page_title: Porcupine (Cheyenne)
section_title: Ghost Dance apostle
hierarchical_section_title: Porcupine (Cheyenne) / Ghost Dance apostle
caption_attribution_description: General notes: Artwork based on photographs by James Mooney
context_page_description: Porcupine was a Cheyenne chief and medicine man. He is best known for bringing the Ghost Dance religion to the Cheyenne. Raised with the Sioux of a Cheyenne mother, he married a Cheyenne himself and became a warrior in the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.
  Porcupine fought against the U.S. in Hancock's War in 1867 in which the Cheyenne resisted moving to a reservation. Porcupine's group was pursued by the 7th Cavalry from Kansas to Nebraska. In Nebraska he succeeded in derailing and wrecking a train, the first time this had been done by Indians. At the conclusion of the Great Sioux War of 1876, the Cheyenne surrendered and were deported to Oklahoma. Porcupine took part in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus in which a part of the starving tribe fought their way back to their homeland in Montana. Porcupine was one of a group of Cheyennes who were subsequently arrested on charges of murdering settlers as the Cheyennes crossed Kansas. After spending most of 1879 in prison, the charges were dismissed without a full trial taking place.
  In 1889, Porcupine undertook a long journey to Nevada to visit Wovoka, the prophet of the new Ghost Dance religion.
context_section_description: The Ghost Dance religion was founded by its prophet Wovoka in Nevada, a Paiute Indian who had a vision on 1 January 1889 during a solar eclipse.  In this vision, he was taken up to heaven and given a dance (the Ghost Dance) to pass on to the Indians to ensure their place in heaven.  Wovoka's religion was heavily influenced by Christianity.  He predicted that a Messiah figure, identified with the Christian Jesus, would come to Earth and resurrect all the Indian dead.  All the whites would be removed from Earth and the buffalo would return.  Wovoka predicted that this would happen in Spring 1891.  In the meantime, according to Wovoka's preaching, the Indians were not to fight the whites, but were to perform the Ghost Dance.
  In November 1889 Porcupine led a Cheyenne mission to visit the Arapahoes in Wyoming.  His companions were Grasshopper, and a younger third Indian.  In Wyoming, Porcupine repurposed the enterprise and went on to Nevada to see Wovoka.  They stayed over the winter and returned in the spring of 1890.  Porcupine's report to the tribal council of chiefs took five days to deliver.  At the end of that time he was given permission to promulgate Wovoka's teaching amongst the tribe.  Thus, Porcupine became the main apostle of the Ghost Dance amongst the Cheyennes.  Porcupine preached that Wovoka was the Messiah and a Christ figure.
  Porcupine describes the visit to Wovoka as a fortuitous side benefit of the visit to the Arapahoes.  He mentions only the Cheyenne delegation as if they came alone.  However, James Mooney, an ethnologist tasked by the U.S. government with investigating the Ghost Dance and who travelled far and wide to interview all the principals in the tribes concerned, including Wovoka himself, tells a different story.  Porcupine's delegation was part of a larger, organised mission, perhaps a dozen people, sent out by a conference of chiefs at Fort Washakie in Wyoming with the explicit purpose of obtaining information about the new religion.  The mission included delegates from the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Shoshoni.  It seems likely that the Arapahoe visit was a cover story to make easier obtaining permission from the Indian agent to leave the reservation.  U.S. soldiers guarding the reservation were under orders to stop anyone from leaving without a permit.  Porcupine, however, travelled without a permit until he reached Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho where he was given one by the Indian agent there.  At Fort Hall, more Shoshoni and Bannock Indians joined them.  The Indian agent at Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation in Nevada reported that the strength of the party was thirty-four as they passed through.  Porcupine says that all the Indians they met after Fort Hall were already performing the Ghost Dance, and that many whites (these would be mostly Mormons in Nevada) were also dancing.
caption: Arapahoes performing the Ghost Dance, 1900, based on photographs by James Mooney
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