and cause visions. He had told them to have the Sioux send their children to school, and to attend to farming. There was to be no fighting with the white people. But the whites were to be destroyed, by a great landslide that would cover the world with new earth. Upon the new earth would roam the buffalo and deer, as of old.

The Indians who obeyed the Messiah would be lifted up, above the landslide, and gently dropped back again, there to live forever with all their friends and relatives who had come with it from spirit land.

This reunion was to occur the next spring, of 1891, when the gra.s.s was knee high.

The Good Thunder party brought what they said was a piece of buffalo meat. The Messiah had told them that if on their way home they killed any buffalo, they were to leave the hoofs and tail and head on the prairie, and the buffalo would spring up, whole, when they turned their backs.

All the buffalo would act this way, in the happy time to come.

The day of buffalo herds on the plains was past; but the party a.s.serted that they did find a herd, and killed one buffalo--and he sprang up, from the hoofs and tail and head, just as the Messiah had promised.

The Cheyennes, the Shoshonis, the Arapahos, the Kiowas, the Utes, the Pai-Utes, were dancing the Ghost Dance. The Sioux now danced.

The Ghost Dancers danced in a circle, holding hands and chanting, until they fell over and went to spirit land. From the spirits they brought back signs, such as buffalo tails, buffalo meat, and other things of an Indian country.

The Sioux Ghost Dancers wore Ghost shirts, of white muslin. These Ghost shirts would turn a bullet: no enemy weapon could pierce a Ghost shirt! That was the word of Kicking Bear and Short Bull.

The Ghost Dance ceremonies were many, and the dance was noisy.

Away up on the Standing Rock reservation, which had not yet joined in the craze, Sitting Bull, the former great medicine leader of the Sioux, was much interested. The agent, Mr. James McLaughlin, refused to permit him to visit Kicking Bear, the prophet on the Cheyenne River reservation, south. Kicking Bear was hard at it, preaching the Messiah religion to his Miniconjous and the other Sioux there.

But Sitting Bull was anxious to learn. So he sent six of his young men down, to ask Kicking Bear to come up for a visit at the Grand River in the Standing Rock reservation.

Kicking Bear appeared, in October, this 1890, with several of his followers, and preached to the Sitting Bull people.

"My brothers, I bring to you the promise of a day in which there will be no white man to lay his hand on the bridle of the Indian's horse; when the red men of the prairie will rule the world, and not be turned from the hunting grounds by any man. I bring you word from your fathers the ghosts, that they are now marching to join you, led by the Messiah who came once on earth with the white men, but was cast out and killed by them. I have seen the wonders of the spirit land, and have talked with the ghosts. I traveled far, and am sent back with a message to tell you to make ready for the coming of the Messiah and return of the ghosts in the spring."

This was the commencement of Kicking Bear's sermon, as reported to Agent McLaughlin by One Bull, an Indian policeman who was Sitting Bull's nephew.

Kicking Bear spoke for a long time. He told Sitting Bull everything.

The new earth, that would bury the whites, was to be five times the height of a man. It would be covered with sweet gra.s.s, and with herds of buffalo and ponies. The Pacific Ocean would be filled up; the other oceans would be barricaded. The white man's powder would not burn, against the Ghost Dancers. The whites who died would all belong to the Evil Spirit. Only the Indians would enjoy life, under the Good Spirit, with no white people to molest them.

To the unhappy, starving Sioux this was a promise full of hope.

Sitting Bull at once took the lead at Standing Rock. He danced himself, reported Agent McLaughlin, "to mere skin and bone." He introduced new wrinkles of his own.

Down at Pine Ridge reservation old Red Cloud had adopted the new belief. On the Rosebud reservation Short Bull, who also "had seen the Messiah," was making the Brules defiant. Now at Standing Rock Sitting Bull had the fever, and was tireless.

Kicking Bear proved to be a nuisance. The Sioux feared him. It was said that in the dark there was a halo around his head, and a star over him; that he had the power to strike unbelievers dead, with a look, or change them into dogs.

