Ghost Dance Religion Analysis

All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come. He bring back all game of every kind…all dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, than all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood like water and all white people die, get drowned! After that, water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick… (Wovoka, The Paiute Messiah qtd. In Brown 416).

In 1973, Christopher Bruce heard about the murders going on in the small villages and towns of Chile on the orders of the government; just to show off their power, and how they were not afraid to use it. Bruce found out as a result of a letter received from a widow of a Chilean folk singer who had been murdered. He was asked to do work for the Chilean Human Rights Committee. The dance first premiered in 1988, the costume designer being Belinda Scarlett and the music being by Incantation, playing the song ‘Ojos Azules’ which is Spanish for ‘Blue Eyes’.

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

From its birth, America was a place of inequality and privilege. Since Columbus 's arrival and up until present day, Native American tribes have been victim of white men 's persecution and tyranny. This was first expressed in the 1800’s, when Native Americans were driven off their land and forced to embark on the Trail of Tears, and again during the Western American- Indian War where white Americans massacred millions of Native Americans in hatred. Today, much of the Indian Territory that was once a refuge for Native Americans has since been taken over by white men, and the major tribes that once called these reservations home are all but gone. These events show the discrimination and oppression the Native Americans faced. They were, and continue to be, pushed onto reservations,

Mormonism was founded in the 1820s’ by Joseph Smith. Smith, wanting to expand his religious following migrated to Illinois where he established a settlement that included a temple of worship and a village (Green 57). In Illinois the Mormon peoples’ were met with threats, violence, and occasionally they were even killed. This was the case for their leader Joseph Smith; Smith was met with disgust from non-mormons when he attempted to run for presidency and his church riddled with scandal when the word of polygamy got out. With his tarnished reputation, Smith was ultimately murdered by an outraged mob, who then threatened other Mormons that if they did not leave they would be met with the same fate (Mormons into the West). With that warning, the Mormons picked a new leader, Brigham Young, who wanted to flee the American Border. Young set for travel with his new followers to the Great Salt Lake, which at the time was located in Mexico.

The Ghost Dance gave many Indians hope, and that hope drove around three thousand Indians to the Pine Lake Reservation also known as the Stronghold (Phillips par. 5). In response to the Indians’ movement and the Ghost Dance, the government sent half of the U.S. army to the Indian reservation (Robertson par. 3). The government felt threatened by the mass of Indians. To lessen the threat, the government decided to target who they thought were the leaders of the Ghost Dance.

Westward expansion during the 19th century had several far reaching effects on many people. During the period of Manifest Destiny Indians were forced onto reservations, deprived many of their resources,and most of their land, and of course, their culture. At the start of the twentieth century, there were approximately 250,000 Native Americans in the USA – just 0.3 per cent of the total population. The United States’ Indian removal policies, laws, and acts changed many Indians’ lives for the worse. During the 19th century, the removal of Indian tribes had many negative environmental, social, and cultural effects on Native Americans.

The Plains Native Americans lost hope after many failed attempts to win against the whites. The Ghost Dance that they learned, that was supposedly going to get rid of the whites and protect them from any harm of bullets, was the only hope they had. But when the massacre initiated, the Ghost Dance didn’t help them. Many Sioux Native Americans (A tribe that was a part of the Ghost Dance) died in the massacre and it lowered their moral drastically. According to the article The Wounded Knee Massacre, “When the smoke cleared almost all of the 300 men, women, and children were dead. Some died instantly, others froze to death in the snow” (TWKM, para. 8). This would be the last time that a major conflict would happen between the Native Americans and the

The Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 was a battle fought between the Sioux (a Native American tribe), and the U.S. government. The U.S. government was worried about the “Ghost Dance,” a dance that Natives performed in a hope that their Gods would create a new world without Indians or non-believers, because it

Native American’s have always been the aspect that shapes our culture and history today. The rise of the new world started with the discovery of the land of which the Native Americans resided. They are referred to as the indigenous people because they were the people who lived and survived off this land first. The Native Americans have a unique culture that consisted of a bond with nature. They had similar gender roles just like the white population. The men were hunters, warriors, and protectors, while the women tended to the children, their homes, and farmed. While the late 1800 's into the 1900 's and beyond began to bring the struggle to the Native American Indians, they fought a tough battle in pursuit of protecting their land. Throughout history the Native American’s have been oppressed and exploited of their identity.

The Ghost Dance religion was an answer to the domination of Native Americans. It was an attempt to make culture and to find a way to improve poverty and disease, all the reservation life of the Native Americans. The Ghost Dance originated among the Paiute Indians in 1870. The tide of the movement came in 1889 with a Paiute shaman Wovoka. Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse. In this vision he saw the second coming of Christ and received warning about the evils of white man. The messianic religion promised an apocalypse that would destroy the white man and the white guy. The earth then would be returned to the Native Americans.

C.) Indian agents didn’t take notice of the Ghost Dance until late spring of 1890, this is when John W. Noble the Secretary of the Interior received a letter from an “alarmed citizen” living in Pierre, South Dakota. This citizen believed the Lakota’s were planning an uprising, at that point Noble ordered the commissioner of Indian affairs to investigate. Hugh D. Gallagher the agent at Pine Ridge Reservation was the first to respond and assured Noble that no dangers existed, Charles E. McChesney the agent at Cheyenne River Reservation also found no dangers, and both denied any rumors of an uprising. Agent J. George Wright from Rosebud Reservation denied any trouble, however he gave a more detailed

The song carries a lot of meaning for many Native American tribes and it also has numerous functions. It is performed for religious purposes, ceremony, to dance, and to bring about a sense of community and shared culture. The Ghost Dance is a relatively newer Native American song that consists of many traditional, older musical characteristics. It became prevalent first in the 1870s and again in 1889 because of the Prophet Wovoka’s influence (Bruno). Europeans were still in the midst of “colonizing” the new world at this point, which consisted of much devastation for the Native Americans inhabiting the land the colonists desired.

On the morning of December 29, 1890, many Sioux Indians (estimated at above two hundred) died at the hands of the United States Army near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Indians were followers of the Ghost Dance religion, devised by Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, as a spiritual outlet for Indian repression by whites. The United States Army set out to intercept this group of Native Americans because they performed the controversial Ghost Dance. Both whites’ and the Sioux’s misunderstanding of an originally peaceful Indian religion culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee. This essay first shows how the Ghost Dance came about, its later adaptation by the Sioux, and

We see this desecration and conflict take place between the Native Americans and the European settlers. Their differences in beliefs based on their origin stories indicated why there were so many massacres like the one in 1890 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The U.S government was apprehensive about the spiritual movement where they performed the Ghost Dance. The Sioux believe they were defeated because they had angered their gods by forsaking their traditions. As per the article titled, “Wounded Knee” from history.com, “Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of