When It Shake the Earth

The Ghost Dance and the Creation of the American Indian

By guest contributor The Politicrat.

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Stories never die; they are carried in the wind, choosing, as they must, the years of each generation they will enter. Winter winds on the reservation are cruel. The force of the lingering cold hardship blows through the cracks, under doors, and through broken windows. They remind us that it is easy to die, and summer is far away.

Adrian C. Louis, The Ghost Dancers

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Introduction

Identity is an ever-evolving paradigm. Be it individual, cultural, or ethnic, the conception and understanding of one’s identity is subject to change over time, and is furthermore shaped by countless experiences, incidents, and interactions, often in direct response to such things. Insofar as individual societies are concerned, cultural identity is typically determined by two major variables. The first of these pertains to environmental and geographical factors. Cultures adapt to the environments in which they develop, with climate and geography determining agricultural practices, architecture, and technologies. Natural hazards shape a society’s cultural outlook, and impels it to develop knowledge, tools, and rituals to cope with the consequences of such and to mitigate their risks; these elements, in turn, become integral to the culture’s belief system. Unique geographical features become focal points for religious practices, and environmental characteristics such as flora, fauna, and natural resources influence spiritual beliefs and traditions. Furthermore, the availability and/or scarcity of resources in a given geographical region determines a culture’s philosophical and religious perspectives on matters concerning fertility, stewardship of the land, and the overarching relationship between man and nature.

The second determinant of a people’s identity is that of cultural encounters. When two foreign cultures converge, it typically leads to the exchange, diffusion, and syncretization of ideas, technologies, beliefs, practices, and languages. However, this is not always a peaceful affair. Cultural encounters have historically led to conflicts, often resulting in one group subjugating the other and forcing them to assimilate. In many instances, the subjugated culture lacks the strength to resist, and ultimately becomes extinct. Much of the time, however, its people will attempt to assert and reaffirm their identity in direct response to perceived threats of assimilation and cultural erasure. Therefore, cultural encounters can reinforce and strengthen a culture’s identity by fostering a sense of resilience and uniqueness. In turn, such confrontations and struggles prompt collective introspection on one’s own deeper cultural norms and values, leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation of one’s own cultural heritage and identity, in addition to a reevaluation and reaffirmation of tradition. When a culture faces possible extinction in the wake of hostile encounters, it will look for ways to adapt as a means of ensuring its own survival amidst the inevitable conquest, intent upon self-preservation, with the hope that it may one day experience revitalization.

This was precisely the dilemma that the American Indians faced during the 19th century, particularly in the wake of westward expansion. As American settlers continued to pour westward, tensions further escalated between indigenous groups and homesteaders, often resulting in violence. In direct response, the United States government amplified its military presence west of the Mississippi, deploying federal troops to protect settlers, secure natural resources, and quell Indian aggression. By the time of the War Between the States, native resistance was at an all-time high, setting the stage for the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s, which ultimately ended in a U.S. victory. In order to expedite the assimilation process, the United States federal government passed the Dawes Act in 1887, which reorganized the reservation system and mandated the allotment and subdivision of tribal lands.

The threat of assimilation and cultural erasure at the hands of white Americans culminated in a heightened sense of desperation and cultural anxiety among the indigenous populations. This anxiety was the result of multiple factors — the disappearance of the buffalo, the influx of white settlers, enlarged U.S. troop and administrative presence, new diseases, and forceful assimilation. Western paradigms of land-ownership — constructs that were foreign to indigenous peoples at the time — became the law of the land, and tribal chiefs, seeking to benefit financially from the white man’s presence, sold off tracts of ancestral lands. This resulted in the gradual deterioration of communal bonds and tribal identities, as well as the loss of traditional kinship structures. The fear of cultural extinction emboldened countless indigenous groups who sought to resist white dominance and reassert their sovereignty. This sentiment expressed itself in a variety of ways. Some elements resorted to violence as a means of expelling white settlers and toppling local administrations. Others took part in more peaceable modes of revolt, intent on overthrowing the alien yoke of American culture by engaging in organized religious and quasi-religious rituals that they believed would usher in an era of renewal. While the late 19th century witnessed the emergence of various sects dedicated to this form of spiritual resistance, most did not have any real, significant, long-term impact, save for one: the Ghost Dance.

