Wovoka.

Spreading rapidly from it origins among the Northern Paiutes of Nevada, the Ghost Dance became the major pan-Indian religious movement of the late nineteenth century. The movement was based on responses to visions recounted by a Paiute holy man named Wovoka, who claimed to have inherited his father's powers as a dreamer. Wovoka's visions, which promised an imminent end to the world to be followed by a renewal of life for Indians in a lush and plentiful land, struck a powerful chord among Plains Indians traumatized by white expansion and yearning for a restoration of their traditional and independent life. As a child, Wovoka learned from his father both the traditional Paiute creation story, which emphasized the renewal of human life and a blooming of the desert, and the teachings of other Indian spiritual leaders, perhaps including the Squaxin prophet John Slocum...