The man with a vision
Portrait of Wovoka, a Paiute spiritual leader.
ALBUM
Orphaned as a teen, Wovoka was taken in by white ranchers, who named him Jack Wilson and taught him about the Christian Messiah. In adulthood, he reconnected more fully with his Paiute heritage. Wovoka, meaning “cutter,” became a spiritual leader known for his shamanic techniques, healing, and leading round dances. Following his vision and the spread of his Ghost Dance, there were false claims that the ritual dance was going to unite Native Americans in violence. Wovoka’s initial instructions included a call to peace with white people, even after friends and loved ones had died: “Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life.” After the Wounded Knee Massacre, Wovoka, saddened and discredited, lived the rest of his life in Mason Valley, Nevada. He held on to his belief that he had spoken to God; he died in 1932.
Upon awakening, Wovoka spread the word of his vision. So began the Ghost Dance, a ritual that raced like a brushfire from the Paiute through other tribes of the Great Basin and Plains, including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux. The ceremony blended traditional teachings, earlier ritual dances, and Christian theology; and its promise of peace and reunification with the dead gave hope to beleaguered Native Americans, many of them confined to reservations. Across the West, they began performing the Ghost Dance.
In a letter to various tribes, Wovoka outlined the marathon-like ritual. “You must make a dance to continue five days,” he said. “Dance four successive nights, and the last night keep up the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes.”
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Different Native American nations interpreted the dance, and the vision, in their own ways, while remaining peaceful. Indeed, Wovoka’s letter explicitly stated, “You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight.” To the Lakota Sioux, though, the ceremony seemed to promise the eventual end of the white man. As they danced, some Sioux wore decorated garments known as ghost shirts, believed to protect them from harm. Federal agents, frightened by the dance and what they saw as its implications, ignored expert opinions, and in 1890, placed some Sioux Ghost Dancers on a list of Native Americans to be relocated.
An Arapaho buckskin Ghost Dance shirt, ca 1890. BLACKHAWK MUSEUM
On December 29 of that year, Army troops surrounded a Lakota encampment at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. As the troops searched the encampment for weapons, some of the Lakota men began singing and performing the Ghost Dance. Precisely what happened next is unclear, but by most accounts, a shot rang out, prompting the soldiers to open fire into the encampment. They killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children in what came to be known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.
