Fig. 15 (50-3055). Back of Garment shown in Fig. 14.
The above detailed statements concerning the designs and their import do not convey their full significance as it was brought out in discussions between the writer and the men who made these garments. In the first place we find on them symbols to be described in another section of this paper; namely, the spider-web designs and the medicine-hoop. It will be seen that in most cases the living creatures represented are those that seem to have power to escape the hailstones, because, as they say, no matter how severe the hailstorm may be, no one observes their dead or maimed upon the ground: therefore they assume that these creatures possess some extraordinary power, or receive the attention of some protective power. The bird represented does not seem to be the thunder-bird, as is usually the case in Dakota art, but such species, usually birds of prey, as soar above the destructive range of the hail. The lizard and the turtle are spoken of as animals of great power, since they are killed with great difficulty, from which it follows that they also enjoy the protection of some power. This we may generalize by saying that the Indian placed upon these garments representations of living creatures that, according to his observation and experience, were seldom hit by missiles, or that possessed great vitality, making it difficult to kill them. Placed on the garments, they express a prayer, a hope, or an actual realization, on the part of the wearer, of the protective power by which these creatures are enabled to survive.
The triangular designs at the top of these garments were spoken of as shields, the idea being that they were in some measure shield-designs, and performed the same function as did those upon shields in former times. Mr. Mooney expresses the opinion that the protective designs on garments used in the ghost-dance religion were not aboriginal with the Indian.
“The protective idea in connection with the ghost-shirt does not seem to be aboriginal. The Indian warrior habitually went into battle naked above the waist. His protecting ‘medicine’ was a feather, a tiny bag of some sacred powder, the claw of an animal, the head of a bird, or some other small object which could be readily twisted into his hair or hidden between the covers of his shield, without attracting attention. Its virtue depended entirely on the ceremony of the consecration, and not on size or texture. The war-paint had the same magic power of protection. To cover the body in battle was not in accordance with Indian usage, which demanded that the warrior should be as free and unincumbered in movement as possible. The so-called ‘war-shirt’ was worn chiefly in ceremonial dress-parades, and only rarely on the war-path.”[[8]]
This statement, however, suggests that Mr. Mooney based his opinion upon objective evidence, while the opinion expressed by the writer is based upon subjective evidence. A comparison of the interpretations of shield-designs and ghost-dress designs seems to leave little opportunity for any other conclusion than that the protective designs used in the ghost-dance were essentially the same as those used in former times upon shields and other objects. The garments may be foreign; but the idea of protective designs is most certainly not peculiar to the ghost-dance religion, since it was widely distributed among American tribes, and associated with ceremonial objects that were in use at least a century before the ghost-dance religion appeared.
If the writer had no other information at hand than that furnished by Mr. Mooney in his comprehensive study of the ghost-dance religion, he would be inclined to regard the whole as the manifestation of aboriginal religious ideas in response to a single foreign conception; namely, that of the coming of a messiah and the destruction of the present order of the world. The way in which the ghost-dance ceremonies were performed, the ideas expressed in the songs, the things the priests dreamed of, and the objects used in the ceremonies, are so characteristically Indian, that no other interpretation seems possible. However, in the present connection we are concerned with these designs as types of the universal primitive expression of belief in the presence of a guiding personal agency that looks into the affairs of men.
| [6] | George Sword, on Ghost-dance Religion (Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 798). |
| [7] | Mrs. Z. A. Parker (Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 916). |