Ghost Dance: Difference between revisions

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[[Image:Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge.png|300px|thumb|right|The Ghost Dance by the Ogalala Lakota at Pine Ridge]]

Noted in historical accounts as the '''Ghost Dance of 1890''', the '''Ghost Dance''' was a religious [[ritual]] incorporated into numerous [[Native American]] belief systems beginning in 1889. First performed among the [[Paiute]] Native Americans in [[Nevada]], the practice swept throughout much of the American West quickly reaching areas of [[California]] and [[Oklahoma]]. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, Native American tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs often creating change in both the [[society]] that integrated it and the ritual itself. At the core of the movement was the [[prophet]] of peace [[Jack Wilson]], known as Wovoka among the Paiute, who prophesized a nonviolent end to Euro-AmericianAmerican expansion while preaching messages of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation. Perhaps the best remembered facet of the Ghost Dance movement is the role it reportedly played in instigating the [[Wounded Knee massacre]] in 1890 that killed almost 200 American soldiers and [[Sioux]] Native Americans. History most vividly notes this Sioux sect of the Ghost Dance which displays extensive distortion toward [[millenarianism ]], thus driving it away from the religion’s core principals.

==Birth of the Ghost Dance==

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Through a parade of Native Americans and some Euro-Americans, Jack Wilson’s message spread across much of the Western portion of the United States. Early in the religious movement many tribes sent members to investigate the self-proclaimed messiah, other communities sent delegates only to be cordial. Regardless of why people were coming to visit Jack, many left believers and returned to their homeland preaching his message. The Ghost Dance was even incorporated by many [[Mormons]] who, residing in [[Utah]], traveled to Jack to evaluate whether or not he was the messiah that [[Joseph Smith Jr]]. predicted would arrive in the year 1890.

While most individuals recognizing the Ghost Dance understood the messiah as a teacher of pacifism and peace, like many other prophets of peace these ideals always elude some.

A representation of the Ghost Dance’s misinterpretation is the image of the Ghost Shirt, a special garment rumored to repel bullets through spiritual power. While it is uncertain where the belief originated, James Mooney pointed out that the most likely source is the Mormon endowment robe, which members of the Mormon Church believed would protect the pious wearer from danger. Despite the uncertainty of who created the belief, it is certain that chief [[Kicking Bear]] brought the concept to his own people, the Lakota Sioux in 1890.

In February of that same year the United States government broke a treaty by adjusting [[the Great Sioux Reservation]] of [[South Dakota]], an area that formally encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations. This was done to accommodate [[homesteaders]] from the east 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 half-sized reservations, tribes were separated into family units on 320 acre plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to boarding schools that forbid any inclusion of Native American traditional culture.

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 Euro-American farmers as teachers to the once proud hunters. By the end of the 1890 growing season, the Sioux farmer’s hard work trying to cultivate crops in semi-arid South Dakota failed due to the inability of the land to produce agricultural yields without 20th century irrigation during a time of intense heat in addition to lack of rain. Unfortunately for them, this was also the time when the government’s patience supporting the “lazy” Indians also failed resulting in rations to the Sioux being cut in half. With the bison virtually eradicate from the plains a few years earlier, the Sioux had no option but to starve. Starve and perhaps observe the Ghost Dance because after everything they had been put through at the mercy of the Euro-Americans, they realized that there was nothing to lose.

==Anthropological Perspectives==