I. The Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance was a Native American spiritual movement that emerged in the late 19th century as a response to the influx of white settlers, its primary aim being to revitalize the vanishing indigenous cultures of North America. Through elaborate, performative ceremonies, practitioners of the Ghost Dance sought to invoke divine powers, which they believed would ultimately deliver their people from under the ostensible heel of white dominance and usher in a new cosmic age in which the balance of nature would be restored. In his essay “The Cultural Significance of the Ghost Dance,” the 20th-century American anthropologist Alexander Lesser describes the Ghost Dance’s underlying doctrine as being one of hope and catharsis, stating that it “promised a destruction of the invading white man, a return of the buffalo and old Indian ways, and a reunion of the Indians and their deceased forbears.”

At its height, the Ghost Dance was often mischaracterized as a fundamentally reactionary and violent movement. Another misconception — one that prevails to this day — is that the Ghost Dance was a restorationist movement, built on traditional religious practices, the desire to recreate the past, and an irrational fanaticism; while the Ghost Dance certainly incorporated traditional practices and ideas, its underlying philosophy was quite forward-thinking and grounded in realism. The ethos of the Ghost Dance was not fatalistic or rooted in any kind of pessimism. Rather, it emphasized the importance of adapting to the circumstances of the present in order to ensure future renewal. In the introduction to his 1996 essay “The Whole World Is Coming: The 1890 Ghost Dance Movement as Utopia,” published in Utopian Studies, folklorist B.C. Mohrbacher states:

This Ghost Dance has often been described as the desperate last act of a vanishing culture. And while in many ways the situation for Native Americans in the late nineteenth century was grim, I would suggest that the Ghost Dance, as a cultural phenomenon, is not tragic but a resourceful cultural response to historical reality. (p. 75)

The Ghost Dance movement can therefore not be merely reduced to some last-ditch effort to resist cultural extinction. Nor can it be labeled as a failure. On the contrary, particularly as it pertains to the preservation of Indian identity and the quest to achieve cultural renewal, one may argue that it actually succeeded in accomplishing its long-term objectives. While it may not have ushered in a new cosmic age in the supernatural sense, the Ghost Dance and its consequences nonetheless played a pivotal role in the creation of a unified Pan-Indian identity, both cultural and civic, and eventually paved the way for demographic revival in the 20th century.

The term “Ghost Dance” refers to two distinct social and spiritual movements that took hold in American Indian societies in the latter half of the 19th century. The first incarnation originated around the year 1870 and was founded by a Paviotso man by the name of Wodziwob. The fundamental principle of this Ghost Dance was the idea that, by engaging in elaborate ceremonial dances, the spirits of long-dead ancestors would return and establish a paradise free of the white man’s presence. Although the Ghost Dance ceremony was initially derivative of the Paviotso round dance, the movement soon spread to other tribes throughout the American West, who incorporated it with practices of their own. Despite its relative initial popularity among such tribes, the movement died out by 1875 or 1876. The reason for this decline was that many of its practitioners felt that it was not working, and thus useless; others viewed its antiwhite ethos as counterintuitive to the survival of their people. Minus several insignificant holdouts who continued to practice the Ghost Dance, by the 1880s it had become largely forgotten.

The impact of the second Ghost Dance was far more profound, and when people speak of “The Ghost Dance,” it is typically this iteration that they refer to. Founded in 1889 by Paiute religious leader Jack Wilson, better known by his nickname Wovoka (“Wood Cutter” in the northern Paiute language), the second Ghost Dance was defined by a vision that was far more lucid than that of its predecessor. It placed a heavier emphasis on prophecy, ethics, and communal bonds. Whereas the first Ghost Dance was typified by the desire to usher in an age that was identical to the past — a time prior to the arrival of the Europeans — Wilson’s Ghost Dance differed significantly in how it envisioned the future. Rather than being rooted in revanchism, the prime directive of the second Ghost Dance was to offer indigenous Americans a means of navigating and adapting to a rapidly changing world; the future paradise was to be something wholly new, as opposed to a reinstitution of a previous age. Such a mindset ultimately served as a means of empowering Indian peoples to reassert, to redefine, and subsequently to retain their sense of identity while also striving to help shape the course of modern society. This is the central theme of historian Louis S. Warren’s 2017 book God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America. Warren highlights this in the introductory chapter, as he challenges those who continue to insist erroneously upon the supposed reactionary ethos of the [second] Ghost Dance:

