Some Protective Designs of the Dakota

by Clark Wissler

GHOST-DANCE DESIGNS.

About the year 1890 a religious movement, generally known as the “ghost-dance religion,” infected the Plains Indians. The chief feature of this religion was the belief in a speedy return of the old time, the buffalo, and the extermination of the white race. The different tribes had various ideas of their duties with respect to this new faith, and, with the exception of the Dakota, they did not manifest direct hostility to the white race. This warlike people, however, were already greatly dissatisfied with the treatment they received from the Government and with the difficult conditions under which they lived. In consequence, they received the ghost-dance religion as a herald of the good time which, to their minds, was to be secured only by war with the white race. While a great many of the conditions in the immediate environment of the Dakota have been given by various writers as causes for the outbreak, the fact that these Indians interpreted the new religion as the manifestation of a warlike spirit was probably due to the fact that they were at heart a warlike people. Their ideas still run toward military things. As the essential idea of the ghost-dance religion was a return of the old time, the ceremonies pertaining thereto made use of the typical objects and ideas of the past. In this, of course, they were not entirely consistent, since they did not discard the use of fire-arms, and did not actually resurrect bows, arrows, and shields. Yet, as a substitute for the protective power of the shield, they introduced garments bearing protective designs. These garments are generally known under the name of “ghost-shirts,” and at the time of the outbreak were spoken of by white people as “bullet-proof shirts.” The following are descriptions of these garments by eye-witnesses at the time of their first appearance:—

“All the men and women made holy shirts and dresses they wear in dance. The persons dropped in dance would all lie in great dust the dancing make. They paint the white muslins they made holy dresses and shirts out of with blue across the back, and alongside of this is a line of yellow paint. They also paint in the front part of the shirts and dresses. A picture of an eagle is made on the back of all the shirts and dresses. On the shoulders and on the sleeves they tied eagle-feathers. They said that the bullets will not go through these shirts and dresses, so they all have these dresses for war. Their enemies’ weapon will not go through these dresses. The ghost-dancers all have to wear eagle-feather on head.”[^[6]]

“I think they wore the ghost-shirt or ghost-dress for the first time that day. I noticed that these were all new, and were worn by about seventy men and forty women. The wife of a man called Return-from-scout had seen in a vision that her friends all wore a similar robe, and on reviving from her trance she called the women together, and they made a great number of the sacred garments. They were of white cotton cloth. The women’s dress was cut like their ordinary dress, a loose robe with wide, flowing sleeves, painted blue in the neck, in the shape of a three-cornered handkerchief, with moon, stars, birds, etc., interspersed with real feathers, painted on the waist and sleeves.

“The ghost-shirt for the men was made of the same material—shirts and leggings painted in red. Some of the leggings were painted in stripes running up and down, others running around. The shirt was painted blue around the neck, and the whole garment was fantastically sprinkled with figures of birds, bows and arrows, sun, moon, and stars, and everything they saw in nature. Down the outside of the sleeve were rows of feathers tied by the quill-ends and left to fly in the breeze, and also a row around the neck and up and down outside of the leggings. I noticed that a number had stuffed birds, squirrel-heads, etc., tied in their long hair. The faces of all were painted red with a black half-moon on the forehead or on one cheek.”[^[7]]

Fig. 10 (50-3053). Front of a Ghost-dance Garment.
Length, 126 cm.

As is noted by the above, designs on these garments were made by individuals who had dreams or other unusual experiences similar to those of the medicine-men; and it would seem from this account that the designs and objects used in the dance were in every way similar to those employed before the ghost-dance religion appeared. The writer made the acquaintance of several individuals who had prepared such garments at the time of the ghost-dance, and from them he secured reproductions with explanations as to the significance of the designs. As some time had elapsed since the ghost-dance religion was at the height of its popularity, it is possible that the more special features belonging to it were forgotten by these men, and that they worked into the reproduced garments older and more conservative ideas. However, the writer is of the opinion, and he took special pains to investigate as best he could, that whatever may have been lost in this way made no important changes in either the objective character of the designs or in the ideas expressed by them. As a matter of fact, the ghost-dance in some of its milder forms is still observed.

Some garments secured by the writer are decorated on both front and back with designs chiefly pictographic. On the front of one (Fig. 10) is a large triangular space extending downward from the shoulders (one half of which is in red and the other half in blue), thickly dotted over with white spots representing hailstones. The red represents the morning; and the blue, the night. Extending across from side to side is a large arched figure made up of red, yellow, white, and green bands, representing the rainbow. Above this are two four-pointed stars, the red for the morning star and the black for the stars seen in the night. There is a large green star with eight points on the dividing-line between day and night, concerning which I secured no satisfactory explanation. At the apex of the triangular space are small dots of yellow, representing the dawn; and the sun is placed on each side of the division between day and night. The new moon is represented by a black crescent. On the morning-side of this design is the picture of a butterfly; while on the night-side, extending over into the morning, is a picture of a peculiar figure, which the artist regarded as a spirit-bird or man-bird, as he expressed it, with the medicine-hoop in his hand. The other portion of the dress is covered over with small dots in various colors, representing bullets. There are also pictures of butterflies, stars, and buffalo-tracks. On one side are two parallel wavy red lines, and on the other two in green, representing the lightning.