James Mooney

The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890

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Since I mentioned the Ghost Dance in the last posting, I thought I’d post this about the classic work on the subject.

Raw Feed (1995): The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, James Mooney, 1896, 1991. 

I liked this ethnography from 1896. Mooney does a good job tracing Indian messianic movements from 1762 to the Ghost Dance of the late 1880s and the eventual Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. The 1991 introduction says some of Mooney’s statements about Ghost Dance prophet and messiah Wovoka being the son of the Paiute Ghost Dance prophet of 1870 are untrue but that his suspicions of a long, direct line of Indian messianic religious revivals were correct. 

I was fascinated to learn that most of these religions postulated not only a revival of the old life (particularly the return of the buffalo, the tribe’s old means of support) – often forsaking white man tech along the way, the resurrection of the dead and also a moral rededication with calls for marital fidelity, sobriety, and intratribal harmony. 

I was interested to see the cultural influences on the Ghost Dance (the use of Jesus’ name, Catholic type gestures, Mormon sacred garments becoming the Ghost Dance shirts) and predecessors like the Indian Shakers (not related to the Christian denomination of the same name) of the Northwest. 

I was also surprised to learn that it was only among the Sioux that the Ghost Dance turned violent because of their many justifiable grievances over U.S. treaty violations. Social conservatives like Sitting Bull fought – literally – with the progressive elements who thought the Sioux should try to adapt to the changing order rather than fight it. Sitting Bull’s death was the result of resistance offered by one of his followers when tribal police tried to arrest him. 

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Six-Guns Straight From Hell

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For some reason, I’m in a weird western mood, so I thought I’d bring out this retro review from August 12, 2013.

Unfortunately, you’re probably going to pay a lot of money for this book in physical form, and the kindle edition, which I have, is no longer available due to rights issues.

Still, I’ll pass along the recommendation, and you should look up co-editor David B. Riley’s Amazon page if you enjoy weird westerns. I’m pretty fussy about what I regard as a good weird western. My criteria is they should be set in the historical American West and not fall back on standard supernatural creatures or time travel or aliens for their effect. Unsurprisingly, I don’t find many stories that fit that bill. However, Riley published Science Fiction Trails, and its stories often did. I’ve also enjoyed some of his own weird westerns.

Unfortunately, it didn’t get a lot of submissions that fit what Riley was looking for, so it’s no longer published.

And, of course, you can always seek out the work of the listed writers.

Review: Six-Guns Straight to Hell: Tales of Horror and Dark Fantasy from the Weird Weird West, eds. David B. Riley and Laura Givens, 2010.Six-Guns Straight From Hell

Oh, sure there are the usual vampires, werewolves, and ghosts as you would expect. But there are also a few Lovecraftian pieces, a bit of alternate history, and a bit of science fiction. And, of course, you do get plenty of gunslingers. It’s one of those anthologies with few real outstanding stories, some memorable ones, and no bad ones.

For me the best of the lot was Sam Kepfield’s “Ghost Dancers“. It takes perhaps the weirdest historical event in the Old West, the Ghost Dance, as its starting point, in particular the one place the movement broke into violence – Wounded Knee. It’s been a while since I’ve read James Mooney’s The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, but the history seemed dead on, the ending memorable.

I’ve enjoyed Lee Clark Zumpe’s Cthulhu Mythos stories so was pleased to see him in the table of contents. The Lovecraftian elements of his “The Man from Turkey Creek Canyon” are rather slight and, to be truthful, I found the end a bit unsatisfying, like the story could have been fleshed out more or belonged to a series. However, I liked its amnesiac gunslinger of “callous conscience” sent to protect a wagon train from ambush. Continue reading →