LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, fall 2001
Student Research Project

Sancar Sallanti
Dr. Craig White
Literature 5731
4 December 2001

Ghost Dance

In considering the minority status of the Native American Indians, it is important to notice that they are in a different situation today than the other minority groups in the United States. The Native Americans became a minority group in a place, which was their own land and they were the majority as opposed to, for example, African-Americans who were brought to the United States by force from their lands in Africa as slaves. In their fight of independence and getting rid of the whites, the Native Americans were introduced to a new religion that promised to save them: Ghost Dance. The topics about the Ghost Dance that this paper will mainly focus on are how the dance came into being, what kind of meanings it had, and how the oral tradition caused it to be performed in different ways in various tribes.

In most sources it is written that the Ghost Dance movement started in 1889 by Wovoka. This information is not quite right since around 1870 a Paiute shaman called Tavibo, Wovoka’s father, authored the dance, where he foretold the end of the world for the whites and the rebirth of the Indians to "populate a terrestrial paradise" (Miller 24). According to Miller, this early version of the Ghost Dance ‘swept through’ most of the tribes in northern California and Nevada until it died out and was forgotten after Tavibo’s death (24). Other sources refer to this early version of the Ghost dance as the traditional Paiute Round Dance without giving it an apocalyptic definition (Hoyer 1).

After Tavibo died, the Paiute hoped that his son Wovoka would take his place as a shaman and continue to perform the rituals of the promised future. Wovoka, however, was feeling closer to the white people that to his tribe and never even cared about anything his father did, which caused the dance to be forgotten all among the tribes. Wovoka’s relationships with the whites started from boyhood, where he would cut timber and attend some farm chores for the family he was living with, David and Mary Wilson, who also gave him the name Jack Wilson (Miller 24-5). According to Miller, Wovoka grew up with the stories of "the wonders of Jehovah and the glory of Christ," and of an age where miraculous events were like a part of the ordinary life (25).

Wovoka saw Jesus as the "mightiest medicine man of all time," who was trying to teach the good to all people and who could cure all the sickness just by touching the people. Jesus became, possibly in a wrong way, the inspiration point for Wovoka to turn back to his tribe and become a shaman like his father but much more powerful. This ambition of power would give the Indian tribes the Ghost Dance and later it would become the most radical religious movement for spreading so fast. But first it had to be accepted by the Paiutes and this took a few years for Wovoka to achieve.

In order to gain power quickly Wovoka decided to use his father’s almost forgotten dance as a tool and made some adjustments on it to serve his own purpose. It was 1886 when the Ghost Dance started again among the Paiutes. Miller states that the new appearance of the Ghost Dance had little effect on the Paiutes as Wovoka expected but they danced it anyway since they had no more hopes left in getting rid of the white people (26). Wovoka’s Ghost Dance had different characteristics from the other Indian rituals. Here the men and women joined hands and formed great circles instead of separately performing the ritual. Wovoka taught the some sacred songs that he could remember from his boyhood and also made up some songs according to the goal he wanted to achieve (Miller 26).

According to Hoyer, there are two main differences between Wovoka’s Ghost Dance and his fathers Ghost Dance. The first difference is that the first Ghost Dance is much more ‘radical’ than Wovoka’s since it predicted for the first time that the white ‘invaders’ would be gone forever. The second difference that Hoyer states is that the first Ghost Dance spread to south and west while Wovoka’s dance was more wide spread to north and east (4-5). Although Hoyer’s idea that the first dance was more ‘radical’ seems to be true, Wovoka’s dance becomes much more important when we think of how far it was spread.

In time, however, the interest in the Ghost Dance began to vanish and Wovoka "decided to die" and lay for hours in a "deathlike trance." When he "returned" to life, he told the Paiutes that he spoke to God and came back with a message. He was promised that "a new world was coming" where the Indians wouldn’t be the slaves of the whites and he was told that all the Indians, including the dead ones, would live happily in this new world with only one condition: they had to keep dancing the Ghost dance (Miller 26).

We can see how Wovoka’s knowledge of Christianity, where he claims to have spoken to the one God, and his traditional knowledge from his father, are mixed here. According to Hoyer, Wovoka takes from his traditional religion concepts such as "shamanic booka [puha], supernatural weather control, belief in dreams and visions, invulnerability, trance states, and the Round or ‘Father Dance’" while from Christianity he takes concepts such as "a modified Decalogue, belief in the resurrection of the dead in Heaven, and the role of the charismatic evangelist…leading revivalistic camp meetings" (5). Mooney, on the other hand, who himself had an interview with Wovoka, argues that Wovoka’s English was not well enough for him to have fully understand the Bible, which brings into mind the question whether Wovoka’s religion was build on misunderstood concepts (13).

