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Nicole Browne

Dr. Suki John

Dance History

27 October 2014

Ghost Dance

Dance was a very important part of Native American life in the 1800’s. It was a way for

the Sioux tribe to communicate with the spirits and to ask for plentiful crops, safety, and large

buffalo. For the Sioux tribes, the Ghost Dance was a way for their people to connect with their

ancestors in a time that they felt they were losing their way of life to the white pioneers. The

white people found their dance to be of a threat to them and over time found a way to end it. As

seen through the history of the Ghost Dance, the white settlers investigation of it, and the

Massacre at Wounded Knee, the Sioux Indians found comfort and faith in the Ghost Dance, but

the white pioneer’s fear of the unknown and lack of understanding led to the their aversion of the

dance and ultimately the massacre of many and destruction of the Sioux tribe’s way of life.

The Ghost Dance movement was a religion for the Sioux tribe that led to the weakening

of the tribe’s unity. Although the Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s is what led to the

Wounded Knee Massacre, Weston La Barre sheds light on the legend of how the dance

originated in his book The Ghost Dance. Tävibo, or “White Man.” was a shaman of the Northern

Paiute tribes and is believed to have started this crusade in 1870 (American National Biography

Online). Tävibo went into the mountains to meet The Great Spirit where he told Tävibo that a

great earthquake would occur and swallow up all of the white people, but leave the Natives to

live happily again. Not everyone believed Tävibo’s story, so he met The Great Spirit once more

in the mountains to tell him about the people’s lack of faith. This angered The Great Spirit so

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much that he decided that only the faithful would be saved, leaving the whites and the unfaithful

natives to be damned in the earthquake. Some Utah Indians heard word of this and began The

Ghost Dance to connect with their ancestors and therefore prove their commitment to the Great

Spirit. Tävibo then became the messiah of The Ghost Dance of 1870 (La Barre 229).

People believed Tävibo had a son named Wovoka, “The Cutter.” As a young boy,

Wovoka witnessed Tävibo’s ceremonies and observed all of the visitors who came to hear the

prophet’s revelations. He became a well-known figure in the midwest for being a direct

messenger from The Great Spirit. According to legend, in 1889, Wovoka became ill during a

total eclipse and saw a vision of God in a trance in “the death of the sun” (La Barre 230). During

this delirium, God told Wovoka to preach goodness to his people and that they should no longer

practice war. God taught Wovoka a dance ceremony to create a reunion with the dead while alive

on Earth (La Barre 230). The Native Americans had strong connections with their elders and

ancestors. According to the Tribal College Journal, the they used story telling to pass down a

tribe’s history and moral beliefs from one generation to the next (Sorenson). The natives truly

respected their elders and all that they taught them, making their ancestors all that more

important. Pleasing the elders once they had passed away was something they strived to do. The

Ghost Dance was a chance for the Sioux’s to connect with the people that helped shaped their

tribe.

Two people who have an understanding of the Sioux way of life are adopted

members of the tribe, Gladys and Reginald Laubin, who describe how the dance is performed in

their book, Indian Dances of North America: Their Importance to Indian Life. The Ghost Dance

ceremony normally began around noon with everyone sitting in a circle around the priests and

the sacred tree. The tribe members sang a mournful chant and passed a bowl of sacred food

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around for all to eat from. The people sang many songs, and finished them by wailing and crying

to ask the Great Spirit to see their loved ones who had passed away. Some threw handfuls of dust

and dirt into the air before sitting down once more to hear one of the leaders speak. Once the

address was completed the dance began. Everyone sang and danced together in a circle, doing a

sort of grapevine step with the emphasis being on the initial plunge left and forward. Circles as

large as three to four hundred dancers had been seen by observers. The dance continued until the

people fell into a trance or had to stop out of sheer exhaustion. Those that fell in a trance had a

chance to tell the leaders in the center of the circle their visions of their loved ones that passed

away. The believers of this dance were fully dedicated to the ceremony by exerting themselves

with the physicality it required. They danced until their legs gave out just to have a possible

moment in a trance to see their loved ones.

