Ghost dance
The ghost dance was a religious crisis cult of several Indian peoples of the North American West , which took place in two forms around 1870 and around 1890. It indirectly led to the Wounded Knee massacre , which is considered the end point of the Indian Wars in the United States .
The spirit dance movement stands in the spiritual tradition of the trance dances of North American natives and represents the last, largely peaceful social movement of the vanquished against the submission and destruction of their livelihoods and traditional cultures. It was only one of many, ultimately unsuccessful restoration efforts , but achieved the greatest popularity and therefore today is mistakenly considered an integral part of certain Indian religions and cultures in the general perception .
First ghost dance
In the 1870s, the force as a seer and prophet Wodziwob experienced - a member of the current state of Nevada -based tribe of Paviotso - at a trance a vision , in his ancestral spirits promised that the old times and with them the traditional way of life would return if the Indian peoples were to dance the ghost dance. Then the earth would turn into a paradise and the white conquerors would be eliminated by a great flood or fire.
For the ghost dance, a group of men and women was formed, in which those involved held hands and intoned the prescribed ghost dance songs - a series of monotonous incantations - to the constant beat of the drums. When the dancers step sideways at the same time, the whole circle started moving. The dance lasted for several days. He is reminiscent of the persistent buffalo dances in which men and adolescents danced for days under the guidance of medicine men until they were completely exhausted in order to ensure the return of the buffalo herds that migrated twice a year and formed the basis of life for the prairie Indians .
Through the monotonous rhythmic drum accompaniment, the uniform movements and the always the same incantations sung, a trance-like state was reached near to complete exhaustion, through which the living should be able to enter the spirit world. The associated merging of this world and the hereafter would ultimately lead to the dead being able to return.
The content and promise of the spirit dance fell on fertile ground in the time of decline. The idea spread very quickly in the late 1860s and resulted in a highly motivated religious movement. It reached California and Oregon from Nevada . Each tribe created their own elements and interpretations of the dance. The original prophecy was supplemented by others as it spread.
Sometimes a dance brought together 5,000 to 6,000 people from different tribes. Nevertheless, one cannot speak of a Pan-Indian cult , since not all ethnic groups joined the spirit dance. The first wave of the ghost dance ended around 1872 after the initiator Wodzivob had revoked the idea and the dances were ultimately unsuccessful.
Second ghost dance
Around 1890 - around 20 years later - the ghost dance experienced a renaissance. Again the origin was with the Paviotso. This time it was Wovoka , a man from the Paiute tribe , who revived the idea. His father may have been one of Wodziwob's successors and passed on spiritual knowledge to his son. Under the name Jack Wilson he worked from the age of eight on a ranch of devout Mormons , from whom he was also raised. Coined in this way, he also adopted Christian elements such as the apostle idea in the spirit dance in order to ensure that it spread again.
The prophecy was basically similar to the first one from 1870: The time would come when the living and dead Indians would unite to live happily together - without death, misery and misery. The huge herds of buffalo would return.
The first ghost dance was celebrated on the Walker River Paiute Reservation in January 1889. According to Wovoka's instructions, men and women held hands and danced slowly to the left in a circle. During the dance they sang songs about Wovoka's dreams and the animals whose spirits gave them protection . The dances lasted six days and nights and were repeated every six weeks. Then all participants took a bath. The clothing consisted of a simple leather or cotton shirt, the "ghost dance shirt", which was supposed to make them invulnerable. Each participant painted it with the signs of their visions; mostly stars, crescent moons and thunderbirds. The edges of the square sleeves and the seams were mostly frayed, as with the old leather clothing, and the shirts were also decorated with individual feathers.
The 1890s ghost dance also first spread to California and Oregon, but then found many followers in Idaho , Montana , Utah , Wyoming , Colorado , North and South Dakota , as well as Nebraska , Kansas , Oklahoma and Canada . Compared to the first ghost dance, this time it also covered the tribes of the Plains and some of the southwest . Again some dance elements and the contents of the prophecies changed with the spread, depending on the culture and mythology of the respective ethnic groups.
