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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and joining me today. It's my cocost,

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Speaker 1: Sarah Downy. Hey Katie, how are you doing? Hey Sarah.

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Speaker 1: Today we are going to talk about the ghost Dance. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the ghost dance. It actually was kind of a dance craze,

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Speaker 1: but more than that, it is a religion. So not

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Speaker 1: a relative of thriller. Okay, And if you've heard of

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Speaker 1: the ghost dance, it's probably in reference to sitting Bowl,

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Speaker 1: but we won't get to that until later. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: actually started in eighteen sixty nine UM with this guy

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Speaker 1: wad zawob Um who started up this kind of cult

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Speaker 1: religion UM that focused on dancing and singing UM. And

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Speaker 1: it's spread to California and Oregon tribes and then died

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Speaker 1: out or was kind of transformed into other cults, and

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Speaker 1: it came back with a guy named wo Woka also

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Speaker 1: known as Jack Wilson, who brought it back. I think

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Speaker 1: in the is it the eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, the

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties among the piute, But you know a little

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Speaker 1: bit more about his background life I think than I do. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was actually raised by white people from his teens

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Speaker 1: and was strongly influenced by Presbyterians and Mormons. And during

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Speaker 1: an eclipse on January one, eighteen eighty nine, he had

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Speaker 1: a vision, and it was some vision. He dreamt that

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Speaker 1: he died, spoke with God in heaven, and then became

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Speaker 1: a messenger to spread a dance and millennial message. And

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Speaker 1: if you're saying some Christian overtones in this, that would

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Speaker 1: make sense. But he also said that the white people

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Speaker 1: would disappear from the earth and all of the new

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Speaker 1: of American dead would come back to the earth and

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Speaker 1: live free from disease and free from all the unhappiness

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Speaker 1: that they were currently experiencing. Their lands would be returned,

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Speaker 1: their friend supplies their way of life. There would be

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Speaker 1: game for everyone again. And you have to remember at

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Speaker 1: this time what was going on with Native Americans in

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Speaker 1: the United States government. Things weren't going well. To put

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Speaker 1: it mildly, the Native Americans had been put on reservations

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Speaker 1: and pretty much every treaty that the government made with

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Speaker 1: them was broken quickly broken. And the government was getting

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Speaker 1: a lot more violent too, and they would put the

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Speaker 1: Native American tribes on a reservation, but as soon as

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Speaker 1: they decided they wanted that land, they would move them

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Speaker 1: somewhere else. And so they just get pushing and pushing

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Speaker 1: them two places where things were getting worse and worse.

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Speaker 1: So this was right, and you know, they'd send them

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Speaker 1: to South Dakota and then say, okay, farm and hold

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Speaker 1: up your end of the deal. Well, in some parts

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Speaker 1: of the farmers or it wasn't their way of life

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Speaker 1: and the land might not be so great for timing. Right. Um,

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Speaker 1: So he had this vision and Uh, part of the

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Speaker 1: deal was dancing and singing and clean living could hasten

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Speaker 1: the millennial apocalypse basically, um, and not drinking alcohol, basically

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Speaker 1: abstaining from things associated with the white people. Right. And

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Speaker 1: the actual dance was supposed to happen for five days

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Speaker 1: and on the last night they would dance until dawn,

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Speaker 1: and you were supposed to repeat it every six weeks.

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Speaker 1: And if you're wondering what the experience was like, it

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Speaker 1: was hypnotic trances and shaking. According to one source I found,

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Speaker 1: and Sarah and I both listened to a recording from

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Speaker 1: the Library of Congress. It was very the recordings we

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Speaker 1: heard seemed to be one male singer. We couldn't tell

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Speaker 1: if there was instrumentation in the background because they were

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Speaker 1: very old recordings and kind of scratchy, but it was

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Speaker 1: mournful and kind of in a minor tune. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it sounded appropriate for something called a ghost dance and

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Speaker 1: something that's trying to bring back the dead. And most

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Speaker 1: of the lyrics I could find, I guess to the

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Speaker 1: songs were all to the father and father come home,

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Speaker 1: or Father here I am, or the father will return.

