Ghost dance

It would be difficult to designate the Ghost Dance of the Indians of North America, for instance, as anything but a phenomenon of acculturation; […].

In the fall of 1890, a new religious fever, “Ghost Dancing,” spread among the Indian tribes pushed to the far edge of the prairies by broken treaties and the advance of the white man. Their religion held that floods would come, destroying, the whites. And then, game would return; dead Indians would be resurrected, and living Indians would be protected from all harm by wearing painted ghost shirts and performing the special dance.

In life, many of the Army’s victims were the followers of the Ghost Dance, a nineteenth-century faith that originated with a vision, delivered, it was said, by God to the Paiute messiah Jack Wilson, more commonly known as Wovoka.