Calling, as he comes, this joyous word,
‘You shall live again,’ he calls,
‘You shall live beyond the grave,’
He is calling as he comes.”
Many did not sing; they only cried out for help, entreating to be shown those who had died. “Oh, hear me! Great Spirit, let me see my little one—my boy; let me hear his voice,” pleaded one woman, and her voice shook me till my hair moved as if a spirit passed.
Some of the women’s faces were distorted with grief, and a kind of nervous action which they could not control seized upon them. One by one as they began to show this tension, Mato and his helpers confronted them, waving before their eyes a feather on a wand and uttering a hoarse chant, monotonous and rapid, “Ha—ha—ha—ha—ha—hah!” until the frenzied one, convulsed and dreaming, fell into the ring and lay stiff and stark in the dirt.
But the ring did not halt. The fall of each new convert seemed to add new vigor to the song, for each hoped to be the next one smitten. Suddenly Shato, dropping the hands of those dancing near him, flung his hands to the sky with a gesture as if he would tear the sun from its place. The hooked intensity of his fingers was terrible to see. He remained fixed in that way, rigid as iron, yet standing on his feet firm as an oak. No one touched him; on the contrary, all were careful not to disturb those who were in trance. Another man stood at bay, buffeting the dancers to keep them from trampling upon his wife, who, being sick of some wasting disease, had joined the circle, seeking health of the Great Spirit.
As I looked my heart contracted. It seemed that I was looking upon the actual dissolution—the death pangs—of my race. My learning was for the moment of no avail. I shook like a reed in the gust of this primeval passion. Was it insanity or was it some inexplicable divine force capable in very truth of uniting the quick and the dead in one convulsive, rapturous coalition?
A thrill of momentary belief swept over me. Was it not better to end it all, to die and go with all my people to the happy hunting grounds! The white man’s world, what was it but a world of care and grief?
The songs continued, but they grew quieter. Several of those who called loudest now lay silent in the dust. Those who circled and sang were keener of eye and calmer of feature. These were they who reasoned, and to them the trance could not come. I began to see that those who had taken on the dream were not the most intelligent but the most emotional men and women of my tribe, those who were weakened by the loss of dear ones.