Research Paper on the Ghost Dance & the Plains Indians

The Ghost Dance, a ritual that became a religion of hope for many Indian tribes in the latter 19th century, ironically played a significant role in the final obliteration of Native Indian autonomy by whites. For decades, the Sioux, like many other indigenous North American tribes, saw their civilization and culture erode before their very eyes during the pinnacle of Western encroachment and Native American withdrawal during the 19th century. They were the victims of a never-ending cultural and military war, launched by European colonists, continued by money hungry pioneers, and completed by an American government bent on the belief of manifest destiny. Entrapped by white civilization, forced onto lands with no religious meaning or agricultural value, and unable to be self-sustaining, Native American tribes struggled to connect with their once powerful cultural identity. Traditional respect for nature, spirits, and previous generations combined with disdain for the horrors of modern society brought by Europeans gave rise to the most powerful and destructive of the Native American religious movements, the Ghost Dance. Yet the true depth of the Ghost Dance was misread on the surface by both whites and Native Americans, whom both regarded it as a call to arms instead of embracing its true message of peace.

Indian tribes long had practiced a form of the Ghost Dance, which was to become the last gasps of a once-great Native American society. During their westward exploration in the 1820s, Lewis and Clark viewed similar dances, which expressed hopes of good harvests and offered prayers to the dead. Within the Paiute tribe of Nevada, the Ghost Dance existed for a couple decades as a ritual, not as a religion. But this changed when Wovoka, a Northern Paiute Indian claiming to be a prophet, announced a God-given vision during an 1889 solar eclipse (Hittman 1990: 2). From this, the Ghost Dance took off as a religious movement. Wovoka foresaw a North America free of disease, hunger, and, most importantly, white men. However, this would not come about in a violent matter, but from peaceful divine intervention with the land returning to its rightful inhabitants, the Native Americans (Hittman 1990: 63). Believing deeply in Wovoka’s prophecies, the Paiute sent word to many tribes that were once sworn enemies (Hittman 1990: 80).

From this, the Ghost Dance quickly took root in almost every major tribe. It offered a prospect for the future to the tribes, which once had controlled all of North America, but since had been degraded into dependents on the white man for all means of life (Utley 1963: vi). The realization in the nonviolence of the Ghost Dance was that more bloodshed would only lead to more decay, as continuing military warfare with the whites was unreasonable due to sheer numbers and technology (Hittman 1990: 102). Unfortunately, the Native Americans who followed it soon corrupted the Ghost Dance for their own purposes, centering instead on the eventual collapse of whites, which would have costly repercussions for both Native Americans and whites.
David Miller typifies the suspicion, misunderstanding, and anxiety many whites felt when viewing the ritual. An early investigator on the subject, he described it as a “strange dance” practiced by men and women “in the vain belief that it would restore them” (Miller 1959: 1). He considered the Ghost Dance a weird ritual that would lead them to fight for a “hopeless dream” (1959: 2). Ironically, Miller regarded himself as a serious investigator of a “whitewashed” subject that had been misconstrued by whites. Unfortunately, many shared his opinion, with reports between army leaders reaching as far as the President regarding the Ghost Dance as a militant practice that needed to be halted after the Battle at Wounded Knee.
For the Ghost Dance to succeed, a demanding and intricate ritual was required for the tribes to perform. It involved all the people of the tribe with the high priest leading with a ghost stick (Mooney 1965: 178). Arranged in a circle around the high priest, each dancer put his hands on a neighbor's shoulder, and then began to wail out in grief the names of departed friends and family (Mooney 1965: 180). After listening to an address from the high priest, they rose up in a larger circle and ran as fast as they could while grasping one another’s hands (Mooney 181). They continued to dance in a circular manner, intoning a tribe-specific chant, such as the Sioux “Father, I come; Mother, I Come; Brother, I Come; Father, give us back our arrows” (Mooney 1965: 181). The climax occurred when one hundred men and women so exhausted themselves they fell over into a trance-like unconsciousness (Mooney 1965: 181). This had to be performed for five straight days, dancing each night and on the last night continuing until morning. This general format was common among tribes with some minor differences being found in the song, the leader, and the dance style.

