Ghost Dance Research Articles

Wovoka and the Ghost Dance

Hittman's book should be read by every student of the Ghost Dance revival and by all those interested in bringing tribal history into discourse with conventional history in such a way that Indian voices and visions may be heard...Imaginative in its presentation and essential in its information.--American Indian Quarterly. By interviewing members of Wovoka's family and others who knew him, Hittman has secured some valuable information...[He] offers a wealth of material concerning Wovoka's descent, family and relations, and personal development through the years...[T]his is an ambitious work with much valuable documentation.--Ethnohistory. The religious fervor known as the Ghost Dance movement was precipitated by the prophecies and teachings of a northern Paiute Indian named Wovoka (Jack Wilson). During a solar eclipse on New Year's Day, 1889, Wovoka experienced a revelation that promised harmony, rebirth, and freedom for Native Americans through the repeated performance of the traditional Ghost Dance. In 1890 his message spread rapidly among tribes, developing an intensity that alarmed the federal government and ended in tragedy at Wounded Knee. The Ghost Dance phenomenon is well known, but never before has its founder received such full and authoritative treatment. Indispensable for understanding the prophet behind the messianic movement, Wovoka and the Ghost Dance addresses for the first time basic questions about his message and life. Michael Hittman is the author of Corbett Mack: The Life of a Northern Paiute (Nebraska 1996). He is chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus.

Corbett Mack: The Life of a Northern Paiute

This is the compelling yet disturbing story of Corbett Mack (1892-1974), an opiate addict who was a member of the Nuumuu (Numa), or Northern Paiute. The Northern Paiute are best known as the people who produced Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet whose revitalistic teachings swept the Indian world in the 1890s. Mack is from the generation following the collapse of the Ghost Dance religion, a generation of Nomogweta or 'half-breeds' (also called 'stolen children') - Paiute of mixed ancestry who were raised in an increasingly bicultural world and who fell into virtual peonage to white (often Italian) potato farmers.Around the turn of the century, the use of opium became widespread among the Paiute, adopted from equally victimized Chinese laborers with whom they worked closely in the fields. The story of Corbett Mack is an uncompromising account of a harsh and sometimes traumatic life that was typical of an entire generation of Paiute. It was a life born out of the turmoil and humiliation of an Indian boarding school, troubled by opiate addiction, bound to constant labor in the fields, yet nonetheless made meaningful through the perseverance of Paiute cultural traditions. Michael Hittman is chairman of the Anthropology and Sociology Department and a professor at Long Island University, Brooklyn. He is the author of Wovoka and the Ghost Dance: Sourcebook and A Numa History: The Yerington Paiute Tribe.

The Ghost Dance as a Millenarian Phenomenon

La Ghost Dance et le carnage de Wounded Knee (1890) où furent massacrés les Sioux qui s'adonnaient à cette pratique marquent de manière plus symbolique que réelle la fin de l'époque de la résistance indienne dans les Grandes Plaines américaines. Après la fin des années 1870, cette résistance se limitait en effet à des actions ponctuelles et isolées. Ceci n'enlève rien à l'intérêt de la Ghost Dance en tant que représentation millénariste qui fait partie d'une tradition religieuse bien connue chez les Indiens. Cependant, se limiter à une étude de la Ghost Dance et de sa propagation fulgurante parmi les Indiens des Grandes Plaines en tant que phénomène religieux risquerait de donner une vue partielle de la puissance de son emprise sur les adeptes. Ainsi faut-il prendre en compte les tensions culturelles, politiques et économiques auxquelles ces sociétés sont soumises, tensions qui existent de longue date, certes, mais qui se sont exacerbées vers la fin des années 1880 et qui créent un climat favorable à l'épanouissement de la pensée millénariste.