While historians and anthropologists have interpreted the [Ghost Dance] faith as an outright rejection of modernity, the Ghost Dance promised to help Indians address the implications of American conquest and to live in the nation as Indians. Much of the religion’s allure came from its promise to help Indians of the Industrial Age who sought futures both modern and traditional, prosperity and health in modern pursuits, and vibrant, enduring Indian culture. (p. 8)

Transformational might be the word that most appropriately describes “The Ghost Dance,” as the movement made it possible for American Indian communities to develop a new sense of cultural unity that could replace their old, faded perceptions of identity. The renewed conception of indigenous cultural identity fostered by the Ghost Dance was not the same as that which had existed prior; they were rooted in two completely different paradigms. The idea of a shared American Indian identity is in fact a very recent development. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, cultural identity was primarily organized along tribal and national lines. However, these divergent identities slowly began to erode in the decades following first contact. This was due to a combination of factors — acute population decline due to the introduction of foreign diseases, Christianization efforts, the spread of European (and eventually U.S.) administrative rule, the dissolution of sovereign Indian territories, and assimilation policies.

II. The Origins of Pan-Indianism

The notion of a single “American Indian identity” did not exist until approximately a century ago. Prior to its inception, as a concept, there was not a single soul alive who self-identified as an “American Indian.” This common designator was little more than a colloquial term almost exclusively used by non-indigenous folk as a label to designate a person of indigenous heritage. Indigenous inhabitants of North America wholly identified themselves as belonging to distinct tribes — as Lakota, as Navajo, as Apache, as Paiute, as Cherokee, as Comanche, etc. However, by the late 19th century, distinct tribal identity had become practically nonexistent apart from the application of mere labels; likewise, there was hardly any sense of community to be seen. But the Ghost Dance changed this.

The most significant consequence of the Ghost Dance was the emergence of “Pan-Indianism” and the subsequent development of a unified “American Indian” identity. “Pan-Indianism” refers to the movement that emerged among various Native American tribes and, to a lesser extent, Canadian first-nations people at the beginning of the 20th century. On a fundamental level it is motivated by a desire to achieve solidarity, unity, and an overall feeling of empowerment within the broader Native American community, in order to establish a common identity that transcends both national and tribal boundaries.

While its embryonic roots can be traced back a century prior (with Tecumseh’s short-lived intertribal confederacy often cited as the first coordinated attempt to establish such a movement), these early endeavors found little long-term success, and were typically characterized by violent antiwhite resistance as opposed to peaceful efforts aimed at achieving cultural revitalization. Nonetheless, a common theme resided within the hearts of these prototypical movements — a single thread of yarn that would connect them to the later movements which would ultimately go on to inherit this perennial struggle: the desire to unite the various tribes of the Americas through a single, shared spiritual ethos. Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa, much like Jack Wilson, was called “The Prophet.” Although inspired by earlier, more regional “Pan-Indian” resistance efforts, namely that of Pontiac and the likewise-dubbed prophet Neolin in the 1760s, the mission of Tecumseh and his prophet brother was far more coordinated and wide-spread in its reach. The religious element of Tecumseh’s movement was better-defined, with Tenskwatawa’s message more coherent and placing a greater emphasis on the importance of ritual. And among the most important of these rituals was ceremonial dance — an invocation of ancestors, whose spirits they hoped would cleanse the land of the pale-skinned interlopers, bring back the game, and return them to the golden age of pre-contact life.

Like Pontiac’s before him, Tecumseh’s confederacy came to an end, and he was killed in battle in 1813. Tenskwatawa would eventually forsake his spiritual calling as prophet, and, after the movement disintegrated, he went on to assist the U.S. government in the resettlement of his people. The charisma and diplomatic genius of Tecumseh and the passion of Tenskwatawa’s message were fundamental to the successful creation of what was the first true Pan-Indian project in Amerindian history. However, at the end of the day, it only proved to be as strong as its devotees. Ethnic tensions and old rivalries had always threatened to tear the fragile union apart, and the confederacy’s immediate fragmentation following Tecumseh’s death made it appear, at the time, that Pan-Indian unity was little more than a dotish dream. Yet although the confederation did not last and the revivalist message failed in its objective to sow the seeds of a new intertribal identity, the initial success of Tecumseh’s efforts did prove one thing: that Pan-Indian unity was possible.

