The Ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890

by James Mooney

KÄNAKÛK

My father, the Great Spirit holds all the world in his hands. I pray to him that we may not be removed from our lands.... Take pity on us and let us remain where we are.—Känakûk.

I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought amongst them by enlightened Christians.—[Catlin].

The scene now shifts to the west of the Mississippi. With the death of Tecumtha the confederacy of the northwestern tribes fell to pieces, and on the closing of the war of 1812 the government inaugurated a series of treaties resulting, within twenty years, in the removal of almost every tribe beyond the Mississippi and the appropriation of their former country by the whites. Among others the Kickapoo, by the treaty of Edwardsville in 1819, had ceded the whole of their ancient territory in Illinois, comprising nearly one-half the area of the state, in exchange for a much smaller tract on Osage river in Missouri and $3,000 in goods. ([Treaties], 1.) The government also agreed to furnish two boats to take them up the river to their new home, where “the United States promise to guarantee to the said tribe the peaceable possession of the tract of land hereby ceded to them, and to restrain and prevent all white persons from hunting, settling, or otherwise intruding upon it.”

For some reason, however, the Kickapoo manifested no overwhelming desire to remove from their villages and cornfields on the broad prairies of Illinois to the rugged hills of Missouri. This may have been due to the innate perversity of the savage, or possibly to the fact that the new country guaranteed to them was already occupied by their hereditary enemies, the Osage, who outnumbered the Kickapoo three to one. To be sure, these aboriginal proprietors had agreed to surrender the territory to the United States, but they were still at home to all visitors, as the immigrant Cherokee had learned to their cost. Be that as it may, several years passed and it began to be suspected that the Kickapoo were not anxious to go west and grow up with the country. Investigation disclosed the fact that, instead of removing to the reservation on Osage river, one-half of the tribe had gone southward in a body and crossed over to the Spanish side of Red river (now Texas), where they might reasonably hope to be secure from the further advance of the Americans. Others were preparing to follow, and the government agents were instructed to make a strong effort to effect the immediate removal of the tribe to Missouri and to prevent the emigration of any more to the south.

Fig. 60—Känakûk the Kickapoo prophet.

It now appeared that they were encouraged to hold their ground by a new prophet who had sprung up among them, named Känakûk. The name (also spelled Kee-an-ne-kuk and Kanacuk), refers to putting the foot upon a fallen object, and does not denote “the foremost man,” as rendered by Catlin. In a letter written to General Clark, in February, 1827—a few days after the prophet himself had visited General Clark—the agent, Mr Graham, after reporting his failure to induce the tribe to remove, states that the prophet “had no idea of giving up his lands,” and continues:

This man has acquired an influence over his people through supposed revelations from God, which he urges on them with an eloquence, mildness, and firmness of manner that carries to their credulous ears conviction of his communications with God.

To give a favorable turn to his mind, I apparently gave credence to his statements of these revelations, and attempted to put a construction on them for him. He listened to me with great attention, and, after I had finished, said I might be right; that God would talk to him again and he would let me know what he said. In the meantime he would use his influence to get his people to move, but that he could not himself come over until all had removed; that there were many bad men yet among them, whom he hoped to convert to the ways of God, and then all would come over. He would preach to his men and warn them from taking away or injuring the property of the white people, and if any white man struck them—to use his own expression—he would bow his head and not complain; he would stop any attempt to take revenge. He seems to have a wonderful influence over those Indians who accompanied him. They neither drank nor painted, were serious, though not gloomy. ([Ind. Off.], 1.)

Fig. 61—Känakûk’s heaven.

In the same month Känakûk himself visited General Clark at Saint Louis, and in the course of a long talk explained the origin of his divine mission and the nature of his doctrine, illustrating the subject by means of a peculiar diagram ([figure 61]), and closing with an earnest appeal in behalf of his people that they should be allowed to remain undisturbed. Although it was said by the traders that he had stolen his inspiration from a Methodist preacher, it is plain from an examination of his doctrine that he was the direct spiritual successor of Tenskwatawa and the Delaware prophet, who in their generation had preached to the same tribe. Like his predecessors, also, he condemned the use of “medicine bags” and medicine songs, which, although universal among the tribes, seem to have been regarded by the better class of Indians as witchcraft was in former days among the whites.

