Collection of Ten Photographs from Mooney’s Pioneering Investigations of the Ghost Dance and Other Native American Circle Dances de Mooney, James - 1892

This extremely rare and important collection documents the famous Ghost Dance and related circle dances soon after the Wounded Knee Massacre. These dramatic photographs, taken by the celebrated James Mooney, show these dances as they were taking place. Viewing the Ghost Dance among the Lakota as a threat, the U.S. Army had killed Sitting Bull while arresting him and soon thereafter killed Spotted Elk and perhaps 150 of his followers at Wounded Knee. Thus these Ghost Dance photographs represent original documentary evidence of a major phenomenon in the history of the American West. These photographs were taken by James Mooney (1861-1921), an anthropologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology. He left Washington in late 1890 to investigate the potentially incendiary Ghost Dance movement. In the winter of 1891 Mooney lived among the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Wichita, and other Native Americans in Native American territory as they performed the Ghost Dance ritual, hoping to usher in the American Indian millennium. Mooney reported, "I am so far in with the medicine men, that they have invited me to take part in the dance, although they order any white man away from the grounds" (Moses, The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney). Late in 1891, Mooney visited the Native Americans at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, near the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. Finding the Sioux understandably reluctant to discuss the religion, Mooney then crossed the Rockies to locate and interview the founder of the movement, Wovoka in Nevada. During this meeting, the first time that a white man had interviewed Wovoka about his movement, the mystic consented to be photographed. "James Mooney was called 'The Indian Man' not because he dressed like one, nor because he thought American Indian societies were superior to his own, but rather from his knowledge, unsurpassed for its breadth and depth, of a few Indian societies. … His works are used constantly today in both history and anthropology. They have achieved a timelessness …" (Moses). One of the few whites to witness and take part in the Ghost Dance, Mooney became the greatest scholar of the ritual and the events which cascaded from this cultural collision. Mooney's Ghost Dance photographs are of the very greatest rarity in the market. We cannot trace any other examples appearing for sale. Ten albumen photographs (4 x 6 in. and 4 ¼ x 7 ½ in.) on original mounts, some with gold bevel. Most faded, light wear and soiling. Most of the photographs bear on the mount recto a pencil caption number likely in Mooney's hand. Extremely rare.