Wovoka, the son of a disciple of Wodziwob’s, said he learned in his vision that he needed to tell his people they must love each other and do this dance for five consecutive days so that the sickness and death would cease and return dead Indians to this world. On January 1, 1889, Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson) had a vision similar to Wodziwob’s while he was in Mason Valley, Nevada, near the Walker River Reservation. As a result of the allotment system, Native Americans lost 90 million acres of land from 1887 to 1934. After all those who agreed to the allotment program bought land, the government considered the remaining plots a surplus for white settlers to purchase. This area would eventually become the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. The chief and his followers (including most of the Weeminuche Ute) consolidated in protest on the western portion of the Ute reservation at the foot of Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwest Colorado. Not all tribes bought into the program, because they saw how it conflicted with the social organization of many groups, which emphasized communal ownership and respect for the land.Ĭhief Ignacio of the Southern Ute tribe actively refused to accept the allotment system.
Ghost dance stop the world full#
Individuals could receive land allotments up to 160 acres in addition to full US citizenship. In contrast to the reservation system that forced tribes into areas as a group, the Dawes Act created a system of private land ownership amongst the tribes. Congressman Henry Dawes of Massachusetts wrote the bill for the General Allotment Act(also known as the Dawes Severalty Act or simply the Dawes Act), which passed in 1887. The tensions between the US government and Native Americans continued to rise with changes in policy toward the end of the nineteenth century. Scholars interpret the end of the dance as a result of the US government forcing tribes to stop, responding to the fears of those white settlers who saw it as a threat and tribes losing interest as the prophecies were not coming to pass. The 1870 Ghost Dance seemingly ended in the mid-1870s, though movements with ties to other teachings-such as the Big Head Cult and Bole-Maru religion-have continued into recent times. The ceremony amongst the Paviotso resembled a round dance, but as the dance spread to western Nevada, California, and Oregon, the ceremony changed from tribe to tribe as different groups added new songs and elements. In the late 1860s, a Paviotso man named Wodziwob fell into a trance in which he spoke of dead Indians coming back to life, eternal life and earthly paradise for all Indians, and all white people disappearing. The ideas between the two episodes blended traditional Native American beliefs with the Christian idea of a messiah. Both events began in Paiute country, near the Walker River Reservation in Nevada. The Ghost Dance movement includes two episodes, the first in 1870 and the second in 1890. One of these movements was the Ghost Dance. Recognizing threats to their traditional ways, Native Americans throughout the American west turned to “religious” movements hoping to bring an end to their struggle. The government focused their efforts toward the reservation system and tried to integrate Native Americans into a western education system and introduce them to agriculture. Several treaties hoped to settle the unrest, but often the US government did not uphold them and tribes did not agree with them.
In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, clashes between Native Americans and white settlers escalated, resulting in the so-called Indian Wars.
Culture, Contact, and ConflictĮvents such as the Louisiana Purchase, development of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Colorado Gold Rush, and Civil War propelled a wave of whites onto Indian lands. The Utes were one of the first groups to learn of the Ghost Dance teachings, which then spread through Colorado, over the mountains, and onto the plains in an attempt to create spiritual unity between the scattered Native American groups. The dances are performed to activate the movement’s prophecy of a return to traditional Native American ways of life. By that time, most Colorado tribes lived on reservations outside of the state. Ghost Dances are key ceremonies within a broader Native American religious movement that developed in the late nineteenth century in response to the westward expansion of whites.