The second ghost dance movement lasted a few years longer than the first, but also came to an abrupt end: the Lakota (Sioux) who lived in the reservations of South Dakota after their defeat and submission by the whites had taken over the movement and included other Christian elements such as the idea of redemption expanded. The prairie Indians , robbed of their land, who had lost their livelihood through the destruction of the buffalo herds, lived in the reservations under poor conditions. The nomadic tribal society , in which groups and family associations lived together in tented villages on wanderings, was in disintegration due to the forced sedentarization in individual families according to the European model. Respected chiefs such as Tashunka Witko (English Crazy Horse) were murdered or had submitted to the victors. The former hunters and gatherers were dependent on food supplies from the reserve authorities, which were often not available and of poor quality. Hunger, disease, unfamiliar food, forced sedentariness and inactivity led to the cultural uprooting of the Lakota. In this climate the ghost dance could not only spread easily, but also encouraged new ideas of resistance. Many dancers wore heavily painted ghost dance shirts, which supposedly could protect them against bullets from white guns. The vision that the ghost dance would sweep the whites away was openly expressed.
After the ghost dance began in the Lakota Reservations in April 1890 and was promoted by some still respected leaders such as Sitting Bull , tensions arose. The reservation authorities saw the mass movement as a political and religious protest by the 25,000 Sioux living in reservations and reacted with coercive measures to stifle a possible impending uprising in advance.
President Benjamin Harrison ordered an army investigation and restricted food rations for uncooperative Indians, adding to tensions. James McLaughlin, administrator of the Standing Rock Reservation , where Sitting Bull lived, had long viewed the ghost dancers with suspicion and feared a riot. Sitting Bull, who had fiercely refused to ban the movement and was considered to be one of its leaders, was to be arrested by the tribal police in deliberate provocation on December 15, 1890. When his followers resisted the old man's rough treatment, Sitting Bull was shot in the head by Indian sergeant Red Tomahawk. Besides him, another 14 people died: five tribal policemen and seven supporters of the old chief, including Sitting Bull's 14-year-old son. Sitting Bull's body was desecrated by the brother of a slain policeman while it was being transported away. The refusal of the burial in the Christian cemetery caused further displeasure. The dead chief was eventually buried in a simple wooden box in the Fort Yates cemetery.
Many Lakota, including many ghost dancers, fled to the nearby badlands . Among the refugees was Chief Big Foot with ghost dance fans from the Cheyenne River Reservation . The army pursued and captured Big Foot and his people. Big Foot, believed to be peaceful, surrendered, and the group was to be transferred to the Pine Ridge Reservation . On December 29, 1890, Big Foot's group was to be disarmed near Wounded Knee Creek. A shot was fired, probably accidentally on the part of the Indians. The soldiers of the 7th Cavalry then shot at the defenseless Indians indiscriminately and carried out a massacre of men, women and children. Even after hours, the wounded were still killed. Even the horses of the dead Indians were shot. A total of between 150 and 300 Indians died that day.
literature
- James Mooney: The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1970.
- Russell Thornton: American Indian Holocaust and Survival - A Population History Since 1492. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1987.
- Louis S. Warren: God's red son: the Ghost Dance religion and the making of modern America . Basic Books, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-4650-1502-3 .
Web links
- The ghost dance is a ceremony for the regeneration of the earth, and, subsequently, the restoration of the earth's caretakers to their former life of bliss. (English)
- United States History Ghost Dance (English)
- Ghost Dance (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Entry "Ghost Dance" in the Dictionary of American History on Encyclopedia.com, accessed August 6, 2018.
- ^ Academia.edu academia.edu
- ↑ a b c [1]
- ↑ Du Bois, Cora "The 1870 Ghost Dance" Anthropological Records Vol. 3, No. 1 (1939) (Berkeley, California; University of California Press) 3-4
- ↑ legendsofamerica.com
- ↑ Hans Läng , Kulturgeschichte der Inder Nordamerikas, Olten 1981, ISBN 3-530-50230-8 , pp. 287-288
- ↑ encyclopedia.com
- ↑ pbs.org
- ↑ hanksville.org
- ↑ ndstudies.gov
- ↑ nsturdies.gov
- ↑ spiegel.de
- ↑ english.illinois.edu
- ↑ spiegel.de
- ↑ wdr.de