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Speaker 1: And so you just have to picture this group of

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Speaker 1: people who have been oppressed constantly for the past several decades,

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Speaker 1: and there's starvation is rampant at this time. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people are sick, and the people are feeling hopeless,

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Speaker 1: and here comes this man who has this vision for

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Speaker 1: them where their lives will be returned to something wonderful.

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Speaker 1: And the thing about it is it gives them a

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Speaker 1: sense of agency. There are things that they can do

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Speaker 1: to make it happen. And the songs and dances were

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Speaker 1: actually revealed in the visions, the lyrics, the right steps

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Speaker 1: and all that um and dancers would fall into trances

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Speaker 1: and sometimes they would receive new songs from their own

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Speaker 1: visions and pass those on UM. So ghost Dance ended

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Speaker 1: up spreading quickly and very far. It made it as

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Speaker 1: far as the Missouri River, the Canadian border, the Sierra

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Speaker 1: Nevada in northern Texas. So UM emissaries would actually come

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Speaker 1: in and meet with Wavoca uh To, you know, initially,

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Speaker 1: probably to check out what was going on. You know,

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Speaker 1: they might have heard something and might have been a

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Speaker 1: little skeptical initially or just being polite, you know, wanting

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Speaker 1: to send an ambassador to him, but would come back,

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Speaker 1: you know, firm converts and the government wasn't too thrilled

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Speaker 1: about this taking back their culture thing. And even though

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Speaker 1: it was pacifist, you mentioned that it was very much

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Speaker 1: It was not a militant movement at all. It was

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Speaker 1: something that would happen naturally. I think the idea was

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Speaker 1: that the earth would be set down again and all

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Speaker 1: the white people would be underneath the surface of the earth. Yea.

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Speaker 1: The moral code to bring on the millennium vision actually

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Speaker 1: forbade war against Native Americans or whites. A central tenet

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Speaker 1: of it was making peace with the white people, because

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Speaker 1: after all, wouldn't be there after so long, because they'd

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Speaker 1: be buried so you might as well. But again the

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Speaker 1: government wasn't thrilled with it. The agents who were out

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Speaker 1: in the field, We're sending messages back that people were

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Speaker 1: joining up in these big groups and they didn't know

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Speaker 1: it was going on. And in this case, fear of

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Speaker 1: the unknown led to a lot of distrust. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: did not see the Christian connection to this, not at all,

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Speaker 1: even though basically Wovoca was the Christ. He was considered

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Speaker 1: a messiah bringing a message. He actually performed a self

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Speaker 1: inflicted stigmata on his hands and feet. Yeah, believing Jesus

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Speaker 1: said come to the Native Americans as a new missilea A.

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Speaker 1: So there was a strong Christian element, but that was

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Speaker 1: it was still very disturbing to the government. Well, they

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Speaker 1: weren't used to seeing people dancing in circles, and it

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Speaker 1: was apparently very hypnotic to watch, and it was rather

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Speaker 1: frenzied and you know, with people falling down and going

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Speaker 1: into trances. It wasn't what they were used to. And

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Speaker 1: about this point is where sitting Bowl comes in, because

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Speaker 1: in eight ninety the Ghost Dance reaches the Lakota Sioux,

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Speaker 1: the westernmost part of the Sioux tribes, which coincided with

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Speaker 1: the Sioux outbreak, even though they're unrelated, kind of happened

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Speaker 1: around the same time, and it was too Sioux medicine

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Speaker 1: men who actually started the idea of ghost shirts, which

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Speaker 1: was not linked to anything well Voca had thought of UM.