Shoshone Ghost Dance Religion: Poetry Songs and Great Basin Context

Shoshone Ghost Dance Religion: Poetry Songs and Great Basin Context

Native American Autobiography: An Anthology

Native American Autobiography: An Anthology. Arnold Krupat. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. xi + 546 pages, 20 illustrations. $17.95. While the past three decades have seen a burst of creative work and attending literary scholarship in Native American studies, there has been a dearth of work on Native American autobiography. Only a handful of texts exist by a limited number of scholars such as Arnold Krupat, David Brumble, Hertha Wong, Jane Katz, and Gretchen Batille and Kathleen Mullen Sands. scarcity of such work can be attributed, in part, to the problematic nature of the genre itself. In his latest contribution to Native American Studies, Arnold Krupar has assembled a useful collection of autobiographical excerpts entitled Native American Autobiography: An Anthology designed for use in schools. Writing for an audience unfamiliar with the issues surrounding Native American autobiography, Krupat lays out a concise discussion of the field and its problems which he has explored in other works, most fully in For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography (1985). Briefly, Krupat notes that both the auto and graph elements of the genre pose problems when applied to traditional, indigenous cultures. Western autobiography, celebrating the autonomous individual pitted against and victorious over social and cultural obstacles, is alien to communal-based cultures of Native America. western tradition of a sequential, cumulative narration of a life, as well as the written aspect of autobiography, also conflicted with the traditions of Native America. Indigenous people recorded important events orally, performatively, and dramatically to an audience, even pictographically; but alphabetic writing was not practiced by Native Americans, Krupat argues. This situation changed as Native people came into contact with invader-settlers, resulting in two genres of life stories that Krupat identifies as autobiography by Indians--narratives written by the story's subject him/herself--and autobiography--narratives written by an outsider, usually white, about an individual Native American. Both forms require careful scrutiny for their context and subtext. Krupat has divided the anthology into seven sections. Except for Part One, the anthology moves chronologically from the eighteenth century to the present, tracing the development of Native American and white relations and the autobiographical texts which result from this intersection. Each section contains four to five excerpts from previously published life stories. Krupat prefaces each section with a discussion of historical and cultural aspects which influenced the creation of the texts represented and which also serve as an ordering principle for that section. Part Two, The Christian Indians, from the Eighteenth Century to Indian Removal, 1830 focuses on the Indian reaction to the white settlers and their ultimate decision to become Christian in the face of Euramerican invasion. Christianized Indians provided some of the earliest written documents because they learned to read when converted by the Christian missionaries. Parts Three through Five, The Resisting Indians, from Indian Removal to Wounded Knee, 1830-90, The Closed Frontier, 1890-, and The Anthropologist's Indians, 1900- include narratives written against the backdrop of events like Indian Removal Act, and the infamous Trail of Tears where, of the twelve thousand Cherokees forced to march west of the Mississippi, four thousand died along the way. nineteenth century was characterized by Andrew Jackson's anti-Indian settlement, the famous figures Geronimo and Black Hawk, the Dawes Act disbanding the 138,000 acres of Indian land and reducing it to 48,000-55,000 acres of poor land, the Ghost Dance, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the Census's now famous report which announced the Closing of the American Frontier. …

Spin Doctors at Santee: Missionaries and the Dakota-Language Reporting of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

Spin Doctors at Santee: Missionaries and the Dakota-Language Reporting of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie

Reviews 181 knowthat “conquesthadbeenthewayoftheworld,notsimplyoftheWest”andthatthe weaker has always lost “to some interloper who came with greater strength, a more unyieldinghunger,”sotheydiginanddetermine tobethe strongest inorderto seetheir dreams become reality. The Pumpkin Rollers isnot simplyanother storybemoaningthe loss ofthepastbut one that understands that the same pioneer spirit that drove the settlers still drives man today, that it is not the open trail or the wide, starry sky that sets on fire a man’s spirit but the possibility of dreaming a dream and making it a reality. Kelton has written yet another true Western about Texas, about history, and aboutpeople he knows from long studyandpersonal acquaintance. The manwhowontheWesternHeritageAwardforthe best novel in 1987has done it again. R. L. STRENG International Christian School San Jose, Costa Rica Indian Killer. ByShermanAlexie. (NewYork:AtlanticMonthlyPress, 1996. 432pages, $22.00.) DidShermanAlexie writethisnovel?Readers familiarwithhisprevious workmay well wonder. Where are theoutbursts ofwildly imaginative writing, the humor, andthe wholly original way ofdealing withthe ironies ofcontemporaryreservation life? Set in Seattle, Indian Killer recalls Almanac of the Dead, the novel in which Leslie Marmon SilkomovedawayfromLagunaPueblotowriteabouttheconditionsthatengenderclass conflictinthecityofTucson. Butwhereas Silkoviewedthecityas agatheringplacefor sordid and corrupt opportunists who degrade the land and the human spirit, Alexie is concernedless with deploringvice andeconomic injusticethanwithexploring the poli­ tics ofpersonal identity within anurban setting. TherearethoselikethetribelessJohnSmith, adoptedatbirthbywhiteparents, who driftnumblythroughlifewithoutknowingwhotheyare.EquallyconfusedaretheIndian “wannabe’s,” like Dr. Mather, a white professor who claims to understand the realities of Indian life, yet teaches his course in NativeAmerican literature without including a singlebookbyanativewriteronhis syllabus. Mather’snemesis, MariePolatkin, acam­ pus activist for native causes andan advocate for thehomeless, has always felt alienat­ ed fromher tribe on thereservationbecause ofher desire for formal education, yet she upholdsthetribal ideal ofcommitmenttoothers. Shealoneinthenovel seems secure in who sheis. Alexie isasunkindto liberals like Mather ashe istobigots likeTruck Schultz, the arrogant radio host, who broadcasts his rants across the city. A killer is terrorizing Seattle, ritualistically scalping white people, and Schultz seems intent upon fueling the flames ofracial anxietythatthekillingshaveignited. Theantithesis ofMarie, Schultz is allego, andagoodexample, amongseveralinthenovel, ofapersonwhose“ideas”upon race thinly disguise anetwork ofpersonal insecurities andirrational fears. As befits a novel that is, at least on the surface, amurder mystery, Indian Killer is moretightlyplotted thanAlexie’searlierfiction. True,nosinglecharacterisdrawnwith much depth—each represents a certain idea about, or a different version of, identity—but Alexie constructs enough types to keep things interesting. Though fans 182 Western American Literature might long for something a bit more like Reservation Blues or The Lone Ranger and TontoFistfight inHeaven, why, intheend, criticize someoneforwantingtostretchhim­ selfartistically, especially whentheresults areas highlyreadable asthis novel is? PAULHADELLA Southern OregonState College The Summer ofBlack Widows. By Sherman Alexie. (Brooklyn: Hanging Loose Press, 1996. 139pages, $13.50.) At present, at least two major dangers loom for non-Indian reviewers of Native Americanliterature: misunderstandingitbecauseofthereviewer’soutsidemess orover­ valuing it for politically safe reasons. Yet even with these potential pratfalls in view, Native American written literature, for the most part a creature only of the past thirty years, forms one of the richest literatures of twentieth-century America. Much of its power no doubt is paradoxically a positive outgrowth of the tragic reality comprising Native American history over the last five centuries. Along with Momaday, Erdrich, Welch, Silko, Owens, Hogan, Vizenor, and the like, the young, prolific Spokane/Coeur d’Alene ShermanAlexie—whose previous short stories, poems, and novels have made him one of the most significant Native American literary voices—has continued his quest to turn that painful history into art. This volume of poetry and his novel Indian Killer arecurrentlyjoint subjects ofa double booktour. As suggested by the spider in the book’s title, themes frequently visited byNative American writers run through these poems. These themes range from death, survival, and the search for identity to reservation life (including much ado about basketball), leaving for thecity (oftenbut not always to return), Wovokaand the Ghost Dance, and so on.Alexie’suse ofIndian humor is one ofthebook’smost noticeable strengths, and the sarcastic “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” is probably the most enjoyable if not the best of the poems here focusing on what we might call “at-large Indianconcerns.”Yetthisbook,likeAlexie’sotherwork,revealsmorethanjusttheinter­ connectedness ofthevarious Indiantribes intheUnitedStates; italsoincludeselements unique to tribes ofthe Pacific Northwest, such as the centrality of salmon to their cul­ ture(“ThePlaceWhereGhostsofSalmonJump...

Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature

Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature Editor: Thomas Austenfeld, Drury College Assistant Bibliographers: Robert Brophy, California State University; Kate Boyes, Jane Reilly, and Tom Lyon, Utah State University; Michael Hobbs and Giuli Coniglio, Northwest Missouri State University; Joel Martineau, University of British Columbia; Linda Ross, Sheridan College; Joe Wydeven, Bellevue College; Michael Kowalewski, Carleton College; Don Barclay, University of Houston. PLEASE NOTE: Authors of books and articles are encouraged to notify Thomas Austenfeld (Drury College; 900 N. Benton Avenue; Springfield, MO 65802) of items for inclusion in the 1997 bibliography. Abbey, Edward. Cahalan, James M. “Edward Abbey, Appalachian Easterner.” Western American Literature 31.3 (1996): 233-53. Knott, John R. “Edward Abbey and the Romance of Wilderness.” Western American Literature 30.4 (1996): 331-51. Metting, Fred. “Edward Abbey’s Unique Road.” South Dakota Review 34.1 (1996): 85-102. Payne, Daniel G. “Monkey Wrenching, Environmental Extremism, and the Problematical Edward Abbey.” Southwestern American Literature 21.1 (1995): 195-208. Wild, Peter. “Sentimentalism in the American Southwest: John C. Van Dyke, Mary Austin, and Edward Abbey.” Kowalewski, Michael (ed.). Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 127-43. Alexie, Sherman. Gillan, Jennifer. “Reservation Home Movies: Sherman Alexie’s Poetry.” American Literature 68.1 (1996): 91-110. 322 Western American Literature Allen, Paula Gunn. Ferrell, Tracy J. Prince. “Transformation, Myth, and Ritual in Paula Gunn Allen’s Grandmothers of the Light.” North Dakota Quarterly 63.1 (1996): 77-88. Asian-American / Asian-Canadian. Beauregard, Guy. “Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms and the Politics of Writing Diaspora.” West Coast Line 29.3 (1995-96): 47-62. Berson, Misha. “Fighting the Religion of the Present: Western Motifs in the First Wave of Asian American Plays.” Kowalewski, Michael (ed.). Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 251-72. Chao, Lien. “Anthologizing the Collective: The Epic Struggles to Establish Chinese Canadian Literatures in English.” Essays on Canadian Writing 57 (1995): 145-70. Georgelos, Peter. “Deterritorialization in Evelyn Lau’s Runaway.” Open Letter 9.4 (1995): 15-31. Hesford, Walter. “Thousand Pieces of Gold'. Competing Fictions in the Representation of Chinese-American Experience.” Western American Literature 31.1 (1996): 49-62. Kanefsky, Rachelle. “Debunking a Postmodern Conception of History: A Defence of Humanist Values in the Novels of Joy Kogawa.” Canadian Literature 148 (1996): 11-36. Morgan, Nina Y. “The Chinatown Aesthetic and the Architecture of Racial Identity.” San Francisco in Fiction: Essays in a Regional Literature. Ed. David Fine and Paul Skenazy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995, 217-40. Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto. “Ethnicity and Ethnography: The Artist’s Fiction as Cultural Artifact in the Works of Maxine Hong Kingston.” Literature and Life: Fact and Fiction 58.1 (1995): 17-24. Atwood, Margaret. Atwood, Margaret. Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Cooper, Pamela. “Sexual Surveillance and Medical Authority in Two Versions of The Handmaid’ s Tale.” Journal of Popular Culture 28.4 (1995): 49-66. Annual Bibliography 323 Austin, Mary. Hoyer, Mark T. ‘“To Bring the World Into Divine Focus’: Syncretic Prophecy in The Land of Little Rain.” Western American Literature 31.1 (1996): 3-31. ---------. “Prophecy in a New West: Mary Austin and the Ghost Dance Religion.” Western American Literature 30.3 (1995): 235-55. ---------. “Weaving the Story: Northern Paiute Myth and Mary Austin’s The Basket Woman.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 19.1 (1995): 133-51. O’Grady, John P. “The Death and Lives of Mary Austin.” Southwestern American Literature 21.1 (1995): 175-86. Stout, Janis P. “Willa Cather and Mary Austin: Intersections and Influence.” Southwestern American Literature 21.2 (1996): 39-59. Wild, Peter. “Sentimentalism in the American Southwest: John C. Van Dyke, Mary Austin, and Edward Abbey.” Kowalewski, Michael (ed.). Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 127-43. Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Schubnell, Matthias. “The Inner Landscape of the Self in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Martin.” Southwestern American Literature 21.1 (1995): 167-73. Bibliography. Austenfeld, Thomas. “Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature.” Western...