I will deal with the Ghost Dance as music in a regional sense and its particularities and consequences in a Sioux scope. It should be noted, however, that the source, Shoshone Ghost Dance Religion, in fact deals with the Shoshone tribe, but the Shoshone were a part of a Great Basin culture much like that of the Plains Indians. In fact, George Herzog notes that the Plains Indians Ghost Dance style “can be traced to the Great Basin: musical evidence reflects the diffusion of the Ghost Dance from that region to and through the Plains” (1935: 404).

For the Plains Indians, the music of the Ghost Dance reflected a new shift in musical direction, where a style was introduced that was “foreign to the Plains; its patterns were different from those prevalent in Plains music” (Herzog1935: 405). Tribes confronted the problem of respecting previous musical styles while embracing the new beliefs. Thus, the Ghost Dance was altered by region and culture within the Native American society that respected conventional values while implementing contemporary changes.

Absent of musical instruments except inclusion of the simple drum, the ritual based itself on prayer through chant. A musical analysis reveals the deep complexity created by years of established and contemporaneous influence of what was initially misinterpreted to be a primitive style encouraging war. Two rhythmic organizations, the duple and the triple, that featured highlights of a new music structure and the symbols of old, dominated the songs of the Ghost Dance for the Plains Indians. Of 130 songs analyzed by Judith Vander, sixty percent utilized duple, thirty-five percent triple, and the remaining a combination of the two (1997: 380).

In the songs of combined organization, there is an interesting contrast between the even symmetrical movement of the duple organization and the rolling movement in the triple organization (Vander 1997: 381). Often they feature subtle musical changes, such as ties overriding the rhythmic patterns of three, suggesting groups of two, while at the end of a triple section, the final placement eases the transition back into the duple organization (Vander 1997: 381). But the steady beat of both organizations is mixed in with unexpected placement of long notes within a rhythmic setting, identified as syncopations (Vander 1997: 383). A distinct syncopation occurs in triple rhythmic organization songs, where an eighth follows a quarter, creating a short-long pattern, establishing a rhythm that plays against the standard three-beat patterns, creating a sequence that stands out in rhythmic context (Vander 1997: 384).

Slow tempos typified Plains Indians songs, but the fact that most duple organization songs have a tempo in the range from eighty to one hundred showed the dramatic, and quick, influence of the Ghost Dance music. The rhythmic style often conflicted with the established styles. A Shoshone Indian, for example, remarked, “When you’re singing songs, you’re supposed to kind of drag your song. Make that song pretty” (Vander 1997: 390). Correspondingly, it was noted by the same Indian that not singing “the Ghost Dance songs too fast” became desirable, showing that tribes accustomed to a slower tempo transformed the original Ghost Dance for their liking. The rhythmic organization is emblematic of the Native American quandary: whether to depend on tradition or to dive headfirst into a radical new belief system. The result often fell in the middle with a blend of traditional musical styles and Ghost Dance innovation that shaped many musically unique songs.

In contrast to the somewhat diverse and unpredictable rhythms, melody provided conformity by relying on traditional melodic ideas. Although the melodic range of the songs extended from a third to a ninth, the basis of the Plains Indians songs were four to five pitches within a narrow range, typical of most tribes in the Great Basin (Herzog 1935: 408). Of over 100 songs broken down by Herzog, eighty-five percent encompassed a fifth or a sixth, while only ten percent used melodies over a sixth (1935: 408). Within this range, Vander notes that the melody is characteristically undulating-descending, meaning there were smooth patterns as the notes went up and down on the scale to provide a soothing, transient effect (396), and Herzog states, that the “gradually descending melodies do not have much freedom of movement when confined to a narrow space” (1935: 409).

