the ghost dance – hope for one people, fear for another

Through the dance, the dead will rise. The buffalo will return and the land will be free of white involvement.

1877
Walker River Nevada

In Nevada, a rancher named Dave Wilson watches his adopted son settle a wild mustang in the newly built corral. From an early age, the young man had shown a natural talent in calming wild horses. So impressed was Dave at that time that he encouraged the boy to hire out his gift to ranchers in the area, offering to break their horses through gentle persuasion rather than brute force.
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A Paiute by birth, the lad, had lost his parents and Dave took him under his wing. The boy’s birth name was Wovoka, but the Wilson family called him Jack. The Wilson’s were devout Christians, and they insisted that the young boy attend church services with them where he acquired a belief in God and learned of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.

Earlier in his life, around 1870, before he was orphaned, Wovoka had been exposed to the teachings of Wodziwob, and that man’s teachings brought something alive within the boy. Wodziwob’s vision of a golden age for the Indian Nations was to lodge in the mind of Wovoka while being reinforced through a Paiute shaman and local leader named Tävibo, who had added extra items onto Wodziwob’s teachings. There are those that believe Tävibo was Wovoka’s father.

Regardless of the age difference, Jack and Dave enjoyed each other’s company and shared a mutual respect. The native community began to recognize Jack’s ability to connect with animals and his growing insight into herbal cures and supposed ability to prophesy future events, and he was once again known as Wovoka by the tribes.

​Like those before him, Wovoka had a vision. Wovoka’s vision was one of gaining salvation through acts of kindness and non-militaristic methods whereby, through the round dance, they would gain a land where the buffalo would return, relatives would be resurrected, and life would be as it was before, on their own ground without white interference.

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Short Bull – He accompanied Kicking Bear to Nevada to learn the Circle Dance from Wovoka

In 1889, two members of the Miniconjou Lakota, Kicking Bear and Short Bull,  traveled to Nevada to learn about the round dance and brought it back to the Pine Ridge Agency for the people to discover its magic. In the Lakota version the dancers prayed, sang songs of joy, joined hands and began a frenzied circle dance. It was not unusual for the ill to participate in hopes of being cured, and it was not uncommon for many dancers to fall unconscious, or sometimes fall into a trance as the dance progressed. As the night wore on, the dancing stopped, and the participants sat in a circle, telling of their personal experiences during the dance and of any visions they may have had. 

The people embraced the dance with absolute faith in its ability to make the prophecy a reality. They also added the element of unique clothing in the form of a shirt that would protect the wearer from sickness or harm, even to the extent of stopping bullets. The people believed. 

With the belief that the dead would be brought back as well as other supernatural forces in play, the dance became known as the Ghost Dance.

Kicking Bear, one of the Lakota that learned the dance from Wovoka, went from Pine Ridge to Standing Rock to seek Sitting Bull’s permission to teach it there. Sitting Bull doubted that the dead would come back to life, but he had no objection to the dance itself. However, he suspected that the dance might be viewed as a threat to the Indian agencies. He was assured that if the dancers wore their Ghost Dance shirts, the soldiers’ bullets would not strike them. 
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Sitting Bull consented and allowed the dance to be introduced to Standing Rock. The reaction of the white agents was one of alarm, with absolute surety that the Indians were preparing for war. Urgent requests were made to the government for extra troops to quell what they perceived as the beginnings of an uprising. The stage was being set for a tragedy that would occur at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.

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1885 Sitting Bull - photo by William Noteman, McCord Museum, Canada

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