After the well-done show of dying-and-coming-to-life-again by Wovoka, the dance was kept being danced by the Paiutes with many new songs that Wovoka would keep teaching them. Another Christian influence we can see in Wovoka’s new religion is that he would take the dancers to the river after long days of dancing so that they would wash away their "sins." By the end of 1888, however, the enthusiasm of the Paiutes towards the Ghost Dance started to diminish again, which wouldn’t bother Wovoka at all, since he had his best event, as an opportunity in becoming powerful, to happen in 1889 that would make him known among all the Indian tribes.

As Miller informs us, Wovoka had learned "the usefulness of an almanac" during his stay with the Wilson family and knew that a total eclipse of the sun would occur. He cleverly fell down to "die" again in front of the amazed Paiutes while the sun disappeared behind the moon in January 1989 (27). This was the most important moment for the Ghost Dance to be spread among most of the Indian tribes since the ‘superstitious’ Paiutes would no longer be suspicious about Wovoka’s powers. Wovoka was declared by the Paiutes to be the ‘Holiest men.’

A much more milder argument about Wovoka’s vision during the eclipse is made by Mooney, who wrote that he was stricken with a fever while the total eclipse of the sun occurred and with the excitement of the Pauites, who were firing to the sky to ‘scare the monster about to eat the sun,’ Wovoka imagined himself to enter ‘the portals of the spirit world’ with the excitement of the eclipse among his people and the effect of his sickness (15-6).

When Wovoka woke up, he told the people that he talked to God again and in addition to his first vision he was told by God that the white men would be "wiped from the face of the earth by a mighty flood of mud and water." He continued his prophecy by saying that "when the flood has passed, the earth will come alive again ─ just as the sun died and was reborn. The land will be new and green with young grass. Elk and deer and antelope and even the vanished buffalo will return in vast numbers as they were before the white man came…It will be paradise on earth" (Miller 27-8). We see that Wovoka continues to use Christian elements in his prophecies where the ‘great flood’ reminds us of Noah’s Ark.

Many delegates started to visit the Paiutes to see their new ‘Messiah’ and to take word from him to their own tribes so that they could dance the sacred Ghost Dance. At this point it is important to remember that the Ghost Dance was not merely a religious movement but also a dance and it is crucial to state here some of the general characteristics from the history of dance that is related to the characteristics of the Ghost Dance. According to Sorell, dance is the reflection of the nature where early men could feel the rhythm felt himself a part of nature by dancing. He continues to say that even in moments of fear or despair, as we can see in the Indians before the Ghost Dance began, dancing is seen as "religious in a self-expressive and communicative sense and it is social because it is an integrated part of [their] life…It is not done because it ‘is’ the thing to do, but because it ‘is’ the thing" (9-10). This definition might help us understand why Wovoka chose his father’s method of dancing for his own purposes rather than solely using his knowledge of the Christian religion for presenting himself as a ‘Prophet of God.’

According to Sorell, every occasion was a reason to dance for the groups of people living together with nature like "birth, death, marriage, war, victory, harvest, hunting, hailing a new chief, healing the sick, exorcising evil spirits; and…incantations for rain, sun, fertility, protection, and forgiveness" (11). Sorell also states that dancing in a circle, like we see in the Ghost Dance, had a special meaning and purpose: "to ban spirits, to heal, and to preserve the tribe from misfortune" (17).

Mason describes some general characteristics of the Ghost Dance as a prayer for "food, clothing, shelter, for life itself, for themselves and those they love." He goes on to say that the dancers should not necessarily have special dancing skills but what is crucial to properly accomplish the ritual is to have a ‘Medicine Man with talent,’ who is "gifted in dramatic ability and judgment, and with good speaking voice. He is the only one who needs to know the routine thoroughly, the dancers taking their cues from him" (153-54).

Although the general characteristics like its being a round dance never changed, the oral tradition of the transmission of the songs and rules of the dance by the delegates of other tribes caused to have several differences in the was the ritual was performed. Hoyer reasons this difference with the variety of languages among the tribes and also with the specific needs of the tribes. He states "both the prophecy’s meaning and particular tribes’ reaction to it varied according to specific cultural contexts" (2).

Arapahoes and Shoshoni, two of the many tribes that accepted the Ghost Dance without much hesitation, performed the ritual in broad daylight around a cedar tree while originally the Paiutes used to dance it only at night and around a blazing fire (Miller 29). Miller explains that the ‘green and never-dying’ cedar tree was a symbol of "enduring strength and lasting life" and that it was an important plant for the plain tribes like the Arapahoes and Shoshoni (29). In Black Elk Speaks, we see that the Ghost Dance is first heard by the Lakota Indians by the Shoshoni and Arapahoes (Blue Clouds), and that they performed the dance around a tree "painted red with most of the branches cut off and some dead leaves on it" (178- 82).

The Caddo Indians, as Mooney informs us, learned the Ghost Dance from the Arapahoes. Since they were not speaking each other’s language, the Arapahoes taught the songs with sign language to the Caddo Indians, who sang those songs in a ‘corrupted’ way, with only a ‘general idea’ of the meaning. Later on, however, the Caddo Indians wrote some Ghost Dance songs in their own language (324).