But despite the movement’s implosion, the spiritual ethos that defined it was not so easily eradicated. For the ritualistic dances and its mission of revivalism had already caught on with various tribes, such as the Cherokee, the Creek, and a number of Algonquin-speaking peoples. And while they did not again attempt to unite, largely abandoning the cause of Pan-Indianism, the dances continued. Over the course of his mission to unite the tribes, which began around 1811, Tecumseh, accompanied by his “prophets,” traveled thousands of miles across the U.S. with the intent of recruiting hundreds of tribes to join his cause; in the end, he found only moderate success. But there was one aspect of his mission that seemed to speak to them all — a yearning for cultural and spiritual renewal. Revivalist movements began to emerge across the American West throughout the early to mid-1800s; and while most garnered little influence, the tribal dances that emerged during this period would set the precedent for the Ghost Dance’s popularity and, perhaps inadvertently, Tecumseh’s vision of a Pan-Indian ethnogenesis.

By the late 1800s, the skepticism (or outright antipathy) towards the idea of “Pan-Indian identity” was far less pervasive than it had been at the start of the century. The buffalo had nearly disappeared, community bonds had become severed, and entire tribes had practically gone extinct. The 1870s saw a large portion of the American Indian population abandon their tribal lands for the cities in search of economic opportunity. While many of these Indian urbanites attempted to conserve certain traditions they believed could be reconciled with modernity, and even tried to maintain a sense of community among themselves by holding large gatherings and festivals, such practices were typically discouraged by employers and local authorities, placing them under a great deal of systemic pressure.

By the mid-to-late 1880s, a significant percentage of these indigenous urban workers had practically given up their cultural identities. As for those who sought to preserve what little remained of their traditional ways of life, many found it pointless; such stalwarts could not help but feel that their society had become sterile and their culture dysgenic. The total American Indian population had gone down from over 800,000 in 1800 to just under 230,000 by 1890. With only fragments of tradition and their communities few in number, elements of the American Indian population, across countless tribes, began to wonder whether the only path to survival was to stand in firm solidarity with other tribes. The only issue was the cultural and linguistic barriers that had for so long kept them at odds. However, by this point, intertribal warfare had become largely nonexistent. Old rivalries subsided. For their populations already sat at an all-time low; war was simply not worth the risk. But did that mean that they could just set their differences aside, and work together in pursuit of ethnic revitalization? Surely not. After all, that had been tried before, throughout the former half of the century; it was a dream that had died with Tecumseh. So with the existential threat of extinction on the horizon, the remnants of indigenous America were willing to entertain any suggestion. And it just so happened that one man may have had that answer.

III. Ethnogenesis & Culture

In the year 1888, whispers of a mysterious sage — a man said to have received a prophecy from God himself — reached the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. As the weeks went by, these whispers grew louder, and became rumor. According to these rumors, the prophecy came in the form of a vision — a vision of a future where the buffalo had returned, where the spirits of the dead had arisen, and where all nations of the pre-Columbian world lived in utter harmony. This enigmatic seer was none other than Wovoka himself.

Various scholars have noted the striking similarities between the eschatological worldview espoused by Wovoka and that of Christianity, particularly the premillennial dispensationalism views that had grown popular within many circles of American Protestantism throughout the latter half of the 19th century. This belief, though typically viewed as heterodox by mainline Christian denominations, suggested that none of the prophecies described in the Book of Revelation had yet been fulfilled, and that, at some point in the future, the end times would unfold in a distinct sequence of events — or dispensations — beginning with a great, seven-year tribulation leading up to Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ, followed by a millennium of peace, the destruction of Satan, and ending with the Last Judgment. By the 1880s, this theological perspective and variations on it, commonly referred to as “Millenarianism,” had become the leading eschatological perspective among Adventists, Baptists, and certain branches of Presbyterianism, as well as more heretical sects like the Watchtower Society and the Latter-Day Saint movement (which had associated with certain elements of the Ghost Dance early on). The Ghost Dance has been described as Millenarian, particularly due to its apocalypticism, promise of renewal, and the coming of a new age. Some have even gone so far as to call it “utopian.” B.C. Mohrbacher writes:

