Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance was a new religious movement among Native Americans. It was active from about 1860 to about 1890.

At the time, Native Americans had been forced to change their ways of life drastically, and had lost much of their culture and identity. The Ghost Dance movement promised them that if they performed the "Dance" and lived the right way, they would get back most of the things they had lost to white people. They could also re-unite the living and the dead, and the people who had caused them such misery would be driven away from their land.

Members also used other dance rituals to represent their spiritual path.

The Ghost Dance was most active during two time periods: the first time around 1860, and the second time around 1890.

Around 1860, a member of the Paiute Native American tribe called Wodziwob had a vision. He saw that the white people would be driven away, and the people would be reunited with their ancestors' spirits, called "ghosts". The vision also told him how to do the Ghost Dance ritual.

The movement spread rapidly. Each tribe added its own elements into the Ghost Dance. However, the movement was ultimately unsuccessful and ended around 1872. At this point, Wodzivob had said that he might have been wrong.

The second wave was started about twenty years later by a man called Wovoka, who worked at an LDS Mormon ranch. He was influenced by the new faith and some of its ideas, like sending apostles to spread the faith.

This movement spread wider, and was again adapted to each tribe's culture. The Lakota also adopted the idea of a messiah. The Lakota lived on a reservation, and when local authorities saw 25,000 natives dance together, they saw it as a threat. This led to the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where the United States Army killed up to 300 Native Americans.^[1] This massacre effectively ended the Ghost Dance movement.

Wovoka wrote a letter in 1892 to the other tribes telling them that Jesus had just returned to earth that year, and that if they lived good lives, they would someday get back their lands and culture, and the dead would live.

Wovoka stayed out of public sight for the rest of his life after giving this message, and lived until the 1930s.