Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Ghost Dance and the Prophet



They danced in a circle, holding hands in round dance fashion. The initiates were covered in brown paint infused with “loco weed,” which they had inhaled prior to the dance. The dancers had been promised that their dead loved ones would return at some future date if they joined the movement. They danced with both desperation and hope. After a length of time, some of the dancers began to grunt and shake, foaming at the mouth and falling into trance. Some of them had visions of communing with their loved ones, some had other visions that required complex interpretations, and some faked the whole experience. Hope and desperation congealed into a religious fervor; many of the dancers would become obsessed with the dance and lose interest in anything but the dance. The Ghost Dance changed the people who danced, and this change prompted criticism from many Indians who thought, “the dance didn’t do anyone any good.[1]” The despair remained; the hope unfulfilled. A way of life had ended; the world of the Indian would never be the same.
By 1889 North America was a changed place. The United States had, arguably, dealt with the big issues that caused the Civil War. The West had mostly been conquered. The Indians were exterminated, assimilated, or corralled onto reservations. There was work still to do, but the heavy lifting had been done. A major turning point had been reached, and the nation was free to move forward. This progress, the security for the United States came at the cost of an entire way of being for the original inhabitants of North America.
To enter the reservation was to admit defeat and become a ward of the conquering nation. Peoples, whose very existence was built on an essential freedom of person, were now virtually imprisoned on land they didn’t want and were required to adopt ways of life that, in many ways, embodied the opposite of everything they valued. The despair of these Peoples was profound. They were not only defeated, but fallen. Like many other Peoples before them throughout history, in such a time of despair and hopelessness, religion arose to provide a new direction, a new foundation for hope, and a new focus for life.
The Prophet was an impressive man. He belonged to the “rabbit robe people,” the Paiute, and would often wear the namesake robe of his people. He stood around six feet tall, wore “white man’s clothes,” with a broad brimmed hat secured to his head with a beaded ribbon tied beneath his chin and his hair cut at chin length in the fashion of his people.  His low hairline came to within an inch of thick, bushy eyebrows. He had low cheekbones, a dimple in his left cheek, and a strong jawline. He had piercing eyes and a deep, slow speaking voice. His carriage was straight, calm, and dignified. He could command the attention of his listeners by the sheer force of his personality, and his message of hope and morality spoke directly to the desperation of a conquered and confused people. [2]
            On January 1, 1889, while chopping wood in the Pine Grove Mountains, Wovoka heard a great noise. He put his ax down and started walking towards the source of the noise and fainted. He entered a feverish delirium where he received several visions and messages for the Indian Peoples. He was taken to heaven where he talked with God. While in heaven, he saw “all the dead people,” including his own mother-in-law who was still alive at the time. He also saw all the tibo?o (white people) who had died. He saw that all of them, including the taibo?o, were healthy, happy, well fed, and young. He was then given puha (power) over the elements through five special songs, and he was told that from hereon out he would share the presidency with Benjamin Harrison. President Harrison would preside over the East while Wovoka would preside over the West.[3]
            Wovoka was told to go to the Indian Peoples and tell than that they could no longer lie, steal, or make war. He was told to tell them that they had to get along with all other Indian Peoples and that they had to get along with, and even work for, the white people. He was given a dance that the people were to perform for three or five nights in a row. He was told that those who strictly followed his teachings would have a reward awaiting them in heaven; they would be forever young and live with their loved one in heaven where they would be cared for and not want for anything.[4]
            Wovoka awoke from his feverish delirium during a solar eclipse. His people believed that he had prevented the end of the universe, that he had saved the sun when he awoke. He related his visions and began to teach his path, which he called “the Friendship Dance of the Indian Race,” or just nanigukwa (dance in a circle). It was only later that others would come to call it the Ghost Dance Religion.[5]
                Wovoka built his reputation on his ability to make it rain and heal the sick. The five songs he received in his vision were for different weather needs. The first was used to create mist or cloud, the second was used to create snowfall, the third was used for rain showers, the fourth was for a hard rain or a storm, and the fifth was to be used to make the weather clear. Many Paiutes attributed the ending of the drought of 1888 to Wovoka’s power. A man named James Josephus, who lived on the Walker River Reservation, became a follower of Wovoka after the Prophet accurately claimed that the drought would end three days later.[6]
            Wovoka’s reputation as a “Rain Maker” quickly grew. Even the Walker Lake Bulletin, and the Lyon County Times took notice, calling him a “Messiah” and reporting that the most severe storms of the season occurred after a working by Wovoka. The Walker Lake Bulletin also reported that when “the Indians had enough… again they sought the Messiah and asked him to let up. And lo and behold, the clouds rolled by, and soon the papers began blowing about the fine climate.[7]
