The 1870 Ghost Dance at the Walker River Reservation: A Reconstruction

Abstract

The 1870 Ghost Dance has posed at least two problems for students of American Indian history: (1) Whether it should be viewed as an episode of Basin-Plateau recurrent religious ceremonialism, i.e., Spier's Prophet Dance, or as a religious movement whose genesis lies in socio-economic deprivation; (2) How to explain its enigmatic central doctrine of resurrection when ritual avoidance of the dead is a marked feature of Northern Paiute culture? This paper will show that in its Walker River Reservation place of origin the 1870 Ghost Dance was a transformative movement which arose from loss of lands, frustration and misery occasioned by Euro-American expansionism. At a time of epidemics and starvation the prophet Wodziwob preached the return of the dead and restoration of the ecology at Round Dances. Deprivation was keenly felt by the Paiute because curing and the food quest were two cultural foci; they perceived Wodziwob to be a crisisbroker, a shaman capable of resurrecting the large numbers of recently deceased, and a Round Dance leader possessed with powers of weathercontrol to improve the food situation. Two functions of the 1870 Ghost Dance, then, were as a curing rite (writ large) and anincrease ceremony. A third function is suggested. Originating from Fish Lake Valley, Wodziwob, or Fish Lake Joe as he was also known, may have attempted to introduce the annual mourning ceremony of the Fish Lake Valley Paiute to his northern conjurers upon emigrating to the Walker River Reservation.