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The Gaun Bagudzitash, or Dance of the Gods, is the one ceremony of the Apache that bears any material resemblance to the many Yebichai dances or "chants" of the Navaho, and even then the only feature common to the two is that the men, typifying gods, wear elaborate masks. The Apache are not unfamiliar with the making and employment of dry-paintings for the treatment of the sick, as has been seen. Originally the dry-paintings and the _gaun_, or gods, always appeared together, but in recent years the Gaun dance has been conducted preliminary to and as a part of medicine, puberty, and war ceremonies. Captain Bourke, in his "Medicine-men of the Apache" (Ninth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1892), speaks of this as the Spirit or Ghost dance. Though performed infrequently now, as compared with other dances, on account of the expense and of disapproval by the agents, the Gaun Bagudzitash is unquestionably the most popular ceremony conducted by the Apache.

No one who has followed the diplomatic history of the negotiations that led to this war can doubt that if there had been no secret treaties, but instead open proclamations of intentions and an open discussion of international ambitions, the world might have been saved this catastrophe. It is no condemnation of any person or country to say this. The reserves and hesitations and misconceptions that led Germany to suppose that England would wait patiently while France and Belgium were destroyed before she herself received attention were unavoidable under the existing diplomatic conditions. What reasonable people have to do now is not to recriminate over the details in the working of a system that we can now all of us perceive to be hopelessly bad, but to do our utmost in this season of opportunity to destroy the obscurities in which fresh mischief may fester for our children.

Whether this extraordinary act was demanded by Innocent or suggested by John, the evidence does not permit us to say. The balance of probabilities, however, inclines strongly to the opinion that it was a voluntary act of the king's. There is nothing in the papal documents to indicate any such demand, and it is hardly possible that the pope could have believed that he could carry the matter so far. On the other hand, John was able to see clearly that nothing else would save him. He had every reason to be sure that no ordinary reconciliation with the papacy would check the invasion of Philip or prevent the treason of the barons. If England were made a possession of the pope, the whole situation would take on a different aspect. Not only would all Europe think Innocent justified in adopting the most extreme measures for the defence of his vassal, but also the most peculiar circumstances only would justify Philip in going on with his attack, and without him disaffection at home was powerless. We should be particularly careful not to judge this act of John's by the sentiment of a later time. There was nothing that seemed degrading to that age about becoming a vassal. Every member of the aristocracy of Europe and almost every king was a vassal. A man passed from the classes that were looked down upon, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, into the nobility by becoming a vassal. The English kings had been vassals since feudalism had existed in England, though not for the kingdom, and only a few years before Richard had made even that a fief of the empire. There is no evidence that John's right to take this step was questioned by any one, or that there was any general condemnation of it at that time. One writer a few years later says that the act seemed to many "ignominious," but he records in the same sentence his own judgment that John was "very prudently providing for himself and his by the deed."[77] Even in the rebellion against John that closed his reign no objection was made to the relationship with the papacy, nor was the king's right to act as he did denied, though his action was alleged by his enemies to be illegal because it did not have the consent of the barons. John's charter of concession, however, expressly affirms this consent, and the barons on one occasion seem to have confirmed the assertion.[78]

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