Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!daisy.cc.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: dancer@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Donn Chambers) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.pagan,alt.religion.shamanism Subject: Re: MDolce: Ghost dance Date: 10 Oct 1995 10:50:09 -0500 Organization: CyberPagans and Misc. Lost Souls of the South Lines: 39 Message-ID: <45e4nh$p8e@daisy.cc.utexas.edu> References: <4543qi$j2h@news.ios.com> <45bom2$cdd@jobe.shell.portal.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: daisy.cc.utexas.edu Xref: shell.portal.com alt.magick.tyagi:4534 alt.satanism:25759 alt.pagan:124851 alt.religion.shamanism:2342 In article <45bom2$cdd@jobe.shell.portal.com>, nagasiva wrote: >[from alt.religion.shamanism: MarkDolce ] A synopsis of the Ghost Dance movement of the last century. It is not exactly accurate in places, so I thought I would clarify it. > >The Ghost Dance, an actual ritual dance, was the focus of a messianic >spiritual movement that happened among the Plains Indians at the end of >the 19th century. An Indian messiah emerged, who went among the people >proclaiming that the new world was at hand. He organized dance >ceremonies during which the participants fell into trances where they saw Actually, it was not a "Plains Indian" ceremony, per se, although it became famous because of over-reaction of the white superintendants at the Lakota reservation at Pine Ridge. It actually started in Nevada and California, among the Paiute Indians. The "messiah" was Wavoka, an Indian man who had been raised by whites as a Christian before he returned to the tribe in his late teens. Hence the strong Christian overtones in the original Paiute version. Wavoka never "went among the people" and preached.... the people came to him when they heard about this dance. Indians from all over the country came, including the Plains Indians. The "Ghost Dance Shirt", supposedly bullet-proof and usually the main item one associates with the Ghost Dance, was almost exclusively a Lakota thing. Most other groups did not use them. Also, the movement was practiced by only a small part of the total Indian population, and even in the groups that did practice it, it was generally less than half the population that did. Some people still do practice the Ghost Dance, although I doubt it is an unadulterated version of the original. Peace, Donn -- ----------------- Don Chambers (chambers@csr.utexas.edu) 471-5573 Univ. of Texas Center for Space Research