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Mooney's Published Illustrations of the Ghost Dance

In his report, Mooney mentioned four accounts of Ghost Dances: George Bird Grinnell's brief description of a Northern Cheyenne ceremony; a second hand account of an Oglala ceremony by trader J. F. Asay. The third, and according to Mooney, "best" account, was by a Mrs. Z. A. Parker, a teacher at Pine Ridge. The fourth account was Mooney's own, based on his observations of the Southern Arapaho ceremonial. Interestingly, while Mooney gave "tribal" attributions for the first three accounts, he gave none for his own. Moreover, his presentation of his own observations included only minimal description of the chronology of specific events; rather, it is far more an interpretive account, fusing elements from several different events to produce a single coherent whole.

After a preliminary account of an apostolic passing of ritual authority through the "Giving of the Feather," Mooney passed through--in one paragraph--"Painting of the Dancers" to "The Ceremony" itself.


According to Mooney,

The dance commonly begins about the middle of the afternoon or later, after sundown. When it begins in the afternoon, there is always an intermission of an hour or two for supper. . . . The preliminary painting and dressing is usually the work of about two hours.




When all is ready, the leaders walk out to the dance place,
and facing inward, join hands so as to form a small circle. Then, without moving from their places they sing the opening song, according to previous agreement, in a soft undertone. having sung it through once they raise their voices to their full strength and repeat it, this time slowly circling around in the dance

. . . As the song rises and swells the people come singly and in groups from the several tipis, and one after another joins the circle until any number from fifty to five hundred men, women, and children are in the dance.



Mooney then made several unillustrated comments about the number of repetitions of the song based on the circumference of the circle, about the Indians' innate ability to "keep the blanket in place," the lack of any accompaniment with rattle, drum or other instrument, rest periods. In the final paragraphs of this section, Mooney gave a brief discussion of the "Crow Dance"
Within the last few years the southern Arapaho and Cheyenne have developed an ancillary dance called the "crow dance," which is performed in the afternoon as a preliminary to the regular Ghost dance at night. As it is no part of the original Ghost dance and is confined to these two tribes, it deserves no extended notice in this connection. . . . Hypnotism and trances form an essential feature of this as of the Ghost Dance proper.
This was illustrated eleven pages later:

Mooney ended this chapter with an extended discussion and illustration of the "Hypnotic Process." This was illustrated with the plate "Praying":

The comparative chapter "Parallels in Other Systems" was illustrated with four plates, entitled "Inspiration, Rigid, Unconscious, and the above noted "Crow Dance." Of these, Rigid and Inspiration are photographs, although Rigid has been touched up.

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