As described in this series, one of the most noteworthy aspects of the Ghost Dance were the trance and prophetic experiences. These were not typical of traditional Native American circle dances.
And yet, ecstatic experiences such as those experienced in the Ghost Dance had long been features of American Christian revivalism. Thus, in another creative fusion, the Ghost Dance represented a form of pentecostal revivalism among Native American Christians. For example, as Louis Warren recounts in God's Red Son, Myrtle Lincoln, a granddaughter of Sitting Bull, who was one of the first Ghost Dance prophets, described the visions, prophecies, and emotionalism of the Ghost Dance as "just like this Pentecostal way." Lincoln became a committed Pentecostal in adulthood and she and her grandfather concluded that the Ghost Dance and pentecostalism "might be the same thing." Indeed, Azusa Street was right around the corner, that seminal revival beginning in 1906. And like Lincoln, many Ghost Dancers would later join the pentecostal movement.
Observers of the Ghost Dance also noted similarities with the enthusiasms and physical displays among Southern whites and Blacks in their tent revivals and camp meetings. As one newspaper of the time reported, the Ghost Dance was "a genuine, old-fashioned camp-meeting like those held in the south by our colored brethren." Another noted, "This dance is to Indians what a 'Camp Meeting' is to white men."
Here, then, is another factor that contributed to the tragedy of Wounded Knee. Charismatic movements have always been looked upon with suspicion by authorities. The emotional and behavioral displays in charismatic revivals have a long history of violating social and behavioral norms for the genders and the races. Such emotional excesses were deemed threats to social decorum and good order. As Louis Martin observes,
[According to some observers of the Ghost Dance, criticisms of the Dance] had been stoked by long-standing elite critiques and anxieties about enthusiastic religion. Charismatic evangelism--from the Hebrew prophets and Jesus through Joan of Arc and the Methodists, the Shakers, Maria Woodworth, and the Ghost Dancers--had always disrupted social order and challenged authority in ways that made officialdom profoundly uncomfortable. Condemnation of revivals was as much a part of American culture as revivals themselves...
[Christians leaders were also critical as] evangelical movements often divided the most enthusiastic Methodists, Baptists, and others from their denominational leadership, many of whom were offended by uncontrolled displays of emotion, particularly shouting and falling to the floor, which they saw as a threat to order, particularly to their own authority.
All this casts a whole new light on the fateful telegram sent by the federal agent of the Pine Ridge Reservation that brought troops to the reservation, the telegram that lit the fuse which culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee: "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy."
Those slain at Wounded Knee were not "wild and crazy." The Ghost Dancers were charismatics at a tent revival.