Conquest and the State: Why the United States Employed Massive Military Force to Suppress the Lakota Ghost Dance

On November 17, 1890, General Nelson A. Miles, acting under the authority of President Benjamin Harrison to take such steps as may be necessary to suppress an anticipated outbreak of Lakota Ghost Dancers, ordered troops to the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. Over the next two weeks, soldiers from as far away as California were summoned, as the largest concentration of U.S. troops since the Civil War surrounded these and two other Lakota reservations-

Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader

Author of The Heirs of Columbus, Hotline Healers, Interior Landscapes, Crossbloods, and numerous other works, Gerald Vizenor is one of the century's most important and prolific Native American writers. Drawing on the best work of an acclaimed career, Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader reveals the wide range of his imagination and the evolution of his central themes. This compelling collection includes not only selections from Vizenor's innovative fiction, but also poetry, autobiography, essays, journalism, and the previously unpublished screenplay Harold of Orange, winner of the Film-in-the-Cities national screenwriting competition. Whether focusing on Native American tricksters or legal and financial claims of tribal sovereignty, Vizenor continually underscores the diversities of modern traditions, the mixed ethnicity that characterizes those who claim Native American origin, and cultural permeability of an increasingly commercial, global world. A. Robert Lee of the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, provides a lucid introduction to this writer whose radically self-aware and contemporary satiric tricksterism . . . as easily invokes Jabes, Barthes, Lyotard, or Foucault as bear ceremonial, ghost dance, or dream-catcher.