After the usual preliminary expressions of mutual friendship and good will, Känakûk stated that all his people were united in sentiment, and then proceeded to explain his religious views as follows:

My father, the Great Spirit has placed us all on this earth; he has given to our nation a piece of land. Why do you want to take it away and give us so much trouble? We ought to live in peace and happiness among ourselves and with you. We have heard of some trouble about our land. I have come down to see you and have all explained.

*****

My father, the Great Spirit appeared to me; he saw my heart was in sorrow about our land; he told me not to give up the business, but go to my Great Father and he would listen to me. My father, when I talked to the Great Spirit, I saw the chiefs holding the land fast. He told me the life of our children was short and that the earth would sink.

My father, I will explain to you what the Great Spirit said to me—to do so, I must make some marks. The Great Spirit says: My father, we started from this point (A, [figure 61]). We are here now (B). When we get here (C), the Great Spirit will appear to me again. Here (B) the Great Spirit gave his blessings to the Indians and told them to tell his people to throw away their medicine bags and not to steal, not to tell lies, not to murder, not to quarrel, and to burn their medicine bags. If they did not, they could not get on the straight way, but would have to go the crooked path of the bad here (D); that when we got to this place (the curved line, E), we would not be able to cross it unless we were all good. It was fire. That we should go to this place (E), where there would be collected all the red chiefs and there would be a great preaching. That if we had not thrown away all our bad doings, these two points would meet (D and E), and then the Great Spirit would destroy everything and the world would be turned over. That if we would be good and throw away all our bad doings, we would cross this fire, when we would [come] to water (second line), which we would cross. There we would come to a country where there was nothing but a prairie and nothing grew upon it. There the sun would be hid from us by four black clouds. When we get here (C), the Great Spirit will explain these round marks.

My father, I have now explained as well as I can, with much pains, our situation. I wish you to tell me the truth and hide nothing from me. I have heard that some of your warriors are going to take up the tomahawk. I explained to you last fall our situation. We are now here (B), where we are in great trouble. I told you of all our troubles. I asked you to reflect on our situation and that we would come back to see you.

*****

My father, you call all the redskins your children. When we have children, we treat them well. That is the reason I make this long talk to get you to take pity on us and let us remain where we are.

My father, I wish after my talk is over you would write to my Great Father, the president, that we have a desire to remain a little longer where we now are. I have explained to you that we have thrown all our badness away and keep the good path. I wish our Great Father could hear that. I will now talk to my Great Father, the president.

My Great Father, I don’t know if you are the right chief, because I have heard some things go wrong. I wish you to reflect on our situation and let me know. I want to talk to you mildly and in peace, so that we may understand each other. When I saw the Great Spirit, he told me to throw all our bad acts away. We did so. Some of our chiefs said the land belonged to us, the Kickapoos; but this is not what the Great Spirit told me—the lands belong to him. The Great Spirit told me that no people owned the lands—that all was his, and not to forget to tell the white people that when we went into council. When I saw the Great Spirit, he told me, Mention all this to your Great Father. He will take pity on your situation and let you remain on the lands where you are for some years, when you will be able to get through all the bad places (the marks in the figure), and where you will get to a clear piece of land where you will all live happy. When I talked to the Great Spirit, he told me to make my warriors throw their tomahawks in the bad place. I did so, and every night and morning I raise my hands to the Great Spirit and pray to him to give us success. I expect, my father, that God has put me in a good way—that our children shall see their sisters and brothers and our women see their children. They will grow up and travel and see their totems. The Great Spirit told me, “Our old men had totems. They were good and had many totems. Now you have scarcely any. If you follow my advice, you will soon have totems again.” Say this to my Great Father for me.[2]

*****

My father, since I talked with the Great Spirit, our women and children and ourselves, we have not such good clothes, but we don’t mind that. We think of praying every day to the Great Spirit to get us safe to the good lands, where all will be peace and happiness.

My father, the Great Spirit holds all the world in his hands. I pray to him that we may not be removed from our land until we can see and talk to all our totems....

My father, when I left my women and children, they told me, “As you are going to see our Great Father, tell him to let us alone and let us eat our victuals with a good heart.”

*****

My father, since my talk with the Great Spirit we have nothing cooked until the middle of the day. The children get nothing in the morning to eat. We collect them all to pray to the Great Spirit to make our hearts pure, and then eat. We bring our children up to be good.

