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 grass, 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 Brulés defiant. Now at Standing Rock Sitting Bull had the fever, and was tireless.