Prophecy in a New West: Mary Austin and the Ghost Dance Religion

M A R K T. H O Y E R University of California, Davis Prophecy in aNewWest:MaryAustin and the GhostDance Religion i On New Year’sDay 1889, “the sun died.”During this total eclipse, a Northern Paiute named Wovoka, known to the whites asJack Wilson, fell into a trance in the Pine Nut Mountains ofwestern Nevadawhere he had been cutting wood. He reported upon reviving that he died and went to heaven, where he talked to God and saw “all the dead people,” Indian and white alike, all of whom were dancing and appeared to be young, well-nourished, and happy. God declared thatJack Wilson was to be, in effect, co-president with Benjamin Harrison, Wilson’sjurisdiction being the West and Harrison’s the East. To secure Wilson’s authority, God granted him power over the elements, specifically in the form of five songs for controlling the weather. He then instructed Wilson to command the Indians to cease all lying, stealing, and fighting, and to work peaceably with whites. He taught Wovoka a dance, a variation of the Paiute’s traditional Round Dance, which the Indians were to per­ form at regular intervals. It later became known to whites as the Ghost Dance, in reference to the dead that were to be reunited with the living. Believers in Wovoka’s “Great Revelation” were to be saved from an impending natural cataclysm that would cleanse the earth, their reward being rejuvenated youth in the next life, in a world of peace and plenty (Hittman 63-64).1 Within months, word ofWovoka’s revelation had spread to Indian tribes throughout the West, many of whom thought him to be “the Indian Messiah.”Although Wovoka’s message enjoined the Indians to get along with whites, the revelation changed in several ways as it traveled, due in part to the vagaries of translating between different 236 WesternAmerican Literature languages; in part to the fact that Wovoka could not write, and so never “recorded” the prophecy in a fixed form; and in part to the divergent needs of the various peoples to whom the prophecy spread. Thus both what the prophecy meant and how particular tribes reacted to it varied according to specific cultural contexts. Some Indian leaders received the message as foretelling the destruction of whites only, the land returning to its rightful inhabitants—a version of a prophecy that has a long history in Native American cultures (see, e.g., Trafzer). Although some believed that the Indians could help bring about the millennium by actively resisting or fighting the whites, what happened at Wounded Knee in December 1890 shows the extent to which white anxiety eclipsed the desire—or willingness—to accurately assess the threat posed by this militant minority. As Ghost Dance scholar L. G. Moses puts the situation, “Dancing, peaceful Indians awaiting their divine redemp­ tion did not sell newspapers, so journalists surfeited the country with stories about Indians dancing themselves into frenzies as they awaited reinforcements from the risen dead” (qtd. in Hittman 276). Acting under the orders of a government made uneasy by the supposition that a Ghost Dance ceremony wasa War Dance, the U. S. Cavalry opened fire on a band ofLakotawhich included women aswell as men, children and elders as well as warriors. The Indian dead numbered around two hundred fifty; some were found up to three miles away from the dance grounds. The Ghost Dance religion and Wovoka’s vision are thought by most to have died on thatwinter day in 1890, and, with the “final”defeat of Indian resistance to white military authority, any remaining hopes by Native Americans to retain their “traditional”way(s) of life along with it. This reading of the events at Wounded Knee has also been shared by most scholars, Indian and white alike. Most anthropologists, following Mooney, who worked east-to-west in gathering information and forming his conclusions about the Ghost Dance, focus on its manifestation among the Lakota and other Plains Indians, and thus foreground these tragic “final” events. Drawing cause-and-effect inferences between Wovoka’s doctrines and Wounded Knee, they assume directly, or indi­ rectly imply, or else state outright that Wovoka’s doctrine...

"The Deaths of Sybil Bolton"; An American History

Dennis McAuliffe, an assistant foreign editor at the WASHINGTON POST and recent embracer of his Osage past, has written a book which is ostensibly about the deaths of his Osage grandmother and other oil-rich Osages in the 1920s. For those who don't know the story or who have only read Linda Hogan's dubious account in her novel MEAN SPIRIT, it is a stunning moment in 20th century Native history. years leading up to the Great Depression were brutal ones for Osages, as the spectacular wealth from one of the continent's richest oil fields drew every manner of white opportunist to Osage County to attempt to cash in on the spectacular wealth of the tribe's members. Most of the activity was simple entrepreneurship, but plenty of what happened was criminal-lawyers, doctors, thugs, and thieves scheming and conspiring to separate Osages from their money. most notorious plot involved a white man, William Hale, who married an Osage woman, Mollie Kyle, then began having various of her relatives killed off. He hoped that by doing so, his wife would inherit more and more shares of Osage oil wealth. Then he would kill her. Dozens of other Osages were killed under similar mysterious circumstances in the 1920s. Walking through an Osage cemetery and seeing the gravestones that show the inordinate numbers of young people who died in the period is chilling. The Osage Reign of Terror, as newspapers of the time dubbed those years, has left an indelible mark on the psychology of Osages then and now. Linda Hogan loosely based MEAN SPIRIT on these events, earning for herself the scorn of many Osages in the process. She, in effect, de-Osaged the story, picking and choosing what she liked about the particulars of history and inventing new material for what she didn't-sort of like, and I don't choose the analogy lightly, finding the Holocaust a rich source, but not finding Jewish people interesting enough to be the subjects of their own history. In place of Osage spirituality, for instance, Hogan uses a sort of pan-tribal New Age-ism with Southern Plains and Southeastern (Hogan is Chickasaw) features, presumably making it easier for her inter-tribal cast of characters to interact but losing the specificity of Osages in the process. Osage reception of the novel has been cool at best, downright hostile at worst. One Osage friend of mine, a poet, publicly criticized the book and her audience dismissed the criticism. My friend, they said, was merely jealous. But there's more to the criticism than jealousy. Imagine a Minneconjou reaction to a story loosely based on the Wounded Knee Massacre that decided the Sioux and the Ghost Dance weren't alluring enough, so inserted some hing else in their place. Or, for that matter, remember the reaction of some Comanches to Kevin Costner's film Dances With Wolves, which when it was a novel was based on them. John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979), a member of the tribe, based his only published novel, SUNDOWN (1934) in the period of th murders. Unlike Hogan, Mathews allows the Osages to be Osages and presents a picture of a community i spiritual, social, and psychic crisis. Along the way, he shows how the two ends of the Osage political sp ctrum-the s vereignty-minded, full-blood faction and he progressive, cooperationist, mixed-blood faction-fared. Th traditionalists, in his account, lived in greater relative danger than the progressives, the wrong-headed assumption being that people from the full-blood families would be asier to dupe out of their money. Many progressives, on the other hand, ended up largely penniless by the end, having invested in businesses that didn't work or having thrown away their money on frivolous goodies. SUNDOWN is one of the least-read by Osages of Mat ews's books. His own odd placement in the tribe as the son of a trader (and really not part of the progressives and certainly not of the full-bloods) who was Osage inspired suspicion of him among many Osages in his own time, as it still does today. large number of frauds on the tribal roll of 1906 stand partially behind that suspicion, in spite of the fact that Mathews could trace his own history b ck (albeit four generations) to the Osage woman who marr ed his Anglo-American great grandfather. And Mathews lived most of his life on the Osage Reservation (then Osage County, Oklahoma), spoke some Osage, comprehe ded more, and served as a crucial member of the Osage Tribal Council from 1934 to 1942.