My father, I will tell you all I know. I will put nothing on my back. God told me, Whenever you make a talk, tell everything true. Keep nothing behind, and then you will find everything go right.

*****

My father, when I talked with the Great Spirit, he did not tell me to sell my lands, because I did not know how much was a dollar’s worth, or the game that run on it. If he told me so, I would tell you to-day.

My father, you have heard what I have said. I have represented to you our situation, and ask you to take pity on us and let us remain where we are....

My father, I have shown you in the lines I have made the bad places. Our warriors even are afraid of those dark places you see there. That is the reason they threw their tomahawks aside and put up their hands to the Great Spirit.

*****

My father, every time we eat we raise our hands to the Great Spirit to give us success.

My father, we are sitting by each other here to tell the truth. If you write anything wrong, the Great Spirit will know it. If I say anything not true, the Great Spirit will hear it.

My father, you know how to write and can take down what is said for your satisfaction. I can not; all I do is through the Great Spirit for the benefit of my women and children.

My father, everything belongs to the Great Spirit. If he chooses to make the earth shake, or turn it over, all the skins, white and red, can not stop it. I have done. I trust to the Great Spirit. ([Ind. Off.], 2.)

A few years later, in 1831, Catlin visited Känakûk, who was still living with the remnant of his people in Illinois, and was then regarded as their chief. He still preached the same doctrine, which the artist incorrectly supposed was the Christian religion—probably from the fact that the meetings were held on Sunday in imitation of the whites—and especially was constantly and earnestly exhorting his tribesmen to cease from drinking whisky, which threatened to destroy their race. His influence had extended into Michigan, and many of the Potawatomi were counted among his disciples. Catlin, who painted his portrait (of which [figure 60] is a reproduction), heard him preach, and expressed surprise and admiration at the ease and grace of his manner and his evident eloquent command of language. The traveler continues:

I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought amongst them by enlightened Christians. How far the efforts of this zealous man have succeeded in Christianizing, I can not tell, but it is quite certain that his exemplary and constant endeavors have completely abolished the practice of drinking whisky in his tribe, which alone is a very praiseworthy achievement, and the first and indispensable step toward all other improvements. I was some time amongst those people, and was exceedingly pleased and surprised also to witness their sobriety and their peaceable conduct, not having seen an instance of drunkenness, or seen or heard of any use made of spirituous liquors whilst I was amongst the tribe. ([Catlin], 3.)

After mentioning, although apparently not crediting the assertion of the traders, that the prophet had borrowed his doctrines from a white man, Catlin goes on to describe a peculiar prayer-stick which Känakûk had given to his followers, and which reminds us at once of the similar device of the Delaware prophet of 1764, and is in line with the whole system of birchbark pictographs among the northern tribes. These sticks were of maple, graven with hieroglyphic prayers and other religious symbols. They were carved by the prophet himself, who distributed them to every family in the tribe, deriving quite a revenue from their sale, and in this way increasing his influence both as a priest and as a man of property. Apparently every man, woman, and child in the tribe was at this time in the habit of reciting the prayers from these sticks on rising in the morning and before retiring for the night. This was done by placing the right index finger first under the upper character while repeating a short prayer which it suggested, then under the next, and the next, and so on to the bottom, the whole prayer, which was sung as a sort of chant, occupying about ten minutes.

Without undertaking to pass judgement on the purity of the prophet’s motives, Catlin strongly asserts that his influence and example were good and had effectually turned his people from vice and dissipation to temperance and industry, notwithstanding the debasing tendency of association with a frontier white population.

The veteran missionary, Allis, also notes the use of this prayer stick as he observed it in 1834 among the Kickapoo, then living near Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas. The prophet’s followers were accustomed to meet for worship on Sunday, when Känakûk delivered an exhortation in their own language, after which they formed in line and marched around several times in single file, reciting the chant from their prayer-sticks and shaking hands with the bystanders as they passed. As they departed they continued to chant until they arrived at the “father’s house” or heaven, indicated by the figure of a horn at the top of the prayer-stick. The worshipers met also on Fridays and made confession of their sins, after which certain persons appointed for the purpose gave each penitent several strokes with a rod of hickory, according to the gravity of his offense. ([Allis], 1.)

