Native American Religion

 

 

During the Ghost Dance Movement of 1890, the Lakota Sioux prophesied "the imminent coming of an age when the dead would return, the whites would be eliminated in a cataclysmic seductive destructiveness, and the lives of all Indians would be returned to a state of bounty and prisitne purity" (131). Ronald Niezen "Spirit Wars"

 

The prophet, Wovoka, was the focal point of the spread of the Ghost Dance. Studies show that the reason many people believed Wovoka was because of attributes of his miraculous power. For example, "it was claimed that he could make animals talk and distant object appear close at hand, and that he came down from heaven in a cloud" (133).

 

During the Ghost Dance, men of the tribe wore "Ghost shirts" made from buffalo hide. These shirts were decorated and painted with religious symbols and designs. When wearing these shirts, tribe members felt that they would be invulnerable to bullets. They belived that American rifles would be useless as well as American soilders.

 

Out of the fear of Indian spiritual revitalization, many American soilders started to retaliate, which led to the Wounded Knee Masacre.

 

The Ghost Dance was a manifestation of difference, of resistance to 'civilization', a refusal by the newly powerless to be dominated and reshaped. It was a religious rebellion against Native American prosecution and the resistance to assimalate.