The Sioux tribe in particular was very excited for the coming “return of the ghosts” (La

Barre 230). They believed The Great Spirit had sent the white men to their native land as a way

to punish the Indians for their sins. The Sioux felt that their punishment had lasted long enough

and the white men needed to leave. Dancing gave the Indians a sense of comfort in believing it

had the power to protect them from sickness and the white man’s bullets (La Barre 230). Dance

gave the natives a way to embody their beliefs in a physical way, closely relating to sympathetic

magic. Although the natives did not necessarily imitate anyone, their movement connected them

to their past and brought them to the roots of their tribe. The Sioux wanted their lives to return to

the way they were before the white men came to their land. Through the Ghost Dance, they

could reconnect with their ancestors and therefore reconnect with the past. At one time the

strongest and largest tribe, The Sioux had lost over 11,000,000 acres of land to the white

pioneers. The Indians were promised seeds and rations but were never granted them. The white

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settlers killed off all of the buffalo, which the immensity of that situation is not easily understood

by people today as explained by Reginald and Gladys Laubin. Within two generations, millions

of life-sustaining animals of the Sioux essentially disappeared (Laubin R, G.). The three years

leading up to 1890 were filled with diminishing livestock, droughts, failed crops, and epidemics

of measles, whooping cough, and influenza (La Barre 231). The Ghost Dance was an opportunity

to feel physically strong and instilled a confidence, which they had slowly been losing to the

white settlers in the tribe.

In the spring of 1890, Kicking Bear addressed a group of Sioux leaders telling them of an

encounter with the Great Spirit. He was told that the Great Spirit would cover the Earth with soil

“five times the height of a man” that would bury all of the white men underneath it. The crops

and animals would be restored and the natives could return to their traditional lives (Pratt 151).

This mirrors Tävibo’s meeting with the Great Spirit about the earthquake that would destroy all

the white men and the dance that could save them. This parallel is important because it reinforces

this idea to the Sioux people that the Ghost Dance could save their culture. Kicking Bear’s

similar vision with The Great Spirit gave Tavibo’s story credibility and thus rekindled the Sioux’s

belief in Tavibo’s Ghost Dance. The native people wanted desperately to live their lives

peacefully like their ancestors did. Although it did not succeed the first time, this second

message from The Great Spirit reignited a passion and a belief for the Ghost Dance and it’s

powers.

A white woman named Catherine Weldon of the National Indian Defense Association, a

reform faction focused on “American Indian dignity and civil rights” (Behrens 153), was one of

the many spectators of the Ghost Dance. She had developed a friendship with Sitting Bull, and

tried to convince him to end the Ghost Dance in fear that it would lead to white backlash. Sitting

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Bull found no reason to end the dance; the tradition continued for the Sioux people (Gilton 60).

The progression of the white settler’s fear kindled when General Nelson Miles was then sent to

investigate the dance. He observed the indigenous and came to the conclusion that it was a

product of the Mormon’s influence on the natives in the Northwest. He did not see any threat

behind the dance and did not request for further government action (NYT). However, one month

later, Lieutenant Marion P. Maus gave another evaluation of the Ghost Dance. He believed that

the Ghost Dance’s supposed Mormon influence went against the Christian religion that the

missionaries sent out to teach them (NYT). There was suddenly a feasible reason for the white

society to see the Ghost Dance as a threat. The Indians were supporting non-Christian views,

which would not be tolerated by the new settlers.

The Ghost Dance was now seen as a threat to the white men and their beliefs that needed

to be ended. A fear of the unknown struck a chord in the settlers, and since the beginning they

refused to understand. Many bans were placed on the native’s religious ceremonies simply

because they were not the same as the white people. While the natives had a hatred for the

whites, they also feared them. The whites had different technologies such as guns which gave

them an entry way into controlling the Indians, as well as their strength in numbers being ten

times as populated as the natives at this point (Laubin R, G.). Until the Ghost Dance, the Sioux

tribe’s cohesiveness and strength had been disbanded by the control of the white society. The

settlers had the control over the natives with nothing to really fear, so what did they see in the

ghost dance? It seems that the “Mormon influence” they saw was only an excuse

to end the dance, as they really saw this new community and revived faith in

the tribe that the settlers thought the Sioux had lost long ago. In a short amount

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of time, the dance became a sacrilegious act that would lead to a series of unfortunate events for

the Sioux people.

The U.S. police decided to arrest Sitting Bull to end the Ghost Dance. By arresting main

leaders of the tribe, the white men could again control the tribe by weakening their confidence.

