# Ghost Dance Movement



## Artfuldodger (Dec 10, 2015)

The Ghost Dance religion (or movement) was an answer to the subjugation of Native Americans by the U.S. government.

The Ghost Dance originated among the Paiute Indians around 1870. However, the tide of the movement came in 1889 with a Paiute shaman Wovoka (Jack Wilson). Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse in 1889. In this vision he saw the second coming of Christ and received warning about the evils of white man. The messianic religion promised an apocalypse that would destroy the earth and the white man. The earth then would be restored to the Native Americans. Salvation of individuals was to be achieved by purging oneself of the evil ways learned from the whites. The religion required frequent ceremonial cleansing, meditation, prayer, chanting and of course dancing the Ghost Dance. Each ceremony lasted for five successive days. The participants danced each night, on the last night the dance continued until morning. The ceremony was to be repeated every six weeks. Within a year, the new religion spread throughout the Native camps in the West, giving Native people the much needed hope.

http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000000/000138/html/t138.html


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## Artfuldodger (Dec 10, 2015)

Wounded Knee Massacre;                                                           According to Wovoka, the Messiah would raise all the Native American believers above the earth. During this time, the white man would disappear from Native lands, the ancestors would lead them to good hunting grounds, the buffalo herds and all the other animals would return in abundance, and the ghosts of their ancestors would return to earth — hence the word "Ghost" in "Ghost Dance." They would then return to earth to live in peace. All this would be brought about by performance of the slow and solemn "Ghost Dance," performed as a shuffle in silence to a slow, single drumbeat, unlike the dance depicted in the drawing above intended to inflame eastern readers. Lakota ambassadors to Wovoka, Kicking Bear and Short Bull taught the Lakota that while performing the Ghost Dance, they would wear special Ghost Dance shirts as seen by Black Elk in a vision. Kicking Bear said the shirts had the power to repel bullets.

Messiah Craze;
American settlers were alarmed by the sight of the many Great Basin and Plains tribes performing the Ghost Dance, worried that it might be a prelude to armed attack. Among them was the US Indian Agent at the Standing Rock Agency where Chief Sitting Bull lived. US officials decided to take some of the chiefs into custody in order to quell what they called the "Messiah Craze". The military first hoped to have Buffalo Bill — a friend of Sitting Bull — aid in the plan to reduce the chance of violence. Standing Rock agent James McLaughlin overrode the military and sent the Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

Interesting how different groups see and understand Jesus.


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