Ghost Dance Movement Research Articles

We Shall Live Again: The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Movements as Demographic Revitalization

This study of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance movements among North American Indians offers an innovative theory about why these movements arose when they did. Emphasizing the demographic situation of American Indians prior to the movements, Professor Thornton argues that the Ghost Dances were deliberate efforts to accomplish a demographic revitalization of American Indians following their virtual collapse. By joining the movements, he contends, tribes sought to assure survival by increasing their numbers through returning the dead to life. Thornton supports this thesis empirically by closely examining the historical context of the two movements and by assessing tribal participation in them, revealing particularly how population size and decline influenced participation among and within American Indian tribes. He also considers American Indian population change after the Ghost Dance periods and shows that participation in the movements actually did lead the way to a demographic recovery for certain tribes.

Demographic Antecedents of Tribal Participation in the 1870 Ghost Dance Movement

Demographic Antecedents of Tribal Participation in the 1870 Ghost Dance Movement

Demographic Antecedents of a Revitalization Movement: Population Change, Population Size, and the 1890 Ghost Dance

The author considers the 1890 American Indian Ghost Dance movement as a demographic revitalization attempt to recover population losses. The effect of tribal population characteristics on participation in the movement is examined, with particular attention to changes in tribal size prior to and at the time of the Dance

Lucy Swan, Sioux Woman: An Oral History

during a time of transition: thirty years before, her people had traveled the Great Plains, hunting and trading to support themselves. Ten years before, many of them took part in the Ghost Dance movement, a messianic religion that offered them their last hope of banishing the white man from their lives and returning to the old ways. That hope began to die at a confrontation with the United States Army at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890. By 1900, the Sioux were moving slowly toward the type of life non-Indians had chosen for them. They were settling on individual allotments of land and attempting to replace their former lifestyle with that of a farmer or rancher. Their children attended schools where they learned to speak English and wore white man 's clothing. Some of the old ways persisted, however. The old legends were passed down from generation to generation. Many Sioux relied on traditional doctors to cure their ills. The foods the people ate were a combination of government rations, purchased groceries, home produce, and the wild plants they had gathered for decades. It was into this society that Lucy Swan was born, and it is this society that her words reflect. Well, I'm Mrs. Swan, Mrs. James Swan. I was married to James Swan for thirty-five years and then he passed away. I've lived here all this time, and all the rest of my life, I guess, till my days come. I didn't go to school until I was ten years old. I went to a day school at White River. I went to school there and I went as far as fourth grade and they asked me to go somewhere else. So I came back, came over to Pierre Indian School, they call it; so I came there and I stayed there three years, till I was eighteen years old. And I went as far as seventh grade and that's it. I didn't have very much education and I don't talk good English, either. But I really like to talk Indian and English; I like to get along with the other people. I try [my] best to get along with the other people. On those days, [school] is very different. We go to school in September till June. First part of June, we go back home and spend a few days with our parents, and then come back to school again in September and stay there nine weeks. We never had a weekend like they do now. And we never had transportation like they do now. Parents had to bring us to school in a team and wagon. But what little I learn I try and carry out today. I have a home of my own and try and do my best to keep my home fire burning to this day. [In school] they teach us to speak English and [read the] Bible and like that, but they never teach us any Indian. They don't let us talk Indian among each other.

