Nowhere within his interviews with Chapman or Mooney does he claim to literally be Christ, as Porcupine, Short Bull in one of his narratives, and others have claimed. Quite the opposite in fact. While the Messiah Letter does state Jesus is on Earth and coming in a cloud, Wovoka himself does not claim he is Christ, at least according to Mooney, and certainly none of the primary source documents studied in this paper indicated he came to anyone in a cloud. It is possible, when talking to his followers, he drew connections between himself, his religion, and Christianity, but he did the opposite when speaking to Chapman and Mooney. However, the purpose of changing the tone in such a way seems unclear. It would seem less problematic, in the long run, for Wovoka to simply say to Mooney and Chapman something along the lines of “Jesus came to me, and provided a new way to worship,” rather than to describe a religion which, while it bears similarity in the morality, is not truly
Nowhere within his interviews with Chapman or Mooney does he claim to literally be Christ, as Porcupine, Short Bull in one of his narratives, and others have claimed. Quite the opposite in fact. While the Messiah Letter does state Jesus is on Earth and coming in a cloud, Wovoka himself does not claim he is Christ, at least according to Mooney, and certainly none of the primary source documents studied in this paper indicated he came to anyone in a cloud. It is possible, when talking to his followers, he drew connections between himself, his religion, and Christianity, but he did the opposite when speaking to Chapman and Mooney. However, the purpose of changing the tone in such a way seems unclear. It would seem less problematic, in the long run, for Wovoka to simply say to Mooney and Chapman something along the lines of “Jesus came to me, and provided a new way to worship,” rather than to describe a religion which, while it bears similarity in the morality, is not truly