Ghost dance stop the world
On the shoulders and on the sleeves they tied eagle feathers. A picture of an eagle is made on the back of all the shirts and dresses. They also paint in the front part of the shirts and dresses. They paint the white muslins they made holy shirts and dresses out of with blue across the back, and alongside of this is a line of yellow paint. The persons dropped in dance would all lie in great dust the dancing make. All the men and women made holy shirts and dresses they wear in dance. They dance around in the circle in a continuous time until some of them become so tired and overtired that they became crazy and finally drop as though dead, with foams in mouth all wet by perspiration. A man stands and then a woman, so in that way forming a very large circle. The persons in the ghost dancing are all joined hands. The person dancing becomes dizzy and finally drop dead, and the first thing they saw is an eagle comes to them and carried them to where the messiah is with his ghosts. They saw these things when they died in ghost dance and came to life again.
When they die they see strange things, they see their relatives who died long before. eople partaking in dance would get crazy and die, then the messiah is seen and all the ghosts. The Report of the Ghost Dance among the Arapaho by Kicking Bear, Spring 1890 Powell, Director, Part 2, (Washington: U.S. Source: James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, Fourteenth Annual Report of The Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892–93, by J. In this case, he was evidently working as a member of the Indian agency police, who were appointed by Indian Agents (federal officials responsible for a reservation).
GHOST DANCE STOP THE WORLD FULL
Selwyn, as “a full blood Yankton Sioux, who had received a fair education under the patronage of a gentleman in Philadelphia.” Selwyn had worked on Sioux reservations in a variety of jobs. Mooney described the man who conducted the interrogation, William T. The last item is the report of an interrogation of a convert to the new religion.
The second is a report of a Sioux ghost dance written by a teacher from a reservation school who observed a ceremony on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The first is a report from a Lakota, Kicking Bear, one of the Sioux who had met Wovoka, describing the dance as it was practiced by another group of Indians, the Arapaho. The accounts of the ghost dance presented below are taken from the report of James Mooney, an ethnologist who traveled throughout the west in the aftermath of the ghost dance movement collecting information about it. Red Cloud (1822–1909), an older chief, was skeptical of the new religion and discouraged continued conflict with whites. One of the principal promoters of the ghost dance religion among the Sioux was Sitting Bull (1831–1890), who had a long history of opposing accommodation with the whites. More confrontational than some other tribes, the Sioux developed a version of the message that envisioned the disappearance of the whites from their land and a return to their former nomadic life of hunting buffalo. As did other Indians who practiced the new religion, the Lakota adapted it to their own traditions.
When they returned to their reservation, they spread word of Wovoka’s message and taught the ghost dance. Like other Indians who heard of the prophet’s vision, the Lakota sent people to meet him in person. By late 1889, it had reached the Lakota and other Sioux, living on their reservations in what is now the state of South Dakota (Documents 22 and 23). Word of Wovoka’s vision spread among Indians throughout the West. The dance was a version of a traditional Indian circle dance. If they did this, God told him, they would hasten the day of reunion with their ancestors. Wovoka was also shown a dance, which came to be called the ghost dance, and told to tell the people to perform it every day for several days in a row. If they followed these instructions they would not die or get sick and would be united with all those who had lived before, whom Wovoka had seen in his vision enjoying the pastimes of old in a land full of game. The message was that they should live honestly, work hard, and not quarrel among themselves or fight with the whites. 1856-1932), living what is now the state of Nevada, had a vision in which God gave him a message to carry back to his people. In January 1889, a Paiute prophet, Wovoka (c.