Sitting Bull’s followers were enraged and gathered together during his arrest. With this newly

instilled confidence that the Ghost Dance gave them, the Indian’s would not let the officers take

Sitting Bull without a fight. The officers said that there would be no trouble if Sitting Bull would

just come with them peacefully. Sitting Bull succumbed to their wishes and agreed to go, but his

people were not so placid. They broke through the line of officers and warning shots rang out.

Once the commotion had settled, Sitting Bull was found dead of a gunshot wound. Over time,

more and more of the tribe’s leaders were arrested and thus weakening the Sioux people. This

was a huge disaster for the Sioux tribe and prompted a dark period of time full of great sorrow

and grief (Gitlin). Dance gave the Sioux people the confidence to stand up for themselves, but

simultaneously was the root of their problems. They never would have stood up to the white

settlers before the Ghost Dance. Now that they are fighting back against the settlers, it only

makes them feel the need to control the Indians more than before.

In an attempt to escape the American government, the Miniconjous, a southern Sioux

tribe, left their village on December 23, 1890, and fled further south toward the Badlands. The

tribe made it a successful five days, but the U.S.’s Seventh Calvary stopped them in their tracks.

Colonel James W. Forsyth met with the tribe council and demanded that the Miniconjous give up

all of their weapons to the calvary. During this meeting a number of Indians began singing Ghost

Dance songs and throwing dirt in the air. In this trying time, they believed performing the dance

could save them from the situation. The white officers saw this as a signal of the Miniconjous

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attack. The troops began requesting that they give up their artillery, but one Indian refused and

began fighting a soldier over the weapon. During the struggle to gain control of the gun, it was

fired. This frightening sound led the frantic, white soldiers to fire their guns on the outnumbered

and unarmed Miniconjous. There was nothing that the natives could have done against the white

settlers and their guns. The Indians tried to flee, and intermitted firing occurred throughout the

afternoon as the white officers chased the Miniconjous. A total of more than 250 Siouxs were

killed at Wounded Knee on December 28, 1890. Although the Indians had found comfort and

faith in this dance, it made the white settlers fear of their power and led them to strike against the

Indians.

For a long time the white settlers instilled fear over the natives in order to control them,

but this Ghost Dance seemed to make the white people feel that they could lose that control.

Although the settlers wanted to feel in control before the incident at Wounded Knee occurred,

they were no longer confident when the natives began dancing together. The men with the guns

were so on edge that they all began firing when they heard the first gunshot ring out. They were

not given a command to pursue the Miniconjous, but they continued to fire out of fear and

confusion. Why the firing did not cease until over 250 were dead is unclear. After the initial

shots, it would make sense that it should end there. The settlers began firing to show their

dominance over the natives and continued to massacre them out of the anger they felt for the

Indians.

To conclude, the Sioux’s dedication to the Ghost Dance led to the ultimate destruction to

their tribe due to the white settler’s fear of losing control. In an effort to bring back their native

way of life and buffalo population, the Sioux turned to the power they believed dance had as a

way to make it happen. The white settlers saw their new instilled dedication to the dance which

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threatened the status quo that they thought the Indians had already accepted. The confidence the

natives felt was a far greater weapon than any of the firearms that the white settlers owned, but

the peaceful Indians ended up being the weaker side of this battle of beliefs.b

Works Cited

Behrens, Jo Lea Wetherilt. “In Defence of ‘Poor Lo’: National Defense Association and

Council Fire’s Advocacy for Sioux Land Rights

Gitlin, Martin. Wounded Knee Massacre. Santa Barbara: ABC -CLIO Greenwood, 2011. Print.

La Barre, Weston. The Ghost Dance. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1970. Print.

Laubin, Reginald and Gladys. Indian Dances of North America: Their Importance to Indian Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Print.

Pratt, Scott L. “Wounded Knee and the Prospect of Pluralism.” The Journal of Speculative

Philosophy, 19.2 (2005): 150-166. Web. 27, October 2014

Sorenson, Barbara Ellen. “The Art of Storytelling.” Tribal College Journal. 24.1 (2012): 15-18.

Print.

Wishhart, David. “Wounded Knee Massacre.” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. n.p. .n.d. Web.

27 October 2014.