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Speaker 1: The idea was that if you wore a ghost shirt,

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Speaker 1: you could stop the bullets from white men, and this

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Speaker 1: kind of led to an increased militancy UM and you

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Speaker 1: know something that was very at odds with the pacifism

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Speaker 1: right because Booca wasn't talking about bullets at all. Bullets

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Speaker 1: were not involved in Boca's ghost dance. And some people

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Speaker 1: think these UM protective shirts might have come from Mormons

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Speaker 1: and their ideas of special clothing, and that they've been

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Speaker 1: adopted by this tribe. But they decorated their shirts with

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Speaker 1: red paint and with feathers and ornamentation, but they didn't

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Speaker 1: wear hats or any kind of head dress, which was

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Speaker 1: unusual because they were trying to repudiate all the white

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Speaker 1: men's trappings and that was one of them. So in

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety a suit Indian named Kicking Bear went to

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Speaker 1: visit Sitting Bull at Standing Rock and he told him

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Speaker 1: all about Wovoka and how many Native Americans were becoming

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Speaker 1: interested in his ideas, and he told him of Bovoca's

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Speaker 1: prophecy and about the grass growing and the game coming back,

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Speaker 1: and you know how it would save the people. Sitting

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Speaker 1: Bowl agreed to get involved in the movement and to

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Speaker 1: help the people. And this is the point when the

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Speaker 1: government really got involved and they wanted to stop it

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Speaker 1: because there was this large gathering of people, some of

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Speaker 1: them were coming to see Sitting Bowl and they were

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Speaker 1: planning to do this big dance, and the government agents

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Speaker 1: had had enough and the Ghost Dance had basically finally

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Speaker 1: gotten too big for the government, and they were afraid

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Speaker 1: it would turn into some sort of militant uprising. And

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Speaker 1: it turned out that they ended up struggling, and Sitting

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Speaker 1: Bowl was killed accidentally, as were several police officers. And

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Speaker 1: that night the who banded together anyways to come and

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Speaker 1: do the dance. So soon after that the army started

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Speaker 1: to round up Native American leaders um and arrest them,

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Speaker 1: and uh one particular leader who was elderly and ill

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Speaker 1: big Foot wanted peath and brought his band of people

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Speaker 1: to an encampment at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, and uh,

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Speaker 1: it sounded I don't know if it was an accident.

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Speaker 1: People aren't sure or if Yeah, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: disagreement if this guy's gun just went off, but one

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Speaker 1: of Bigfoots span fired a shot, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: the soldiers were shooting at the group, which included women

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Speaker 1: and children, and the men in Bigfoots group went to

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Speaker 1: retrieve their weapons and started shooting, and it ended up

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Speaker 1: just being a huge massacre, which is kind of thought

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Speaker 1: of as the less stand Right. And that was December

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Speaker 1: twenty Nights in eight nine, and I keep finding conflicting

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Speaker 1: numbers on how many suit were killed at Wounded NY,

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Speaker 1: but it seems to be around two hundred and there

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Speaker 1: was something like four hundred and fifty soldiers just opening

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Speaker 1: fire on you know, unarmed women, children and men. So

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Speaker 1: that was kind of the end of ghost dancing to uh.

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Speaker 1: It didn't really go much further than that. Versions of

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Speaker 1: it continued into the twentieth century, but it was actually

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Speaker 1: more of a I don't know, a stepping stone for

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Speaker 1: some people getting closer to Christianity and some people getting

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Speaker 1: closer to traditional shamanism. And it's interesting because some historians

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Speaker 1: look at this as just a sad time in US history,

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Speaker 1: the conflict between the US government and the Native American

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Speaker 1: people's and other people will actually go back and try

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Speaker 1: to say that it's a good example of Native Americans

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Speaker 1: being militant, and therefore the government was justified in trying

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Speaker 1: to squelch this revitalization of culture, which I would say

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Speaker 1: I ascribed to the former at that point, because this

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Speaker 1: movement started off as something that was completely peaceful and

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Speaker 1: it just got wrapped up in a lot of violence

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Speaker 1: and miss can indication. One of the government agents at

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Speaker 1: the time, there's only one who stood up for them,

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Speaker 1: and she said, well, if it was you know, Seventh

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Speaker 1: day Adventists, you know, going out and doing their religious things,

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Speaker 1: she wouldn't be worried. But just because it's Native Americans

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Speaker 1: and their religion, you've decided that it means that they're

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Speaker 1: out to get us, and they weren't. She was the

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Speaker 1: voice of reason, and no one wanted to listen to her.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn more about Native American culture

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Speaker 1: and check out the Stuff You missed in History Class blog,

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Speaker 1: come to the website at www dot how stuff works

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