Bluefeather Fellini by Max Evans

120 Western American Literature Billy’s father, Pawnee Killer, accepts his son as they both participate in a battle against the government, but the latter part of the narrative focuses more directly on the historical aspects of the Ghost Dance than on Billy’s own individual plight. As is true of the finest examples of the western novel, these works’greatest achievement rests in the verisimilitude of their settings, the richness of their depiction of western characters, and their treatment of several of the West’s archetypal themes, most notably the quest for justice. Hackenberry and Worcester’s portrayals of the rugged landscape of the Dakota Territory and Brooks’ of the vastness of Texas are poignant and vivid, while Hackenberry’s Goodwin and Brooks’Henry Dollar are heroic yet human embodiments of law in a lawless land. None of these works is flawless. Yet, on balance, each tells an interesting story, revealing once again the powerful hold that the frontier West continues to exert on the American imagination. CHRISTOPHER S. BUSCH Hillsdale College BluefeatherFellini. By Max Evans. (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993. 340 pages, $19.95.) The novel beginswith half-Taos Indian and half-Italian Bluefeather Fellini meeting Sam Grinder, a churlish and toothless old prospector who can chew tobacco and drink beer at the same time. Together they search for a rich vein of gold in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. In the course of the picaresque novel, which ranges through the 1930s and 40s, Bluefeather Fellini prospects for gold; briefly features as afavorite of salon culture in Taos; wanders through Texas, Arizona, and Nevada prospecting, drinking, dancing, and sexing; turns gentleman gambler and settles for a time in Tonopah with awoman who owns a burlesque company; kills a man in self defense during a high stakes poker game; leaves for Breen, Colorado, where he meets and marries Mary Schmidt O’Kelly, “the most beautiful, intelligent, kindliest and best baker of pies in the entire world”;successfullyworks the King Tut gold mine with Mary, only to kill her accidentally with a dislodged rock; and then departs Colorado after blast­ ing the mine entrance closed. And that is only Part One. BluefeatherFellini is clearly the product of Evans’s life-long association with the Southwest as a cowboy, rancher, mining speculator, trader, artist, and writer. Those familiar with the author’s previous works, which include The Rounders, TheHi Lo Country, and My Pardner, know Evans’s considerable enthu­ siasm for the region’s physical and cultural terrain. Yet the scope of the novel expands beyond the Southwest to take in the grim reality ofWorld War II. Part Two dramatizes the role of the Ninth Regiment in the allied assault on Reviews 121 occupied France in 1944. Evans does not let up in describing the grisly destruction ofwar. Part Three finds the protagonist back in New Mexico. There he meets a doctor and his aunt, “a weirdly gorgeous young woman”who supposedly is ninety-six years old. The three attempt to mass produce a wondrous health cure made from sage oil. The ending of the novel suggests further adventures for Blue. This is a memorable and rambunctious novel that is full of eccentricities. What it lacks in depth of characterization is compensated for in the sheer range of the story. MARTIN PADGET University ofCalifornia, San Diego Parable ofthe Sower. By Octavia E. Butler. (New York and London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993. 299 pages, $19.95.) Los Angeles is most hated of our cities because it makes our fears most visible. Here is its nightmare future: civil order collapses, and with it much of our technology. Mobs and drug-crazed criminals rule by night, and fires burn uncontrolled. Water, fuel, and food are nearly unobtainable; some homeless resort to cannibalism. Citizens with even modest property try to protect them­ selves within fortified communities, which become targets for siege. Groups of survivors try to escape, but only spread the chaos. This is a horrifying vision, but not difficult to believe in: perhaps easier than any other. Octavia E. Butler enters a now recognizable tradition of Los Angeles dystopian fiction with thisvery intelligent and finely crafted novel. Butler, who grew up in...