The utopian promise of the Ghost Dance can be described in terms of its promise of a renewed world, its ritual practice, and its creation of identity. The utopian promise is realized through actual practice of the Ghost Dance ceremony itself as well as through the cultural and demographic revitalizations which grew out of it. These revitalizations can be described as paying dividends in terms of renewed identity and unity. (p. 84)

While it may be a stretch to label it as “utopian,” given the term’s Whiggish, European connotation, Mohrbacher’s suggestion that the inherent optimism of the Ghost Dance is the prime mover of the cultural renaissance it sparked is nonetheless a fascinating claim. Historically, all cultures are ultimately the outgrowth of some underlying, deep-seated spiritual tradition, be it a conventional religion, folk spiritualism, or a simple cult of the dead. Throughout history, religion has been the prime inspiration for the greatest, most inspired works of art, of all different forms. The Ghost Dance is no exception.

The Ghost Dance can be described as the “cultural gestation” stage of the Pan-Indian ethnogenesis. First adopted by the Paiute peoples in Nevada, the movement swept across North America like wildfire. Between 1888 and 1890, disciples of Wovoka were dispatched throughout the American West to disseminate the doctrine to the tribes, taking only a matter of months to reach the nations of the Great Plains, who took a particularly keen interest in it. The Plains Indians had been affected the most by westward expansion and U.S. frontier policy relative to most other tribal groups, and by the 1880s their communities were defined by a sense of abject despair. But the Ghost Dance gave them hope.

It would be both reductive and inaccurate to characterize the Ghost Dance as though it were some kind of a monolith. One of the things that made it so unique was that, from a doctrinal perspective, it emphasized that the emergent Indian identity was defined not merely by Pan-indigeneity, but just as equally required American Indians to re-embrace their individual tribal identities as well. In fact, Pan-Indian identity itself, according to the precepts of the Ghost Dance, was dependent upon tribal identity, as one could not take pride in being an Indian unless he or she was, first and foremost, proud of his or her nation as well; only from there could a common sense of “Indianness” be possible, where unity was rooted in the shared experience of all Indian peoples across all tribes.

Dual identity was an important component of Indianness. Although the ultimate goal of Pan-Indianism was to build an identity that could eventually transcend tribal lines, tribe was not to be conflated with race. Literary scholar Robert K. Thomas points out that this phenomenon of “transcendence” was already under way within just over a decade of the Ghost Dance’s inauguration, stating that “by 1900 the Sioux Indian was Sioux and he was an ‘Indian’; further, the symbols of being a Sioux and being an ‘Indian’ were consistent with one another.”

There were two areas in which Wovoka stressed the importance of tribal identity within the context of the broader notion of “Indianness.” The first emphasized the importance of interpretive and practical miscellany in its performance. The Ghost Dance was not intended to be a standardized, universal ritual. Each tribe was encouraged to put its own unique spin on it so that it could reflect the distinctness and individual character of that tribe. The Ghost Dance “doctrine” was similarly not uniform, but instead subject to interpretation on a case-by-case basis. This was by design, as Wovoka understood that, despite the shared experiences that all Indians had in common, individual context — often determined along the basis of tribal custom — was assorted. Thus, the Ghost Dance could be adapted in such a way that it could reflect each individual tribe’s needs.

Wovoka understood that Pan-indigeneity could never be monolithic. Nor did he wish for it to be. The Ghost Dance itself was a general ritual with a core objective; its premise suggested that if all the tribes performed the ceremonies in a way that best reflected their own communities’ needs, then that is how revitalization might best be achieved, both in the spiritual and material sense. This is perhaps best reflected in the series of epistles that Wovoka wrote to various Indian tribes, wherein he illustrated the core dogmata of the Ghost Dance:

