Seekers after wisdom have always been drawn to American Indian ritual
and symbol. This history of two nineteenth-century Dreamer-Prophets,
Smohalla and Skolaskin, will interest those who seek a better
understanding of the traditional Native American commitment to Mother
Earth, visionary experiences drawn from ceremony, and the promise of
revitalization implicit in the Ghost Dance.
To white observers, the Dreamers appeared to imitate Christianity by
celebrating the sabbath and preaching a covenant with God, nonviolence,
and life after death. But the Prophets also advocated adherence to
traditional dress and subsistence patterns and to the spellbinding
Washat dance. By engaging in this dance and by observing traditional
life-ways, the Prophets claimed, the living Indians might bring their
dead back to life and drive the whites from the earth. They themselves
brought heaven to earth, they said, by "dying, going there, and
returning," in trances induced by the Washat drums.
The Prophets' sacred longhouses became rallying points for resistance to
the United States government. As many as two thousand Indians along the
Columbia River, from various tribes, followed the Dreamer religion.
Although the Dreamers always opposed war, the active phase of the
movement was brought to a close in 1889 when the United States Army
incarcerated the younger Prophet Skolaskin at Alcatraz. Smohalla died of
old age in 1894.
Modern Dreamers of the Columbia plateau still celebrate the Feast of the
New Foods in springtime as did their spiritual ancestors. This book
contains rare modern photographs of their Washat dances.
Readers of Indian history and religion will be fascinated by the
descriptions of the Dreamer-Prophets' unique personalities and their
adjustments to physical handicaps. Neglected by scholars, their role in
the important pan-Indian revitalization movement has awaited the
detailed treatment given here by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown.