Ghost Dance? Photography, Agency, and Authenticity in Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Ghost Dance? Photography, Agency, and Authenticity in Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices by Gladys Swan

Reviews 161 being, a la the Arthurian legends, that the evil has been purged and now God will renew the land. It is little things like this, and the inclusion of a sub-plot involving the travails of a “good” priest, that, in conjunction with the weak dialogue, keeps TheDark Wayfrom being as good as it so easily could have been. GRANT SISK University ofNorth Texas TheHappy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Life. By Robert O. Easton. Foreword by Gerald Haslam. Introduction byJack Schaefer. (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1993. 222 pages, $12.95.) Since its publication in 1943, the reputation of Robert O. Easton’s The Happy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Lifehas grown quietly but steadily. Capra Press now marks its 50th anniversary with a third edition. In the 1977 second edition, Jack Schaefer hailed the book as having “a timeless quality.” More recently, it has won high praise from writers as diverse as Ross Macdonald (“An epic work, a masterpiece ofwestern literature”), Ursula Le Guin (“Haunting as the tule-fogs of the Delta”), and Jon Tuska (“One of the best novels of the American West”). Its claim to greatness lies essentially in its down-to-earth characters and artfully crafted tales. TheHappy Man is, asJack Schaefer observed, “a book with subtle overtones emerging out ofthe straightforward simplicity ofnarration,... with never an obtrusive flourish of explanation or sentiment or stylistic trick.” The ranch workers come alive in these pages. And in their follies, dreams, and strengths is found what is timeless and universal in humankind. FR. LEO A. HETZLER St.JohnFisher College Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices. By Gladys Swan. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 251 pages, $24.95.) Set in the mining town of Chloride, New Mexico, Gladys Swan’s Ghost Dance:A Play ofVoicesexamines communal loss of hope. For western towns such as Chloride, the economic mainstays of cattle, timber, and mining are not what they once were. The cultivation of tourism, it seems, is the current economic corrective to becoming a ghost town. Chloride’s one call-to-beauty is Roselle More, hometown girl and aging movie star, who’s returning now for her first visit in decades to kick-off the town’s rebirth. In the early pages, Roselle walks the town’s nearly deserted streets, and disappears, so one suspects, into the already crowded canvas of “The Ghost Dance,”a legendary oil painting depicting the people and history of 162 WesternAmerican Literature Chloride. She is replaced by a young look-a-like, Joan Gallant. At tale’s end, Joan finds to her confusion that she has become Roselle More for keeps. Another long-ago resident back for a visit is “Bird” Peacock, late middle-aged, the sole surviving offspring of a once-wealthy Chloride pioneer family. Last time “Bird”was home he convinced the local downtown merchants that he had a money machine that converted singles into ten dollar bills. “Bird” is in love with Roselle, or so it seems. Vignettes or snapshots ofminor and supporting characters abound, includ­ ing the merchants of the dying downtown as a Greek chorus, of sorts. Other vividlydepicted characters include Roselle’shigh school drama coach, the town historian with the requisite addled memory, plus an assortment of Hollywood-types drawn to Chloride by Roselle’svisit. Influences of Latin America’s “magic realism” literary movement, Charles G. Finney’s Southwest tale, The Circus ofDr. Lao, and Joan Didion’s Hollywood tale, Play It As It Lays, all seem somehow present in this, Swan’s second novel (her first, the critically well-received Carnivalfor the Gods). Shakespeare’s Puck, Twain’s Tom Sawyer, and Indian America’s trickster-coyote are found in the “Bird”Peacock character. Scenes of the nineteenth century Indian wars, plus a Chloride-inspired playscript help close out the final chapters of this sometimes straightforward, other times complicated tale. An ambitious, off-beat novelwith a strong cerebral bent, Swan’s GhostDance challenges the reader to take a different look at the modern-day West. JAMES B. HEMESATH Adams State College Sign Languages. By James Hannah. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. 168 pages, $19.95.) Sign Languages,James Hannah’s second book, is a collection of nine stories...