Yet within these boundaries, the practice of setting more than one melody note per syllable of text is occasionally used (Vander 1997: 406). Compared to the trill, an ornament in European classical music, this provides an unusual change in a strict and rigid melodic structure (Vander 1997: 406). Indeed, innovations helped form a new style within a traditional setting. It appears that the Plains Indians, similar to other tribes, favored the use of a traditional part of their musical culture within the new culture while still finding a way to adapt it for their own use in the Ghost Dance. The synthesis by hundreds of tribes of many musical traditions with a new ritual demonstrates the desire that Indians felt for a return of a superior Native American presence reflects their desperation, a desperation that sowed receptiveness to any belief that envisioned regaining dominance.

Only after being finally conquered by a foreign force did the defeated tribes seem to realize the importance of unifying. Within the Plains Indians, intertribal fighting had continued almost until the period of reservations and the emergence of the Ghost Dance during the 1880’s. Although a council of tribes had been proposed during Geronimo’s time in the 1870’s, irreconcilable differences prevailed over the need for action against an increasingly grim state of affairs (Utley 1963: 19). Even with the Ghost Dance, the sole unifying factor was the dream of vanquishing the white man and the reestablishment of dominance of the Native American. Out of the Ghost Dance arose untenable beliefs such as the Sioux “ghost shirt”, which protected one from bullets, disease, and anything the white man had to offer. Desperation fed many of the implausible ideas that connected themselves to the Ghost Dance, yet they comforted a people decimated by famine, disease, war, and loss of dignity.

Unfortunately, the very things that appeared to provide consolation to people, like the ghost shirt, eventually brought about the swift downfall of the Ghost Dance and the tribes that followed them. Nothing demonstrated this better than the battle—or massacre, depending on the historian—of Wounded Knee in 1890.

On the morning of December 29th, the Seventh Cavalry, headed by Col. James Forsyth, had orders to collect the weapons of the Sioux (Utley 1963: 206). The Sioux regarded firearms as one of the last objects of pride they still had and resented their being taken, even temporarily. Combined with the idea of invincibility of the ghost shirt and the foretelling of the Ghost Dance driving the white man out, the atmosphere on the South Dakota reservation became increasingly hostile. The spark occurred when a medicine man named Yellow Bird, dressed in Ghost Dance attire, began to throw dirt and dance around the American soldiers (Utley 1963: 210). Pointing to the soldiers, he then told a group of agitated warriors, “their bullets cannot penetrate us; the prairie is large and the bullets will not go towards you; they will not penetrate you” (Utley 1963: 210). Within a few minutes, a band of young warriors opened fire. The regiment quickly swarmed, torching teepees and mowing down men, women, and children alike with grape shot and musket rounds. The battle rapidly turned into a bloodbath. Soldiers slaughtered anyone who moved. In the end one hundred fifty Sioux were dead, including forty-four women and eighteen children and twenty-five American soldiers perished. Undeniably, the massacre served as a literal and symbolic ending to Native American culture: the Sioux were forced from their native lands of South Dakota and sent to Oklahoma, forbidden to perform the Ghost Dance again. Wounded Knee became an historic symbol for the annihilation of a culture, of a people, and of the Ghost Dance.

Misinterpreted by whites as a primitive wartime ritual and regarded as a supreme source of strength against the whites by Native Americans, its real emphasis on peace*, dignity, and respect never emerged out of the Ghost Dance as Wovoka had anticipated. Instead, misconstrued perceptions cloaked and defeated the many beautiful aspects of the ritual that both sides ignored. Thus, the misapprehensions of the white man and the Native Americans indirectly led to the ultimate collapse of a once strong native people and of the Ghost Dance itself.

Bibliography

Ghost Dance. Dir. Tim Schwab. Perf. Barry LeBeau, Gemma Lockhart, and Tim
Schwab. Videocassette. South Dakota Arts Council, 1990.

Herzog, George. “Plains Ghost Dance and Great Basin Music”. American
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Hittman, Michael. Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
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Miller, David. Ghost Dance. New York, Duell Sloan and Pierce, 1959.

Mooney, James. The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Chicago:
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Utley, Robert. Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven: Yale University Press,
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Vander, Judith. Shoshone Ghost Dance Religion. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
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