Don Wildman

Moments later, as the day is reborn and the sun brightens, this man, Wovoka, returns to the living, his visions becoming revelation, sparking a movement, the Ghost Dance, that will soon spread across the land.

Greetings all.

Welcome to another episode of American History Hit.

Glad you're listening.

Thanks very much.

I'm Don Wildman.

Today's subject, in many ways, is a last chapter.

Literally so.

Open almost any book on the history of Native tribes in North America, turn to the final pages, and you'll find in there the story we're covering today.

A dark, closing moment in the long erosion of what was once a stable and vibrant civilization.

It's a chapter that ends with what even at the time was recognized as an unthinkable atrocity, U.S.

troops firing on defenseless families.

The era to which I refer is known as the Ghost Dance Movement, and it's often reduced in those books to a cult, an oversimplification of what was so much more, a profound spiritual response to the pressers of extinction inflicted by conquering European Americans.

Why did it begin?

What did its believers hope to achieve?

And how did the ghost dance era echo onward, against all odds, not only in American history, but in the living memory of today's Native cultures?

We'll discuss this all with Gregory Smoke, professor of history at the University of Utah, a leading scholar of Native American history and religion.

He's the author of Ghost Dances and Identity, the Definitive Study of Prophetic Movements in the 19th Century.

Professor Smoke has worked extensively with tribal nations and led major research projects for the National Park Service, including at Little Bighorn, Pipe Spring, and Zion.

He's also a past president of the National Council on Public History.