The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1891.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 6, 8 January 1891, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1891.

for tho causa that lacis assistance, Por the wrong that needs resistance, Par the future In the distance, And the good that we can do.

The Indian rising in the United States, which has assumed such formidable proportions, appears, from the long reports published in American papers which were received by the last San Francisco mail, to have had its origin in religious fanaticism, aggravated by starvation. A very liberal provision is made by the American Government for dealing out rations to the Indians on the various reservations, but, according to report, tbe supplies that have reached them in many instances have been exceedingly meagre. One despatch states: - " General Schofield has in. structed General Miles to find out if the cause of the present disatisfaction among the Indians is due more to lack of rations than to their belief in the coming of the new Messiah. There are plenty of reports on that subject already in the hands of the War Department, and all of them declare that the Indians have been unpaid and underpaid, and that their petitions for more rations have been disregaided by the Indian Bureau."

By natural instinct an oppressed people look for a deliverer, and the belief that a Messiah is at hand whose appearance is to be heralded by the belching forth of mud from two great mountains which will bury the white man, has gained an extraordinary credence among the western Indian tribes from the coast to the Mississippi and from British Columbia to Arizona. The Messiah, according to the accepted i story, will restore the good old Indian times. An officer stationed at Los Angeles, in a letter to General Miles, endeavours to identify the Indian Messiah as One Johnson Sides, a sort of self-appointed missionary among the Indians, and known as the " Peacemaker." He called on the writer of the letter last spring and said he had bean visited by Indians from many localities to whom he delivered the Bible story of Christ's mission on earth. The officer believes that the story, by frequent repetition, has gradually developed into the story. of th? Indian Messiah.

But whatever the origin of the delusion, its development has assumed a peculiar resemblance to the fanatical rites which attended the outbreak of Hauhauism in New Zealand. The devotees ot the new religion engage in what is known as ."the ghost dance." We publish in another column to-day a description of this strange performance written by an eye-witness. The points of resemblance to the orgies connected with the Paimariri fanaticism will forcibly impress those who are acquainted with the history of that strange delusion: -

The connection between religious frenzy and dancing has always been regarded as a curious psychological problem. David, in the intensity of 'his religious zeal, we are told, danced before the ark of the Lord, and there are numerous religious bodies—such as the whirling Dervishes in the East and the Shakers in the West—among whom dancing forms an important religious ceremony. The Hauhau fanatics of Opotiki, when preparing to murder that devoted missionary the Rev. Mr Volkner, aggravated their religious intoxication by large draughts of the fermented juice of boiled peaches. After the murder, Kereopa gouged out the eyes of the corpse, and, filling the communion cup from the church with blood, passed it round among the frenzied people, who had always received the utmost kindness at the hands of Mr Volkner, and who, in their sane moments, there is.no reason to doubt, cherished for him warm feelings of affection. There is no extremity to which men whose passions are thus inflamed, will not go, and telegrams from the frontier districts of the American States show that friendly Indians a month ago were warning settlers for whom they cherished friendly feelings to take refuge in the fortified posts which have been established by the, Government in Indian territories. ; The friendly Indians, indeed, were as much alarmed by the conduct of the ghost-dancers as were their white neighbours.

The commencement of hostilities was a sad day for the North American Indians. They have lived so long at peace that their camps are full of old men and old women, upon whose heads the first brunt of the war will fall j an Indian has small regard for the weak and helpless when on the warpath. They are ill-armed, and, although owing to their numbers and the character of the country, they may do considerable damage, their cause is an utterly hopeless one. Inevitably a war of this sort, participated in by settlers who have been goaded to madness through the burning of their homesteads and the-murder of their wives and children, assumes the form of a war of extermination. It is sad to think that one race of mankind must utterly disappear to make room for a higher race, but this appears to be an inexorable law of nature, which is being rapidly fulfilled in the case of the North American Indians.