The Strange Religious 'Shaking' Phenomenon on the Sound
A new and puzzling religious movement among Indigenous communities on the Skokomish Reservation draws warnings from the government.
A curious phase of religion has sprung up within a year and a half among some of the Indians of the upper Sound. It has been called by its opponents the 'Shakers,' and has prevailed mainly among the Squaxon, Nisqually, Skokomish and Chehalis Indians. In the fall of 1882, an Indian named John Slocum, who was living on Skookum Bay, apparently died. After his resuscitation, he claimed he had visited heaven and been told to teach his people to become Christians. He gained followers and they held 'big meetings' where women pretended to fly and people experienced trances and shaking. The practice involved brushing sins off one another's bodies. The movement led to the abandonment of gambling, horse racing, and drinking. However, the government physician, worried that the constant head-shaking would cause insanity, intervened to stop the physical manifestations. Despite suppression, the practice has continued to spread like the measles.
“They would brush each other with their hands, as they said, to brush off the sins, for they said they were much worse than white people.”
This reporting documents the origins of the Indian Shaker Church, a unique syncretic faith that persists in the Pacific Northwest today. The article captures the intense tension between Indigenous spiritual autonomy and the colonial efforts of the U.S. government to regulate and suppress native religious expressions under the guise of public health.
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