When the spirits arrived: Divergent Lakota Voices of the 1890 Ghost Dance

Abstract

The Ghost Dance was a distinguishing phenomenon in Lakota history that caused a lot of friction and divisiveness among the Lakota people in 1890. From the very beginning, however, the Lakota Ghost Dance was studied mainly from the perspectives of white Americans, and the Lakota views were only in passing incorporated into this narrative. The earliest accounts created a tradition of treating the Lakota Ghost Dance as a military, political, or religious-political movement. This approach is characterized by phrases such as Sioux outbreak, Messiah Craze, or Ghost Dance war, so often used even in the titles of these works The tradition continued into the late twentieth century, when alternative interpretations began to emerge. However, there is still much to be understood about the Ghost Dance from the Lakota point of view. In The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, I was able to locate and use a number of Lakota accounts of the Ghost Dance that had not been used before. Since the Lakota voice was only one part of that study, much of the material could only be used partially or had to be left out. Some of the documents are long, 15–20 pages each, some are written in Lakota or Dakota and need time-consuming translation. Some of the documents have been at least partly published before, while others have not been used so far. In this article, I will present and analyze excerpts of some of the key documents representing different approaches to the Ghost Dance among the Lakotas.