Ghost Dance History

The first Ghost Dance began in 1869 with the spiritual visions of a prophet named Wodziwob, a Northern Paiute from the Walker River Indian Reservation in Nevada. In his vision, Wodziwob was told that the Indian dead would return and with them the old, happy life, provided that Native people tirelessly devoted themselves to around dances. Native adherents assembled for dances that lasted four or five days. Dancers collapsed from exhaustion and received visions in which they saw their deceased relatives. This Ghost Dance spread throughout native California and up into Oregon in the 1870s. It was similar to the Ghost Dance proper in its excitement over immediate supernatural phenomenon.
They must refuse alcohol and limit their contact with Euro-Americans. This religious

We need to consider what it provided for the people involved. It gave people a new spiritual life upon which to focus, that helped to meld divergent people, remainder of the groups from populations devastated by European-introduced diseases and conquest into a new community. This was a time when governmental officials had tremendous power over the lives of American Indian people. Native American religions were frowned on as primitive and counterproductive. During a time of extreme repression of Native life. As a result, many traditional practices went underground. People could not afford to show how the blending of different religious and cultural ideals laid the foundation for a fierce form of Indian resistance. Perhaps the best-known rituals of Native peoples to Euro-Americans are the Ghost Dance.
Many societies of the plains also adopted an outgrowth of the 1869 Ghost Dance as part of their religious rituals. Among the Plains peoples, the Ghost Dance largely consisted of people dancing in a circle for hours or even days at a time. It was their belief that if they danced long enough, the Creator