The Happy Man: A Novel of California Ranch Life by Robert O. Easton

Reviews 161 being, a la the Arthurian legends, that the evil has been purged and now God will renew the land. It is little things like this, and the inclusion of a sub-plot involving the travails of a “good” priest, that, in conjunction with the weak dialogue, keeps TheDark Wayfrom being as good as it so easily could have been. GRANT SISK University ofNorth Texas TheHappy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Life. By Robert O. Easton. Foreword by Gerald Haslam. Introduction byJack Schaefer. (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1993. 222 pages, $12.95.) Since its publication in 1943, the reputation of Robert O. Easton’s The Happy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Lifehas grown quietly but steadily. Capra Press now marks its 50th anniversary with a third edition. In the 1977 second edition, Jack Schaefer hailed the book as having “a timeless quality.” More recently, it has won high praise from writers as diverse as Ross Macdonald (“An epic work, a masterpiece ofwestern literature”), Ursula Le Guin (“Haunting as the tule-fogs of the Delta”), and Jon Tuska (“One of the best novels of the American West”). Its claim to greatness lies essentially in its down-to-earth characters and artfully crafted tales. TheHappy Man is, asJack Schaefer observed, “a book with subtle overtones emerging out ofthe straightforward simplicity ofnarration,... with never an obtrusive flourish of explanation or sentiment or stylistic trick.” The ranch workers come alive in these pages. And in their follies, dreams, and strengths is found what is timeless and universal in humankind. FR. LEO A. HETZLER St.JohnFisher College Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices. By Gladys Swan. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 251 pages, $24.95.) Set in the mining town of Chloride, New Mexico, Gladys Swan’s Ghost Dance:A Play ofVoicesexamines communal loss of hope. For western towns such as Chloride, the economic mainstays of cattle, timber, and mining are not what they once were. The cultivation of tourism, it seems, is the current economic corrective to becoming a ghost town. Chloride’s one call-to-beauty is Roselle More, hometown girl and aging movie star, who’s returning now for her first visit in decades to kick-off the town’s rebirth. In the early pages, Roselle walks the town’s nearly deserted streets, and disappears, so one suspects, into the already crowded canvas of “The Ghost Dance,”a legendary oil painting depicting the people and history of ...

"Everything of Interest in the Late Pine Ridge War Are Held by Us for Sale": Popular Culture and Wounded Knee

So BLACK ELK DESCRIBED THE ERUPTION of violence at the Pine Ridge Reservation on the morning of 29 December 1890. Called in to suppress the messianic Ghost Dance religion and prevent an outbreak, U. S. Army troops, after two months of tense inactivity, killed over two hundred Lakotas in a ninety-minute burst of violence. Long a marker of the end of the Indian wars and the close of the frontier era, the massacre at Wounded Knee holds a prominent position within western history and popular consciousness.2 At the same moment that Wounded Knee entered history, it also entered the realm of popular culture. Photographers George Trager, newspaper reporter William Fitch Kelley, and dime novelist Francis Dougherty soon produced images and

The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890

Responding to the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance among tribes of the western United States in the early 1890s, James Mooney set out to describe and understand the phenomenon. He visited Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet, at his home in Nevada and traced the progress of the Ghost Dance from place to place, describing the ritual and recording the distinctive song lyrics of seven separate tribes. His classic work (first published in 1896 and here reprinted in its entirety for the first time) includes succinct cultural and historical introductions to each of those tribal groups and depicts the Ghost Dance among the Sioux, the fears it raised of an Indian outbreak, and the military occupation of the Sioux reservations culminating in the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Seeking to demonstrate that the Ghost Dance was a legitimate religious movement, Mooney prefaced his study with a historical survey of comparable millenarian movements among other American Indian groups. In addition to his work on the Ghost Dance, James Mooney is best remembered for his extraordinarily detailed studies of the Cherokee Indians of the Southeast and the Kiowa and other tribes of the southern plains, and for his advocacy of American Indian religious freedom. Raymond J. DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, has edited James R. Walker's Lakota Society (1982) andThe Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984), both published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Ghost Songs : Echoes from Wounded Knee

The Ghost Dance of the Lakota is irretrievably linked to the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. An examination of the cultural elements comprising the philosophy practice of the ritual reveals a distinct form of religious worship that is undeniably Lakota. An analysis of fourteen Ghost Dance songs demonstrates that the Lakota version of the dance was unique to the Great Plains where it survived for only a year. It is concluded that if the Ghost Dance had not been adopted by the Lakota, other rituals would have been adopted to satisfy the Lakota's sense of what they perceive to be their own unique culture.

The Comanches as Aboriginal Skeptics

vention, syncretism, multiple religious participation) and the role of individualistic ritual are overshadowed. Much of the qualitative dimension-the uniqueness of the constellation of meanings assembled by particular culture groups-is lost. Ultimately, those tribes that fall outside the pale of big ritual trait distribution are liable to be assigned a secondary status as atypical or In light of the prevailing documentation of their religious behavior (Wallace and Hoebel 1952), and by the usual criteria for Plains religion, the Comanches might indeed appear to be marginal. They had little of the Sun Dance or Ghost Dance, there were only traces of medicine societies among them, no tribal fetishes, and their mythic corpus seemed a patchwork in comparison with the myth cycles of other tribes. For revelations they practiced the Plains-style vision quest, but also relied on unsought dreams as the western tribes did. Though