The Ghost Dance performed by the Sioux Indians was much more unique, where the leaders and the dancers were fasting for twenty-four hours before the dance began and then were entering ‘sweat lodges’ with the sunrise, which were separate for men and women. This process of sweating was a form of purification, which originally was done by the Paiutes in the river by washing themselves (Miller 59).

Not only the process of the Ghost Dance shows differences, but also the way various tribes call the dance. It is "dance in a circle" for the Paiutes to distinguish it from the traditional dances that are danced without forming a circle, "everybody dragging" for the Shoshones, which reflects the general characteristics of the movements, "the Father’s dance" or "with joined hands" for the Comanche Indians, "dance with clasped hands" for Kiowa Indians, "the prayer of all to the Father" for the Caddo Indians and "spirit" or "ghost" dance for the Sioux and Arapaho Indians, related to its connection with the other world (Mooney 35).

Although we see all these distinctions among the different tribes in performing the ritual, the ‘doctrine’ of the Ghost Dance never changed. Wovoka, at some time, wrote letters and sent them to many chiefs of the tribes, explaining the way the Ghost Dance should be danced, and included some rules for the Indians to follow like: "Do not harm any one. Do right always," "When your friends die, you must not cry," "Do not tell lies," and "You must not fight." These doctrines represent a peaceful and moral attitude towards the universal idea of ‘sin’.

According to Mooney, some tribes had the tradition of killing horses, burning tepees and destructing properties, and cutting their bodies with knives when someone they knew died, which was changed by the doctrine of "When your friends die, you must not cry," which refers to that same tradition (24). In fact, an Arapaho told Mooney that the things done after someone died was a result of the painful idea of never seeing that person again, which is promised not to be the case with the new religion by it’s stating that all the Indians, dead or alive, will be gathered in a new world (24).

The doctrine "You must not fight," also made radical changes in the Indian life, where every man was supposed to follow a path of war and where the most honorable title was that of a warrior (Mooney 25). This is an invitation to peace with the whites, although every member of the tribes looked forward for the white man to be vanished as it was promised in Wovoka’s visions. How the warrior tribes accepted the doctrines of Wovoka and settled down to peace shows us the power of the new religion over the Indians.

Another important element of the Ghost Dance is the Ghost Dance shirts. Mason writes that costuming was not important at all when the movement started, where dancers were told to wear their ordinary costumes. Later on the new concept of Ghost Dance shirts began among the Sioux, which were white shirts made of cotton with some traditional symbols (150). There wasn’t a special pattern for the design of the shirts: it was sometimes very simple and sometimes full of symbols. These symbols were usually some representations of the "sun, moon, stars, the sacred things of their mythology, and the visions of the trance" (Mooney 34).The Ghost Dance shirts were also believed to have supernatural powers like protecting the wearer from bullet and knife damages. This belief was to be proven bitterly wrong in the Wounded Knee battle.

Wounded Knee is the place where the Ghost Dance movement came to an end, caused by the misinterpretation of the white men about the movement itself. It all started when Sitting Bull, one of the Sioux delegates who went to see Wovoka and who helped the dance to spread among the Sioux Indians, was killed. Mooney comments that Sitting Bull was killed by the white men for his evil intentions among a movement that had no hostile intention (88-9). This so-called evil intention is nothing more than his arranging all the ghost dancers to gather near Pine Ridge, which was the principal dance ground, so that they can dance more effectively. Apparently this gathering appeared to the white man as a preparation of war.

Several days after Sitting Bull’s death, the Indians were told to give all their weapons to the officers and to surrender. Whatever the reasons were, it is remembered as the biggest massacre in the Indian history where even the number of the people that died is not certain: some say it is 145 killed and 33 wounded while other authorities say that it was over 300, including women and children (Miller 243).

The most appropriate words about the Wounded Knee massacre is told by Black Elk:

"And so it was all over.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream" (207).

It all started with the ambitions of a man named Wovoka, who wanted to be as powerful as the prophet of the white man. Whatever his reasons were, the movement he started spread quickly among all Indians. Although the oral and tribal traditions caused the Ghost Dance to be danced with differences in various tribes, their dream was the same: to get back the peaceful life they had before the white men came. The doctrines that Wovoka wanted the Indians to follow are universally accepted by all religions and they were effective in changing many traditions like their killing horses and hurting themselves after someone they know dies. It was indeed a beautiful dream, which had to come to an end.

Works Cited

Hoyer, Mark T. Dancing Ghosts. Reno: U of Nebraska P, 1998.

Mason, Bernard S. Dances and Stories of the American Indian. New York: Barnes, 1944.

Miller, David Humphreys. Ghost Dance. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959.

Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1965.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000.

Sorell, Walter. The Dance through the Ages. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2000.