What Was The Ghost Dance?
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What significant event marked the beginning of the Ghost Dance Movement?
New Year's Day, 1889. In the vast open skies of western Nevada, a solar eclipse begins as if a bite's been taken out of the sun, then gradually more and more until fully consumed by the moon. On the horizon, the golden mountain range simmers, dimming to dusk. All around, bird songs rise to a frantic crescendo, then suddenly go silent. In the eerie silver-white glow of totality, the sun's corona bursting from behind the lunar disk, a Paiute prophet suffers the ill effects of scarlet fever. Seized by delirium and chills, he slips in and out of a deep trance, experiencing visions of a different world, a renewed world, where his people's ancestors have returned, where the buffalo roams free again and native nations thrive in peace.
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.
The Ghost Dance
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.
Professor Smoke, Greg, welcome. Thanks. Great to be here. The Ghost Dance Movement begins in the late 19th century, as I mentioned, around 1890, the end of a century that has witnessed the conquest and collapse of tribal societies across the continent, but most recently, of course, in the West, specifically with the last tribes resisting expansion, the Apache, the Shoshone, Lakota, and others. The management of this conquest after the wars were over was done as it still is today by pushing Native peoples onto reservations. Starts with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Can you take us through this process historically?
I'd be happy to. I would also add, though, you know, right up front, one of the things that I'm going to argue here today is that the ghost dance isn't the end. Yeah. And the ghost dance is still practiced today. And from my perspective, the ghost dance is as much a beginning as anything. And we'll get back to that.
But you're absolutely right. I'm glad you said that because as I was reading that opening that I wrote, it has such a downer feeling. And I want to tell people that's not the note we mean to strike today. Of course, there's that element to this. But that's your point is that there's as much of a cultural... kind of rediscovery going on through this movement. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I would say that's fair to say, but I would say you're absolutely right when it comes to the popular understanding of the ghost dance movement of 1890, which is not the first ghost dance movement, but that's the popular understanding.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What significant event marked the beginning of the Ghost Dance Movement?
0:02–5:12
2
How did Wovoka's visions influence the Ghost Dance?
5:12–15:49
3
What historical context led to the emergence of the Ghost Dance?
15:49–30:50
4
What were the main beliefs and goals of Ghost Dance participants?
30:50–42:45