            As his reputation spread, Wovoka received written requests for his intervention in issues of weather as well as for spiritual guidance and for healing. The way he ended his responses to these correspondences indicates how central his role as Rain Maker was to his reputation. “We have lots of rain here and my people are all very well and happy.[8]” Wovoka would often send red paint with his replies. The correspondents were to apply the paint in a special way before a storm. Then they were instructed to stand out in the rain and let the falling water wash the paint from their bodies.[9]
            It was not only the Indians that believed in Wovoka’s puha. People from all over the Walker River area, both white and Paiute would call on Wovoka to use his power over the elements. In 1889, torrential rains had been so heavy that they soaked through piles of firewood. One white family asked Wovoka to use his power to do something about it. He ordered everyone available to pile up their wet wood, and then he asked for a black eagle plume.[10] Once the wood had been piled, “He sticks that eagle plume up there [in mid-air] as high as he could reach. He took it [his hand] [down] and that eagle plume stayed up there. Then he knelt down and waited a little while and then, maybe he hit two rocks together, I don’t know what he did, anyway, a spark came and that wood began to burn. All that wet wood and everything.[11]” Wovoka then told the people to take fire from the burning wood to light the fires in their homes. He claimed that everything that was wet and unusable would dry out and become usable again.[12]
            Wovoka was not the first Indian prophet, nor was he the first to inspire a religious movement. Po’pay, who led the 1680 Pueblo Rebellion in New Mexico, taught that the people needed to return to the old ways in order to escape Spanish rule. There was also The Prophet, who acted as the spiritual force behind Tecumseh’s War in the early part of the 19th century. There was even a puha tenahpu (Comanche medicine man) named Eschiti, who, in 1874, claimed to have had visions that foretold that if the Comanche performed a Sun Dance, they would be liberated from Anglo-domination. This led to the Indian defeat at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, which undermined Eschiti’s claims and helped to inoculate the Comanche from the influence of the Ghost Dance Religion. [13] Wovoka may not have been the first Indian prophet, but he was the first to spread a message of peace and cooperation.
            The spread of Wovoka’s message began when the Utes sent a delegation to see him shortly after the first Ghost Dance in January of 1889. That summer, the Shoshones and Arapahos sent five delegates to meet the Prophet. In November the Northern Cheyenne, Arapahos, the Lakota, and the Bannocks and Shoshones sent more delegates to meet the Prophet and learn the Ghost Dance. This group of delegates included Sitting Bull and Kicking Bear.[14] In 1890 more delegations of Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahos, Shoshone, and Mohave journeyed to visit Wovoka and learn the Ghost Dance. These visits to learn the Ghost Dance and meet and learn from the Prophet continued past 1906.[15]
            Wovoka’s message was one of peace. The followers of this path were not to steal, not to make war, they were to work together with their Indian brothers and sisters, and to work with and under the Whites. The tone of the movement slowly began to change as reservation promises were not met, and those who were supposed to take care of the People worked to take advantage of the People, and the United States government continued to act with war-like aggression against the Indians.[16]
            The turning point came in October of 1890 when the new Indian agent for the Pine Ridge Reservation became nervous about this new religious movement that was taking hold on the reservation. The Indians of Pine Ridge understood that tensions were rising and began to wear the Medicine Shirts that were supposed to stop bullets. The new agent called for troops to stop the Ghost Dance claiming that the reservation was growing out of control. The government sent soldiers to both Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations.[17] When the troops arrived, almost two thousand Indians fled Rosebud for Pine Ridge. Kicking Bear and Short Bull, both Ghost Dance missionaries, took several hundred Indians from Pine Ridge combined with those from Rosebud and fled into the Badlands, north of Pine Ridge reservation. Around this time Sitting Bull was killed and then on December 28, the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred. The Indians were well and truly defeated. The promises of the Ghost Dance religion had failed, and the free Indian was a memory.[18]
            The Ghost Dance religion was over, but the influence of the Prophet continued. He received delegations and visitors.[19] Reports of the effectiveness of his puha, and requests for talismans and tokens continued. He was paid for these services as well as for photographs of him, and even for shaking his hand.[20] Faith in the Prophet and his power continued even after his death in 1931. Several faithful followers could not believe that he had died and thought that he was simply waiting for an opportunity to appear alive and demonstrate his power once again.[21]



            1. Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Ethnography (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008) 194.
            2. Michael Hittman, Wavoka and the Ghost Dance, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990) 108.
            3. Ibid, 63
            4. Ibid, 64
                5. Ibid, 63
            6. Ibid, 67
            7. Ibid, 68
            8. Ibid, 70
            9. Ibid
                10. Ibid, 71
                11. Ibid
            12. Ibid
            13. Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1998) 77.
                14. Hittman, Wovoka, 89
            15. Ibid, 90
            16. James R. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 141.
                17. Paul H. Carlson, The Plains Indians (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1998) 180.
            18. Ibid
            19. Hittman, Wovoka, 90.
            20. Ibid, 136.
            21. Ibid, 359.

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