LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Susanne Brooks

Ghost Dance: Connecting With the Past

      In objective 3b, the Native American Indian alternative narrative: “Loss and Survival”, the Native Americans defy the myth of “the vanishing Indian,” choosing to “survive”.  Since I have not studied in depth the American Indians, the idea of “survival” sounded romantic to me.  I have since learned that my response is a natural one.  I wanted to find something specific in which American Indians survive; what connects them to their past and how does their culture still survive today.  I read a quote by Chrystos where she stated that if there is nothing sacred in your life, then life is not worth living.  My journey began with the word sacred.  As I searched the phrase “American Indians Sacred”, I found a lot of information on land, medical practices, and specific objects.  Specific dances as well were mentioned.  I narrowed my search on “The Ghost Dance” because of its historical influence on Native American history as well as the history of the United States.  The Ghost Dance is sacred because it attempts to connect with the past. 

      In the late nineteenth century, the Native Americans experienced devastation to the buffalo, the land and themselves.  Wovoka, a Paiute, son of an Indian prophet, went into a deathlike trance during an eclipse of the sun.  It lasted three days and nights.  When he awoke he returned to his people and told his dream.  In his dream he was shown movements and songs.  He said a great spirit was coming to the Earth to raise all the dead.  He predicted the buffalo would return so that the people would never be hungry again and the whites would leave their land forever.  He instructed his people in the dance to save them from defeat.  The dance promised a return of the good life that had existed before the Europeans arrived. 

      The people were to dance all day and night until they fell into a trance which would then they would gain entrance into the spirit world.  They were to wear “ghost-shirts” to protect the wearer from the white man’s bullets and abandon their warlike ways.  The people embraced the dance because they were so desperate.  Gary Null who wrote Secrets of the Sacred White Buffalo, says, “It was believed that, while performing the Ghost Dance the participant could visit loved ones who had previously left their bodies.  As so many Native Americans suffered the loss of friends and relatives, this aspect of the ceremony was particularly healing”.  The Ghost Dance created unity among the Indian people, even tribes who had long standing conflict.  This solidarity caused white onlookers to become fearful.  Tribes came together in 1876, and defeated General Custer and his Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn River in South Dakota.  Then, fourteen years later, another massacre happened.  The government gunned down ghost dancers at Wounded Knee Creek.  Women, children, and the elderly were among the dead.  Three hundred were shot in the back in their attempt to escape.  Null states that a historian who investigated the Ghost Dance at the time, “U.S. troops reported seeing approximately 125 people at the beginning of the ceremonial dance.  By the end of the dance they admitted that twice that number of people were present.  Yet no additional people came into the dance circle during the entire time”. 

      Today, American Indians still dance the Ghost Dance, however for different reasons.  The Ghost Dance has become, in a sense, syncretic; a blend of two meanings.  There is the traditional meaning as told by Wovoka and the non-traditional meaning as a way to connect with the past.  The meaning has changed because of historic events.  There are now wounds that need healing and by participating in the Ghost Dance, it helps American Indians reconnect to the past.  Charlotte Heth who wrote, Native American  Dance Ceremonies and Social Traditions, states, they continue the Ghost Dance tradition of using the dance as a means of establishing an emotional connection with the values of “Indianness”.  Null write that the Ghost Dance is still practiced today in private.  Indians are losing relative to cancer and alcohol and the Earth is still in need of healing.  They dance in hope of salvation from these afflictions (29).

Works Cited

“Ghost Dance”  Wikipedia.  2 May 2007.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance>

Heth, Charlotte.  Native American Dance Ceremonies and Social Traditions.  New York: Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1992. 

Null, Gary.  Secrets of the Sacred White Buffalo.  New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.

Zhang, Xiao.  “Ghost Dance celebrates Indian culture”.  Outpost Metro Mail Us.  13  October 1999.  Nevada Outpost.  2 May 2007.  

      <http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost/community/com.zhang.ghost.html>