New Angles of Vision on the Cherokee Ghost Dance Movement of 1811-1812

The Cherokee ghost dance movement of 1811-1812 got its name from James Mooney in 1891 but has been known to historians since the first account was published by Thomas L. McKenney in 1838. Recently a number of important works have generated new insights into ghost dance religions, cargo cults, millenarian movements, and nativist revivals. They suggest the need to re-examine the Cherokee phenomenon. I have tried to assemble here all the primary accounts and to re-assess them in the light of these recent studies, particularly those by A. F. C. Wallace, Peter Worsley and Kenelm Burridge. Although the evidence is still fragmentary, it casts serious doubts on the claim that there was a direct link between the Cherokee movement and the ghost dance religion among the Creek. Not only did the Cherokee movement precede that among the Creek, but it remained passivist in tone where the Creek movement was militantly activist. Re-examination of the evidence also questions McKenney's account of a single prophet who inaugurated and directed the movement. By following McKenney and conflating a variety of prophets, prophecies and events, historians and ethnographers have given the ghost dance a coherence and consistency it did not have. Furthermore, previous accounts have, in my opinion, dismissed the movement rather too easily on the basis of its more extreme manifestations and mistakenly attributed its demise to the failure of some of the more extravagant predictions to materialize. Far from being a trivial incident, the Cherokee ghost dances marked a critical turning point in Cherokee history. The standard versions of the Cherokee ghost dance movement derive essentially from the account given to McKenney by the Cherokee chief, The Ridge, in the 1830s, and the account given to Mooney by the Cherokee, James Wafford, in 1891.1 They can be summarized as follows: In

Who Were the Hohokam? The Evidence from Pima-Papago Myths

A corpus of thirteen Pima-Papago myths is examined for historical evidence concerning the prehistoric Hohokam peoples in southern Arizona and concerning the origin of the Buzzard moiety among Pimans. It is suggested that most myths involving the Hohokam express a death and rebirth ideology which may have been influenced by any of four sources, including diffusion from central Mexico, an actual Hohokam conquest, Spanish expeditions in search of Cibola, and the ghost dance movement. This paper compares Pima and Papago myths on three issues: a flood, the fate of a people called the Hohokam, and the origin of moieties. The myths differ. For example, some say that the flood reached to within a few inches of the sky while others say it barely wet the ground; some say the Hohokam were conquered by the ancestors of today's Pimas and Papagos while in others the Hohokam were the ancestors and the conquerors were Spaniards; the moieties are said by some to have been present when the ancestors of today's Indians emerged from the underworld while other myths say the moieties originated in a conquest. It has recently been suggested that one version out of the several to be discussed here tells a story which really happened. This version states that the Hohokam were conquered by people who had been living to the east of them and that the conquerors incorporated the Hohokam as a moiety. Patrilineal descendants of the Hohokam are members of the Buzzard moiety among today's Pimas and Papagos and patrilineal descendants of the conquerors are members of the Coyote moiety. The events probably happened in the fifteenth century, or three hundred years before the first European settlement in the area (Hayden 1970). No archaeological evidence bearing on those specific events has been found.

Acculturation and Messianic Movements

R OBERT H. LOWIE has recently called our attention again to the problem of messianic movements among the American aborigines.' Among the North American Indians, one of the fundamental myths was the belief that a culture-hero would one day appear and lead them to a terrestrial paradise.2 Under certain conditions, which this paper will describe and analyze, these myths have become the ideological basis for messianic movements. In the messianic movement, the ushering in of the by the messiah is announced for the immediate future. Twenty such movements had been recorded in the United States alone prior to i89o.3 The messianic doctrine is essentially a statement of hope. Through the intervention of the Great Spirit or of his emissary, the earth will shortly be transformed into a paradise, enjoyed by both the living and the resurrected dead. In anticipation of the happy return to the golden age, believers must immediately return to the aboriginal mode of life. Traits and customs which are symbolic of foreign influence must be put aside. All members of the community-men, women, and children-must participate. Besides reverting to the early folkways, believers must adopt special ritual practices until the millenium arrives. Thus, in the American Ghost Dance movements ceremonial bathing and an elaborate dance were the chief ritual innovations.4 The doctrine always envisages a restoration of earthly values. These values will be enjoyed, however, in a transcendental setting, for in the age which is foretold there will be no sickness or death; there will be only eternal happiness. The messianic doctrine is peaceful. The exclusion of the whites from the golden age is not so much a reflection of hostility toward them as a symbolization of the fulfillment of the former way of life. The millenium is to be established through divine agency; believers need only watch and pray.'