Ghost Dance
GHOST DANCE. The Ghost Dance was the major revivalist movement among nineteenth-century North American Indians. Dating from about 1870, it had its culmination in the 1890–1891 "messiah craze" of the Plains, which caused the last Indian war in the Dakotas. The name Ghost Dance refers to the ritual round-dances that were thought to imitate the dances of the dead and were performed to precipitate the renewal of the world and the return of the dead. There were other American Indian ceremonial dances that were called ghost dances—for instance, a ritual dance among the Iroquois. However, it was the messianic Ghost Dance of 1890 that attracted general attention because of its message and consequences. It has been considered prototypical of other revivalist movements among North American Indians, so much so that most later movements have been classified as "ghost dances" (La Barre, 1970).
History
Strictly speaking, there have been two Ghost Dances, closely connected with each other and almost identical in form and cultic performance.
The 1870 Ghost Dance
The Ghost Dance movement of 1870 was introduced on the Walker Lake Reservation in Nevada by a Northern Paiute Indian, Wodziwob ("gray hair," 1844–1918?). During a trance he was conveyed to the otherworld, where he learned that the dead were soon to return, that the disappearing game animals were to be restored, and that the old tribal life would come back again.
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