GHOST DANCE

The Ghost dance replaced the Buffalo dance when the buffalo disappeared from the plains. It's practice swept across the west fanned by the desperation of a proud people destroyed by the humiliation of welfare. It culminated in the tragedy of Wounded Knee. In the belief that the dance would help to bring about the return of the buffalo, their ancestors and their way of life, they danced until they dropped unconscious to the ground.

By the 1880's the U.S. government had managed to confine almost all of the Indians on reservations, usually on land so poor that the white man could conceive of no use for it themselves. The rations and supplies that had been guaranteed them by the treaties were of poor quality, if they arrived at all. Graft and corruption were rampant in the Indian Bureau. In an attempt to stem this problem, a move was made to recruit Quakers to take the positions as Indian agents, however not nearly enough Quakers responded to the call for volunteers.

This call, however, opened the door to other denominations setting up shop on the reservations. An attempt was made to convert the Indians to Christianity with mixed results.
However, by 1890 conditions were so bad on the reservations, nationwide, with starvation conditions existing in many places, that the situation was ripe for a major movement to rise among the Indians. This movement found its origin in a Paiute Indian named Wovoka, who announced that he was the messiah come to earth to prepare the Indians for their salvation. Representatives from tribes all over the nation came to Nevada to meet with Wovoka and learn to dance the Ghost Dance and to sing Ghost Dance songs.

http://www.hanksville.org/daniel/lakota/Ghost_Dance.html


" I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother. "
-Wovoka, Paiute Prophet

The Ghost Dance was an attempt of a group of North American Indian tribes to further separate themselves from the white man and the religious doctrines they were forcing upon the tribal peoples. Among the Sioux and Arapaho, the Ghost Dance was one of the central rituals of a new religious movement that focused on the restoration of the past, as opposed to a salvation in a new future. The movement was active within limited tribes and mirrored other attempts by previous Indians to escape the civilization of the white man.

The earlier movements included the Good Message of the Iroquois and the Dreamers of the Columbia River tribes. All of these movements had similar features including a rejection of the white man’s civilization, especially alcohol, weapons and technology. In addition, the movements preached unity among tribes, even those that were once enemies and a revival of Indian customs that were threatened by the civilization of European peoples.


8.5 Wovoka (seated), the Paiute medicine man and mystic whose visions of a world without white men, renewed by the spirits of the dead, inspired the late 1880's Ghost Dance movement among western tribes.

The despair and nostalgia associated with the Ghost Dance reflects that period from which the movement evolved. Plains tribes faced losing their freedom and being overtaken of their homes, their beliefs and their existence. The Ghost Dance was a resurrection of the dead, a bringing back of the customs and way of life that the Indians were trying to hold onto.

The prophet who began the movement of the Ghost Dance was Wovoka, a member of the Paiute Tribe. He was descended of a family of prophets and Shamans. Known as a medicine man, it was said that during an eclipse of the sun and while suffering from a high fever, he had a vision which inspired the development of the movement known as the Ghost Dance.

The vision embodied the beliefs that inspired the followers of the movement including that the white man would disappear from the Earth after a natural catastrophe and that the Indian dead would return bringing with them the old way of life that would then last forever.

The first dance was held by Wovoka around 1889. Word spread quickly and the Ghost Dance was accepted by the Utes, Bannocks and Shoshone tribes. Eventually, the Plains tribes also adopted the Ghost Dance movement and the peaceful message of hope was spreading and uplifting many Indians. While adapting the movement, many tribes added specific customs and rituals to the Dance that reflected their tribes individuality.

The Sioux added two specific elements including the use of hypnosis to bring about trances and aid in the communication with the dead, and a ghost shirt. Made of buckskin or cloth, the shirt was said to make the wearer immune to bullets, a weapon of death known initially only to the white man.

A famous Sioux warrior, Sitting Bull, adopted the Ghost Dance into his way of life. He was a respected leader, medicine man and warrior. His following of this movement alarmed the military and Indian Agencies. In 1890, just a few months after presiding at his first Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull was killed. His followers fled and joined the band of Kicking Bear, one of the first to practice with Wovoka.

Donning their ghost shirts and with their beliefs firm in their hearts, the followers of the Ghost Dance were rounded up at Wounded Knee creek and killed while resisting arrest. Among those killed were women and children wearing their ghost shirts, which did not stop the bullets of the Indian Agencies or the Military.


Arapaho Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance continued to be danced in more southern tribes, but the end of the movement really came with the deaths at Wounded Knee. The hopes of the Indians also ended at that massacre.

The Wounded Knee Massacre
White officials became alarmed at the religious fervor and activism and in December 1890 banned the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations. When the rites continued, officials called in troops to Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. The military, led by veteran General Nelson Miles, geared itself for another campaign.


Civilian grave diggers bury the Lakota dead in a mass grave.

The presence of the troops exacerbated the situation. Short Bull and Kicking Bear led their followers to the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, to a sheltered escarpment known as the Stronghold. The dancers sent word to Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas to join them. Before he could set out from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, however, he was arrested by Indian police. A scuffle ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain. Six of the policemen were killed.

http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/wounded.htm

Groups of Colored Peoples have tried to fight against the ways of the white man...to no avail....We as Afrikan people need a Black Social Theory that can stand against the continued onslaught being waged against us. I am trying to learn from past attempts at social theories.