William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[224] The voice of the people is the voice of God. Seceders may go out from either Sioux camp or Mormon church, but to depose an Indian chief is no less hard than to dethrone a Mormon seer. Sitting Bull has separated from Red Cloud, carrying with him a thousand lodges of his nation; David Smith has separated from Brigham Young, carrying with him more than a thousand families of his people; yet Red Cloud remains the Sioux chief and Brigham remains the Mormon seer.

Seceders cannot take away the grace which covers an appointed chief. The seer not only talks with the Great Spirit, but executes his judgments on the earth. A buck falls sick-he grovels to his chief. That chief, he thinks, can wither him by a spell. If that magician is not softened, he must die. So thinks the Mormon of his own relation to his pope. An Indian learns that sickness is a sign of sin. He thinks a devil has entered his flesh, and when, amidst the toil and hardship of a hunter's life, he feels the fever in his veins, the ague in his joints, the ulcer in his lungs, he crawls to his sorcerer, who groans and prays, makes passes with his palms, and puts the sinner under spells and charms.