Ghost Dance (Revised)

Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge.

The circle dance has been danced by Native Americans since prehistory. Some form of circle dance was performed all over the world. A Paiute Indian by the name of Jack Wilson, otherwise known as “Wovoka” or “Grandfather” taught his people “The Ghost Dance”. It is a form of circle dance.

The Ghost Dance was originated at a time of great troubles for the Indian people. Their buffalo had been hunted to almost complete extinction, they had a Typhoid epidemic in 1867, and the Whiteman appeared to be here to stay. A man by the name of Hawthorne Wodziwob from the Northern Paiute or Tovusi-dokado (Cyprus-bulb eaters) gathered groups of people to tell of his vision and organize Ghost Dances. He organized a series of community dances to announce his vision. He told them about his vision to the land of the dead and of stories told to him by the souls of the recently deceased.

One of Wodziwob’s early disciples was a man by the name of “Tavibo” who was Jack Wilson’s father. Tavibo was a “Weather Doctor”. Jack Wilson grew up and became a Weather Doctor, and he was a talented spiritual leader among his people. On January 1st 1889, during the solar eclipse, Jack Wilson had a great vision. He said that he had seen the vision before, but hadn’t understood it until the vision during the eclipse.

During an interview held by James Mooney, Jack Wilson also known as “Wovoka” said: “…he had stood before God in Heaven, and had seen many of his ancestors engaged in their favorite pastimes. God showed Jack a beautiful land filled with wild game, and instructed him to return home to tell his people that they must love each other, not fight, and live in peace with the whites. God also stated that Jack’s people must work, not steal or lie, and that they must not engage in the old practices of war or the traditional self-mutilation practices connected with mourning the dead. God said that if his people abided by these rules they would be united with their friends and family in the other world.
In God’s presence, Jack proclaimed, there would be no sickness, disease, or old age. According to Jack, he was then given the Ghost Dance and commanded to take it back to his people. Jack preached that if this five-day dance was performed in the proper intervals, the performers would secure their happiness and hasten the reunion of the living and deceased. God purportedly gave Jack powers over weather and told him that he would be the deputy in charge of affairs in the Western United States, leaving current President Harrison deputy in the East. Jack claims that he was then told to return home and preach God’s message.
Jack Wilson claimed to have left the presence of God convinced that if every Indian in the West danced the new dance to “hasten the event,” all evil in the world would be swept away leaving a renewed Earth filled with food, love, and faith. Quickly accepted by his Paiute brethren, the new religion was termed “Dance In A Circle”. Because the first European contact with the practice came by way of the Sioux, their expression “Spirit Dance” was adopted as a descriptive title for all such practices. This was subsequently translated as “Ghost Dance”.





Photo of Wovoka's Gravesite by "Bubba T. Briarhopper" (probably not his real name) Bubba tells about his visit to the gravesite. I provided a link here, but Briarhopper has subsequently given up on the blog world.


As you might have guessed, there is more to this story. What started out as a peace and acceptance move, the ghost dance turned into a prayer to rid the world of white men. While most participants in the ghost dance accepted it as a peace movement, others most certainly didn’t. The Northern Paiutes were subject to the teachings of the Mormons. The Mormons wear “garments” as a symbol of their purity. The Native Americans somehow got the idea that if they wore a “garment” that they would be unable to be killed. They called their protective garments “Ghost Shirts”. They thought that the shirts would ward of bullets and protect them from death.

As the Ghost dance moved throughout the west it was introduced to the Lakota Sioux by chief Kicking Bear. Most all of the Native Americans have renewal ceremonies, where they pray for the Earth to become new again. Only instead of praying for peace and acceptance, the Lakotas prayed for the end of the Evil Whiteman. The fact that they did the ghost dance as a prayer to get rid of the Whiteman, got them the attention of the U.S. Army. The army saw the dances as war dances and thought that Native Americans were preparing for war.

The following is from wikipedia:
In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota (an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state) into five smaller reservations. This was done to accommodate white homesteaders from the Eastern United States and was in accordance with the government’s clearly stated “policy of breaking up tribal relationships” and “conforming Indians to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must.” Once on the reduced reservations, tribes were separated into family units on 320-acre (1.3 km2) plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to boarding schools that forbade any inclusion of Native American traditional culture and language.

To help support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), was delegated the responsibility of supplementing the Sioux with food and hiring white farmers as teachers for the people. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty Sioux farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government’s patience with supporting the so-called “lazy Indians” ran out, resulting in rations to the Sioux being cut in half. With the bison virtually eradicated from the plains a few years earlier, the Sioux had no options available to escape starvation.

Increased performances of the Ghost Dance ritual ensued, frightening the supervising agents of the BIA. Kicking Bear was forced to leave Standing Rock, but when the dances continued unabated, Agent McLaughlin asked for more troops, claiming that Hunkpapa spiritual leader Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement. A former agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, saw nothing extraordinary in the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have overcome the agencies, saying: “The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians. If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.”

Nonetheless, thousands of additional U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested on the reservation for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During the incident, a Sioux witnessing the arrest fired at one of the soldiers prompting an immediate retaliation; this conflict resulted in deaths on both sides, including the loss of Sitting Bull himself.

Big Foot, a Miniconjou leader on the U.S. Army’s list of trouble-making Indians, was stopped while en route to convene with the remaining Sioux chiefs. U.S. Army officers forced him and his people to relocate to a small camp close to the Pine Ridge Agency so that the soldiers could more closely watch the old chief. That evening, December 28, the small band of Sioux erected their tipis on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The following day, during an attempt by the officers to collect any remaining weapons from the band, one young and deaf Sioux warrior refused to relinquish his arms. A struggle followed in which somebody's weapon discharged into the air. One U.S. officer gave the command to open fire and the Sioux responded by taking up previously confiscated weapons; the U.S. forces responded with carbine firearms and several rapid fire light artillery (Hotchkiss) guns mounted on the overlooking hill. When the fighting had concluded, 25 U.S. soldiers lay dead, many killed by friendly fire, amongst the 153 dead Sioux, most of whom were women and children.

Following the massacre, chief Kicking Bear officially surrendered his weapon to General Nelson A. Miles. Outrage in the Eastern United States emerged as the general population learned about the events that had transpired. The U.S. government had insisted on numerous occasions that the Native American had already been successfully pacified, and many Americans felt the U.S. Army actions were harsh; some related the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek to the “ungentlemanly act of kicking a man when he is already down.” Public uproar played a role in the reinstatement of the previous treaty’s terms including full rations and more monetary compensation for lands taken away.

However, twenty of the soldiers involved received Medals of Honor for their part in the slaughter; these awards have never been revoked.

What started out as a peaceful movement, turned out to be part of the worse Indian massacre in history.