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"They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things – the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent."
"They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things – the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent."
— Lakota Interpretation of the Ghost Dance from John Fire Lame Deer
Photograph of Wovoka, "Jack Wilson," Date Unknown.
Who was Wovoka?
Who was Wovoka?
Wovoka (1856-1932) was a Paiute spiritual leader and the creator of the second Ghost Dance movement that spread across Native American tribes in the late 19th century. In 1889, during a solar eclipse, he received a vision in which God instructed him to teach a new ritual dance (the Ghost Dance) to his people. Successful participation in this dance would ensure that Wovoka's prophetic vision—one that promised the resurrection of ancestors, the return of the buffalo to the plains, and the removal of white colonizers—would come to pass. The dance spread as far the Missouri River, the Canadian border, the Sierra Nevada, and northern Texas.
As the leader of the Ghost Dance movement, Wovoka remains a noteworthy figure in the world of dance. This ritual became a powerful form of spiritual and political expression for Native American communities facing displacement and oppression. For many, the Ghost Dance was more than a dance—it was the promise of a future free from suffering and colonization. The dance gave participants hope for a future in which Indigenous ways of life would be preserved. Through Wovoka's influence, the Ghost Dance movement highlights the transformative power of ritual dance as both a spiritual practice and unifying force for resilience and social change.
"When you get home you must make a dance to continue five days. Dance four successive nights, and the last night keep us the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way."
"When you get home you must make a dance to continue five days. Dance four successive nights, and the last night keep us the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way."
— Transcribed Excerpt from The Messiah Letter in James Mooney's The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890.
Elements of the Ghost Dance
Elements of the Ghost Dance
The cornerstone of the Ghost Dance was the circle dance or round dance, which is a part of traditional Native American dance. People danced closed together, held hands and moved with a shuffling side-to-side step. The Ghost Dance ceremony did not use a drum, compared to other traditional round dances, but there was often a pole or a tree in the center of the circle, or sometimes nothing at all. The Ghost Dance largely varied depending on what tribe performed it.
The dance allegedly induced a hypnotic state in some dancers, with some making an effort to achieve a trance. To help this process, someone would stand in the circle waving a feather or a cloth for dancers to watch. Songs with a faster rhythm were sung to help the dancers wishing to achieve a trance and perhaps experience visions. Those experiencing a trance might leave the circle of dancers and dance on their own or lie on the ground.
Ghost Dance of the Sioux, Print from a Wood Engraving, 1891.
Citations
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Wovoka". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Sep. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wovoka.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ghost Dance". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ghost-Dance.
James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, 14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 2, (1896).
Hall, Stephanie. “James Mooney Recordings of American Indian Ghost Dance Songs, 1894: Folklife Today.” The Library of Congress, 17 Nov. 2017, blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/11/james-mooney-recordings-ghost-dance-songs/.
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