Fig. 62—Onsawkie.

Through the kindness of Mr C. H. Bartlett, of South Bend, Indiana, the United States National Museum has recently come into possession of one of these prayer-sticks. The stick, of which [plate lxxxvi] gives a good idea, is of maple, a little more than 12 inches in length, 2​9⁄16 inches in its greatest width, and three-eighths of an inch thick. It is said to have been painted a bright red on one side and a vivid green on the other. The paint has now disappeared, however, leaving bare the surface of the wood, polished from long use. One side is carved with the symbolic figures already mentioned, while the other is smooth. In all its details it is a neat specimen of Indian workmanship. According to the tradition of the Armstrong family, its former owners, the small square in the lower left-hand corner represents hell or the final abode of the wicked, while the house with the four pine (?) trees, at the top, symbolizes the spiritual home of the devout followers of the prophet. As is well known, four is the sacred number of many Indian tribes. The significance of several other lines above and below is unknown. Along the shaft of the stick from bottom to top are the prayer characters, arranged in three groups of five each, one group being near the bottom, while the others are along the upper portion of the shaft and are separated one from the other by a small circle. The characters bear some resemblance to the old black-letter type of a missal, while the peculiar arrangement is strongly suggestive of the Catholic rosary with its fifteen “mysteries” in three groups of five each. It will be remembered that the earliest and most constant missionaries among the Kickapoo and other lake tribes were Catholic, and we may readily see that their teachings and ceremonies influenced this native religion, as was afterward the case with the religions of Smohalla and the Ghost dance. Neither three nor five are commonly known as sacred numbers among the Indians, while three is distinctly Christian in its symbolism. It is perhaps superfluous to state that the ideas of heaven and hell are not aboriginal, but were among the first incorporated from the teachings of the white missionaries. The characters resembling letters may be from the alphabetic system of sixteen characters which it is said the Ojibwa invented for recording their own language, and taught to the Kickapoo and Sauk, and which resembled somewhat the letters of the Roman alphabet, from which they apparently were derived. ([Hamilton], 1.)

PL. LXXXVI

THE PRAYER-STICK

This prayer-stick or “bible,” as it has been called, was obtained by Mr Bartlett from Mr R.V. Armstrong, of Mill Creek, Indiana, who stated that it was the only remaining one of a large number which had been in possession of the family for many years. The story of the manner in which it was originally obtained, as told by Mr Armstrong, is interesting. “His father, Reverend James Armstrong, was a Methodist minister and missionary who had been sent to northern Indiana in the early part of this century. In 1830, while living on Shawnee prairie, 3 miles from the present site of Attica, Indiana, a large band of Kickapoo Indians came to his house to visit the missionary, and apparently regarded the interview as of great importance to themselves. They declared that they were from beyond the Mississippi river, that they had heard of Mr Armstrong and his missionary labors, and that they believed him to be the one for whom their people had long been looking. Each Indian held in his hand one of these wooden crosses, and as they knelt on the grass in front of the missionary’s house, they went through their devotions in their own tongue, moving their fingers over the inscription that ascends the shaft of the cross. The missionary understood them to state that this cross was their “bible,” that they knew that it was not the true bible, but that they had been told to use it until one should come who would give them in exchange the genuine word of God. Thereupon the missionary gathered up their crosses—and there were more than a large basketful of them—and gave in exchange to each a copy of the New Testament. The Indians received the books with profuse expressions of gratitude and apparently viewed them at once as sacred possessions. These wise men from the west then went away to their far country.”

Känakûk died of smallpox in 1852, in Kansas, where his people had been removed in spite of his eloquent appeals in their behalf. For many years he had been recognized as the chief of his tribe, and as such exerted a most beneficial influence over the Kickapoo in restraining the introduction and use of liquor among them. At the same time he staunchly upheld the old Indian idea and resisted every advance of the missionaries and civilization to the last. He was regarded as possessed of supernatural powers, and in his last illness asserted that he would arise again three days after death. In expectation of the fulfillment of the prophecy, a number of his followers remained watching near the corpse until they too contracted the contagion and died likewise. ([Comr.], 1.) After his death, the decline of his tribe was rapid and without check. In 1894 there remained only 514, about equally divided between Kansas and Oklahoma. These few survivors of a large tribe still hold in loving reverence the name of their chief and prophet.