Ghost Dance Religion

The Ghost Dance was a prophetic Native American religious movement that started around 1870 in response to the White European American conquest, and it rapidly spread throughout two thirds of the United States, with local variations. It sprang from the harsh conditions the Indians had been forced to accept. It promised to restore ancestral might, and it helped revitalize native cultures. It was strongly marked by Christian moral teachings, apocalypticism, and messianism. It had been prepared by several prophets who had seen in visions what the Indians must do to be [Page 446]freed from White oppression and bring back the good old times: Neolin or the Delaware Prophet (in the 1760s), Smohalla (Wanapam, ca. 1815–1895), Tenskwatawa (Shawnee, 1775–1836), Kenekuk (Kickapoo, ca. 1790–1852), and Tavibo (Paiute, ca. 1835 to ca. 1915).

A major surge in the practice of the Ghost Dance occurred in 1890, resulting from the revelation received by Tavibo's son, Wovoka, aka Jack Wilson (ca. 1856–1932). On January 1, 1889, after a solar eclipse, Wovoka saw the spirits, the ghosts, of the dead ancestors with the Great Spirit, who told him to preach the Ghost Dance and good moral conduct. Unlike other prophetic messages, the new movement tolerated the Whites, who were, however, expected to retreat to their own world. Wovoka was given power through five songs.

The prophecy guaranteed that once the Whites had gone, their possessions would revert to the Indians; diseases, poverty, and death would vanish; and the preinvasion golden age would prevail, allowing the dead ancestors to be reunited with their descendants. They would bring back the buffaloes. Several groups, mostly the Sioux, wore a ghost shirt, a white garment (perhaps inspired by the one worn by the Mormons) decorated with feathers and mythological designs, which rendered the dancers purportedly invulnerable against weapons, and they held the traditional bow and arrow. The dance lasted 4 or 5 days, mostly at night, in an open space with details differing according to the tribes. The fasting dancers formed circles and pressed against one another so as to form a single organism. The leader sang an invocation to the departed, to the rhythm of the participants' steps, followed by laments and cries. The Great Spirit was then called on to bring the dead to communicate with the dancers. This climax was performed in a trance that would be repeated several times. The Dance acted out the final destruction of the world as well as its regeneration, providing for the salvation and healing of the disciples.

Though peaceful, such messianism was so obviously leveled against the White Americans that it worried them. The massacre at Wounded Knee (December 1890) was in part caused by the army's urgency to suppress it. This struck a major blow to the Dance; nevertheless, it continued to be performed.

Like most prophetic movements, the Ghost Dance turned to Pan-Indianism to vanquish the Americans. Yet while it fought against them, it incorporated many of their spiritual features, for its disciples felt that the superiority of the European Americans must come from their religion, which thus had to be integrated into traditional rituals to strengthen their efficiency. (The major report on the movement was written by James Mooney in 1896.) An American anthropologist, Weston LaBarre, theorized that the emergence of the Ghost Dance Religion was a paradigmatic example of how all religions emerge as a response to crisis and imminent destruction, including the ominous threat of cultural obliteration.

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