Agent McLaughlin sent thirteen police under Sergeant Crazy Walking, to arrest Kicking Bear and put him off the reservation.

Crazy Walking went, and found Kicking Bear and Sitting Bull in the midst of a Ghost Dancer meeting. He listened to the stories, and was afraid of the medicine. He returned to the agency, and said that Sitting Bull had promised that Kicking Bear should leave, the next day.

Agent McLaughlin called Second Lieutenant Chatka. Lieutenant Chatka had good sense. He was a soldier and did not put much faith in such "medicine." He asked for only two men, and rode straight to Sitting Bull's camp, on the Grand River, forty miles south of the Agency quarters.

The Sioux there were dancing--which made no difference to Lieutenant Chatka, although some of them were his relatives. He broke through the circle, told Kicking Bear and his Cheyenne River reservation squad that they must get out; and escorted them twenty-five miles south, to the line between the two reservations.

Thus Lieutenant Chatka proved himself to be a faithful officer.

This night Sitting Bull snapped his peace pipe in two, before his Ghost Dancers. His heart had swelled within him.

"Why did you break your pipe, Sitting Bull?"

He replied hotly:

"Because I want to fight, and I want to die, if need be, for this new religion."

He declared that the dancing must continue. The spirits had said that the Sioux must dance or they would lose their lives.

Four hundred and fifty of the Standing Rock Indians were his devoted followers. It was he who translated the messages received for them from the spirit world. It was he who anointed them, after the sweat baths, with the sacred oil. It was he who urged them to dance until they dropped at the wave of his sacred feather. He was all-powerful, again.

First Lieutenant Bull Head, of the Sioux police, lived three miles west of him, up river, and was watching him. Sitting Bull did not like to be watched. The police irritated him.

The constant dancing, day and night, on the reservations, alarmed the white officials. It was a threat, like the threat of Tec.u.mseh and the Open Door.

Down at Pine Ridge, Short Bull, the Messiah's prophet there, announced:

"My friends and relations: I will soon start this thing in running order. I have told you that this would come to pa.s.s in two seasons, but since the whites are interfering so much, I will advance the time from what my father has told me to do, so the time will be shorter.

Therefore you must not be afraid of anything. Some of my relations have no ears, so I will have them blown away."

He told them all to gather in one place and dance and make ready. Even if the soldiers surrounded them four deep, no harm would occur.

At last, on request of the agents at Pine Ridge and Rosebud the troops entered, to keep order. Short Bull, Kicking Bear and other prophets of the Messiah led their people into the Bad Lands, in the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, there to await the promised time.

They had destroyed their houses, and the houses in their path. Many of the Sioux who had not danced went with them, or joined them, because of fear of the soldiers. They feared being arrested and held as hostages.

Soon there were three thousand of the Sioux in the Bad Lands.

This left Sitting Bull and his dancers alone, up at Standing Rock, with the police watching them. He felt that he ought to go to the Ghost Dance big camp, in the Bad Lands. And he decided that he would.

Agent McLaughlin had asked him to come to the agency for a talk; but Sitting Bull well knew that if he did go to the agency, he probably would be arrested. So he declined.

Next, Agent McLaughlin arrived, in person, and roundly scolded him for encouraging the "foolish" dancing.

Sitting Bull proposed to Agent McLaughlin that they journey together into the west; and that if they could find no Indians there who had seen the Messiah, he would tell his people that it all was a lie.

But Agent McLaughlin refused to do this, although it seemed to be a fair proposition. When he rode away, the Ghost Dancers threatened him; but Sitting Bull would permit no violence. He had been bathing, and wore only his breech-clout. He stood almost naked in the cold, and kept his people from attacking, until the agent was out of sight.

Sitting Bull prepared to join the other Ghost Dancers, who would be expecting him. His horses had been doing nothing. They were well fed and strong, and if he got a head start, he knew that he could keep it.

So, to show that his heart was not all bad, he had his son-in-law, who could write a little in English, write a note to Agent McLaughlin.