The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-02-11
THE INDIAN MESSIAH
This "SOn of the Great Spirit"
Will Be at the Midwinter Fair.
Though He Is a Dirty Piute He Had
Much Influence with Red Men and
Taught Them the Ghost Dance.
San francisco Chronicle.

Ine mldWlnter falr before long. he
will not come from his home in the sage
brush over the mountains to feast his eyes
on the marvels and beauties of the place.
He will come simply as an attraction and
10 make money. for this copper-colored
Messiah has an eye to the main chance.
In his own native language his name Is
a quaint unpronounceability, with some
beautiful significance. But in English the
Messiah is plain Wilson Jack" He is a
Piute-a short, fat, dirty Piute. He wears
a flannel shirt and ragged jeans trousers
does the Messiah, and smells bad; and all
about him is a big gaudy blanket. He is
about forty years old. His face is cast in
the ordinary Indian mold, but there is more
mobility, more animation, more fire and
spirit than in the face of the average In
dian. On the whole, there is little in his
appearance which at a glance would set
him apart from those squalid tribesmen of
his whom one sees begging at the car win
dows at almost every station from the
Sierra to Ogden.
Yet Wilson Jack is a very remarkable In
dian. 1t was he who, in the fall of 1890,
by the wild shores of Walker lake
preached to the tribe a new and strange
religion. It was he who taught them to
dance the ghost dance: 1t was he who
spread among them that religious fury
and herce fanaticlsm which eulmlnated
death of old Sitting Bull and the battle of
Wounded Knee.
The glory of a supposed orator is gone
from him now, even among the untutored
people who once regarded him as heaven
sent. They know that he was born of a
squaw mother in a smoky little tepee on a
Nevada reservation. His gospel has be-
come no more than a story, to be told over
bowls of tobacco by wigwam fires. No
lon dn oil TnnnRa f1a foot 4 N n
the weird measures of the ghost dance.
All. the tribes are at peace. Their Messiah
is forgotten.
Wilson Jack is now chopping wood at 81
a day for old Billy Wilson, whose ranch
IS not far from Pine Grove. New; II Olive
Roberts hadn't secured that Job for him
he might be living out in the sage brush
somewhere on a jack rabbit diet. Roberts
has secured the privilege to exhibit a vii
met the Messiah just after the latter's
mission was supposed to have begun. He
has recognized his value as an object OF
ing, SO that he may be within Easy reach
when wanted. He win bring him to San
Francisco for the fair.
THE CREED'S GROWTH.
How the strange creed which the Indian
Messiah taught had its genesis, how it
grew ard spread from tribe to tribe and
how, finally, it went up in deadly smoke at
Wounded Knee is a tale Of more than
Usual AIilciESl. LII Tie dOluilI Il low d
rumor began TO be circulated among the
Indians that somewhere out in the wilds Of
Nevada the Christ had appeared on earth,
the one of all who was to be the savior Of
the redmen. According to his teachings the
white race was TO be destroyed utterly.
Forests full of game were TO grow again
upon the sites of the white mans cities;
prairies black with buffalo were to stretch
where white men now have farms and vii
lagos. Primeval nature was to be restored.
The Indian was to be lord or the CONT
ncnt from sea to sea.
Such doctrines were naturally attractive
to the Indians. Delegations from the re-
motcst eastern tribes came to the Messiah
at Walker lake. The Sioux, Crows, Arap-
ahoeS, Blackfeet, S~noshones, Bannocks ana
the rest sent their sacheIns to visit him.
They listened to his counsel and learned
from him a new dance-the dance of ghosts.
Upon their return to their homes they be-
their people. They believed or affected TO
bellows in the Piute teachers real divinity;
but whether this belief was true or feigned,
it is certain that never before in history
was therc such a general or dangerous
fervor of religious excitement among the
All autumn long the Indians danced the
ghost dance, tasted, prayed, kept long Wig
lis and dreamed strange dreams born or eX-
tumn long they were firm in the conviction
that with the coming of the new Christ q
glorious era for them would begin.
But the autumn passed and the old year
became the new, ard still the white mans
cities smoked through all the land and the
white mans soldiers held the tribes i'm
check. Then came the fatal field of Wound
ed Knee, stained with the blood of whites
and reds; The Messiah's prophecies Were
dance and began to think less Of the new
Christ and more of the government %rations.
Oliver Roberts says that Wilson Jack was
never an impoStor, but merely a Spirftuali5t.
1t is a well-known fact that there are
mediums, so called, among the Indians. In
the latter part of the summer of 1890 Wilson
81 90 Ls. hnr,n nnnr piUnn IL
twelve miles from the Carson & Colorado
railroad. and went alone into the noun
tains about Walker lake, There Is somethinS
region. The lake is deep and still. The
bare mountains tower wild and high above
it. The levels are desolately barren. In
the solitude and silence of those shores the
Indian Spiritualist lived for a month and
saw no human face save his own reelected
He slept u~nblanketed through the chilly
nights. His only food was grasshoppers
of the lake, shouting 10 the mountains.
calling upon the Great Spirit
A little after he came from his %sojourn
in that wild region Roberts saw him at
Sears Station on the Virginia & Truckee
railroad. He had just begun to spread
among his own superstitious people the
him through divine inspiration while he
stayed by the lake. Roberts asked him OF
impressions which had come 10 him there.
THE MESSIAH'S STORY.
This is the way the Messiah told his own
story to his questioner:
ME go 20 lake all lone. Live there one
moon. No shoot 'en, nothing. No fish.
Eat grasshopper. All time walk by lake;
holler heap much; jump up and down and
dance all time.
Long time no see 'em. Bym-by heap
see 'em. Great, big Injun, been dead long
time, he come see me. He say byrn-by all
white man he die and he all buffalo when
he die. Injun shoot EN- all he want.
Plenty game, plenty fish, plenty be..ver
when white man all gone.
tell me, you go teach dance. Nice dance
for Injun. Heap dance it putty scon.'"
All the dignity, nobility, divinity with
which the white mans mind invests the
red man pass away before such q state
Wanted Messiah becomes at once a poor,
crazy Indian. raving there along the
beaches of the Half-starved upon
his diet of grasshoppers, exhausted by
body, it is no wonder that shadowy beings
visit his diseased imagination and speak
to him.
A new light falls upon the shabby figure
famous chief tells of the new Messiah in
his own language. Porcupine, the Sho-
shone chieftain, speaking through an in
terpreter, described his visit TO the Mes
siah:
I'm the tenth moon of rhe year I came
TO the lake, and there were with me Ban
nockS and Crows and the Sachems of my
own tribe. And there were gathered
there scores Of Indians from many ma
tions. AS we sat together in a circle in the
morning. smoking the pipe of peace, sud-
denly the Christ appeared in cur midst.
He spoke TO us words of wisdom all day