Ghost Dance: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Ghost Dance, also known as the Ghost Dance of 1890, was a millennialistic religious movement among Native Americans that began in the 1880s in the southwestern United States, as many Indian tribes had been forcibly relocated and integrated there. It ended with a bloody confrontation with the United States Army at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

This movement began with a revelation that a Paiute known as Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson) had during a solar eclipse. Central to the Ghost Dance religion was the Ghost Dance itself, dancing in a circular pattern, which induced religious ecstasy and the use of hallucinogenic peyote cactus. The ghost dance was an attempt to bring about renewal of native society and the decline in the influence of the white man. Believers in the Ghost Dance ritual were convinced that performing the Ghost Dance would eventually reunite them with their ancestors coming by railway from the spirit world. Meanwhile, the world would return to a primordial state of natural beauty, opening up to swallow up all other people, while the performers of the Ghost Dance floated in safety above with their ancestors and friends.

Though originally nonviolent in nature, the movement ultimately attracted militant elements who favored armed conflict as a means to fight the whites. Ultimately, the Ghost Dance inspired hysteria among white settlers and resulted in the wholesale massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee.

Samples

• Download recording Ghost Dance and gambling song from the Paiute and Arapaho Native Americans from the Library of Congress' Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry Collection; performed by James Mooney (possibly along with Charles Mooney; neither are believed to be Native Americans) on July 5, 1894