Origins of the Ghost Dance

1891 Print made of Sioux Indians performing the Ghost Dance.

Note this depiction shows knives and sticks in hands used to induce fear and imply violence when representing the Ghost Dance.

Just before the turn of the 20^th century, a new pan-Indian religious movement began to spread. The “Ghost Dance” originated in Nevada but quickly spread throughout the Midwest, being incorporated into pre-existing cultural practices. The ultimate aim of the movement was to liberate Indians and bring an end to white settler colonialism.

Source: The North American Indian. Edward S. Curtis. (above)

“News of a Messiah cult, which originated among the Paiute at Walker Lake, Nevada, at the time of the total eclipse of the sun on January 1, 1889, reach the Lakota by the summer of that year… a new order of things was prophesized, by which white men would be swept from the country, life would be restored to the bodies of slain Indians… The Ghost Dance spread rapidly, until every band of the Teton Sioux was asmoulder with the excitement of the craze.”