Ghost Dance History
The Ghost Dance was a religious movement by the Southwest and Plains Indians during the late 19th century. Native Americans performed the dance to usher in a new world where American Indians would be free of the whites who had taken their lands and killed most of the buffalo. The Ghost Dance was a way for Native Americans to resist the loss of their old ways as the U.S. government forced them onto reservations.
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Origins of the Ghost Dance
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About 1870, Wodziwob, a Paiute living on a reservation in Nevada, made a prophecy that one day a great earthquake would cleanse the earth by ridding it of the white man. God would resurrect the Native Americans, and they would live on a land teeming with buffalo and restored to a pristine state. To hasten the end of the white man, Wodziwob instructed followers to perform a version of the traditional round dance in which men and women would form a circle and lock hands. While moving to their left, the dancers would perform ritual songs.
The Ghost Dance of 1890
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Wodziwob's Ghost Dance spread to other reservations, but it was a short-lived movement, possibly because the prophet died in 1872. In 1889, another Paiute, Wovoka, had a vision during a solar eclipse in which he saw a renewed earth purified of white men, much like Wodziwob had prophesied. Wovoka, too, instructed fellow Native Americans to perform the Ghost Dance. Dancers wore sacred shirts made of muslin and decorated with sacred symbols like eagles and crows. His message was peaceful: Do not fight, lie or steal, and God would deliver the Native Americans from the rule of the white man. Wovoka's Ghost Dance spread to other tribes, including the Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne, Pawnee and Comanche.
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The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890
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The U.S. government viewed the spread of the Ghost Dance with alarm, worrying that it was a cover for a coming insurrection. Fearing an outbreak of the Ghost Dance at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, reservation officials sent Lakota police to arrest Chief Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull was killed in the fight that erupted during the arrest. In the aftermath of Sitting Bull's death, some Lakota Sioux Ghost Dancers led by Chief Big Foot traveled from their reservation on the Cheyenne River in South Dakota to the Pine Ridge Reservation (also in South Dakota), hoping to make peace with the U.S. government with the help of Chief Red Cloud. The 7th Cavalry, which had been ordered to find and disarm Big Foot and his followers, met them on their way and escorted them instead to an army camp on Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning, during a search of the Lakota for weapons, confusion reigned. When a gun went off, the soldiers opened fire on the unarmed Lakota, killing close to 300 men, women and children.
The Ghost Dance After Wounded Knee
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In the 1890s, the Pawnee revived a version of the Ghost Dance, called the Ghost Dance Hand Game. The Shoshones practiced the Ghost Dance in what is believed to be its original form through the 1950s.
Significance
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By 1890 the U.S. wars to subdue the Native Americans had ended, with all of the remaining tribes moved onto government reservations. The Ghost Dance, though apocalyptic for whites, was a hopeful message for the defeated Native Americans. It was also a peaceful message based upon the Christian sermons Native Americans had heard on reservations. Ironically, the government policies requiring Native Americans on reservations to learn English and be instructed in the Christian religion allowed the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance, since a common language broke down tribal barriers.
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