To start, what was the Ghost Dance? And what part did it have to play in the massacre at Wounded Knee?
Let me start with the second question. You may have heard of the famous book by Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Published in 1970, the best-selling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a classic treatment documenting American atrocities that displaced and destroyed Native Americans and their way of life. The title refers to the 1890 massacre of almost 300 Sioux Indians, many woman and children, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the last exchange of fire between the federal government and the Sioux, and is often viewed as the emblematic moment when the indigenous way of life on the Western plains, which had existed for thousands of years, finally came to a tragic and bloody end.
What happened at Wounded Knee?
Prior to the tragedy, a variety of tensions had been building on the Sioux reservations in South Dakota. Most significantly, in 1889 Congress approved the statehood of North and South Dakota. This prompted the government to take even more land from the Sioux, almost half of the Great Sioux Reservation. In addition, when the new, smaller reservations were created, a bureaucratic bungling slightly changed the border between the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. This displaced a group of Wazhazhas Brules from their settlements on Pass Creek. This band of Wazhazhas became the most disaffected among the Sioux in the lead up to Wounded Knee and they were among the very last holdouts.
Beyond land disputes, the US government had also significantly cut the rations to the reservations. This caused widespread illness and malnutrition in the face of a measles and influenza outbreak in the two years leading up to Wounded Knee.
Needless to say, the Sioux reservations were under considerable strain. Discontent was widespread, with rumors about uprisings breaking out. Tensions were high.
And into this volatile situation entered a new religious movement, the Ghost Dance.
The Ghost Dance emerged among the the Northern Paiute (territories in Nevada and California) with the spiritual leader, rainmaker, and prophet Wovoka (also named Jack Wilson). The prophecies of Wovoka foretold a future restoration of Native American life, a future of peace and prosperity that would be inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah. To usher in this age, the Indians were to live at peace among the whites, to work, and to send their children to school. And they were supposed to dance.
The Ghost Dance was a traditional circle dance, with some key changes. The dancers held hands and rotated in a clockwise direction. Men, women, and children participated, an egalitarian change from some male-dominated traditional dances. Even some whites were welcomed into the circle. As the circle turned many dancers fell and entered into a trance, which often lasted hours. Upon awakening, dancers shared visions of going to heaven where they encountered their dead loved ones. Given the amount of loss and grief experience by Native Americans, these encounters with lost loved ones fueled the eastward spread of the Ghost Dance, eventually making its way to the plains reservations. Soon after Wovoka's first prophecies in 1889, the circles began to turn among the Sioux in South Dakota.
Given the tensions and rumors of uprisings, the federal authorities could only look upon the Ghost Dance with suspicion. While different in key respects, the circle of the Ghost Dance was rooted in traditional native practice. This represented a "reversion" in the eyes of the authorities to "non-progressive" and "primitive" native practices, a return to traditional culture and lifeways. This wasn't the direction the federal government wanted the Sioux to go.
Plus, it was feared that the dance was stirring up revolutionary fervor. To suspicious and nervous reservation agents, hundreds of Sioux dancing and singing in a traditional circle dance was an ominous sign. And so, on November 15 the federal agent of the Pine Ridge reservation sent a fateful telegram, asking for federal troops to invade the Sioux reservations: "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy...We need protection and we need it now."
The troops came. Tensions rose ever further. Events cascaded out of control. And on December 29 federal troops opened fire on unarmed men, women and children at Wounded Knee.
Thanks to the popularity of the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is a sad and well known tragedy in American history. But do we know this event as well as we think? Because here is where things get interesting, for the purposes of this blog. Jesus was at Wounded Knee, and in ways that might be surprise you.
What many people don't know is that the Ghost Dance was, for many Native Americans, a Christian movement. Many participants of the Ghost Dance identified the coming Messiah with Jesus Christ.
Take, for example, Black Elk, the Lakota holy man. Many students of New Age and indigenous spiritualities revere the teachings of Black Elk as recounted in Black Elk Speaks. But did you know that, along with many others, Black Elk encountered Jesus in the Ghost Dance?
Because of this experience, Black Elk eventually converted to Catholicism, and is now being considered as a saint. As Black Elk's grandson commented, Black Elk was a man comfortable praying with both his pipe and his rosary.