What you get home you make dance, and will give you the same, when you dance four days and in night one day, dance daytime, five days and then fifth, will wash five for everybody. He likes you flock you give him good many things, he heart been setting feel good. After you get home, will give good cloud, and give you chance to make you feel good, and he give you good spirit, and he give you all a good paint. You folks want you to come in three [months] here, any tribes from there. There will be good bit snow this year. Sometimes rain’s, in fall, this year some rain, never give you anything like that, grandfather said when he die never no cry. No hurt anybody, no fight, good behave always, it will give you satisfaction, this young man, he is a good Father and mother, don’t tell no white man. Jesus was on ground, he just like cloud. Everybody is alive again. I don’t know when they will [be] here, maybe this fall or in spring. Everybody never get sick, be young again [ ] (if young fellow no sick anymore)[,] work for white men never trouble with him until you leave, when it shake the earth don’t be afraid no harm anybody. You make dance for six weeks night, and put your foot [food?] in dance to eat for every body and wash in the water, that is all to tell, I am in to you. And you will received a good words from him some time. Don’t tell lies.

One of the defining features of the Ghost Dance, particularly regarding its role in the revitalization of indigenous American cultures, was the formulation of a new musical tradition. In addition to supplementary dances that were incorporated into their respective ceremonies, each tribe was known for its unique collection of Ghost Dance songs that more or less reflected their individual tribal identities. The songs were thematically and musically diverse. Some reflected the cultural anxieties unique to the individual tribe. Others were glaring affirmations of tribal or Pan-Indian identity. A good number of them were antiwhite polemics. And yet, in contrast, many more echoed a deep desire to live in harmony alongside whites, further emphasizing the peaceful ethos expounded by Wovoka. But the most common theme present within these songs was the promise of renewal. Among the most famous of these is the “Ghost Dance Song of the Sioux”:

The whole world is coming.
A nation is coming, a nation is coming.
The eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
The father says so, the father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming.
The crow has brought the message to the tribe.
The father says so, the father says so.

– Anonymous

Songs such as this, and many more, are the root of the contemporary American Indian musical tradition and continue to be sung at pow-wows and ceremonies on reservations all across the country. Despite having initially been distinct expressions of a given tribe’s experience — a product of the Ghost Dance’s artistic and ritualistic diversity — these songs have come to transcend mere tribal identity. They belong to a shared heritage, built upon a common set of shared experiences.

IV. Modern Reflections

The Ghost Dance and its legacy still resides at the heart of American Indian identity to this very day. If we look hard enough, we can notice traces of its ethos interwoven throughout contemporary Indian art, including music, film, and works of literature. Many times, they function as a sort of ongoing dialogue between both past and present — not merely commentaries on how the past affects the present, but metaphysical dialectics that rise above any one generation.

Adrian C. Louis’s posthumously published picaresque novel The Ghost Dancers is a recent example of such, and serves as both a thoughtful and humorous exposé into what it means to be an American Indian in the contemporary era. Set in South Dakota in 1988, in the wake of Lakota activist Russell Means’s failed bid for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination (which ultimately went to Ron Paul), the novel follows Lyman “Bean” Wilson, a middle-aged university professor of mixed heritage, as he struggles to come to terms with his identity, namely in reconciling both his white and Paiute ancestries in a world that does not really view him as either. And this is made even more complicated due to his family legacy.

In the novel, Bean is depicted as the great-grandson of “Jack Wilson” (Wovoka), founder of the Ghost Dance. As is the case in many works of contemporary indigenous literature, the narrative presents itself as a sort of timeless dialectic between the protagonist and his ancestor, who just so happens to be the figure most arguably responsible for planting the seeds of American Indian identity. While Bean is shown to have a great deal of admiration for Wovoka, he often feels haunted by the specter of his forefather; and his ancestry is revealed to be one of the fundamental contributors to his identity crisis. This point is conveyed both explicitly and implicitly throughout the duration of the narrative, the most notable example occurring in chapter eight, when Bean’s student, Donelle, with whom he has a sexual relationship, reads him his recently published editorial on the Battle of Wounded Knee and his great-grandfather’s role in shaping not merely the contemporary identity of the Paiute people, but Pan-Indian identity in general:

Stories of the “Paiute Messiah” and his powers soon spread to many of the western tribes, including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Bannock, Shoshone, and numerous others, including the Mormon Cult based in Utah. They too, in search of redemption for their ludicrous views, danced the Ghost Dance. More to the point, however, the message of Wovoka was brought back to Dakota Territory, to the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota, by various messengers, such as Short Bull. (p. 124)

Although being read aloud to him within the context of the narrative, it is presented almost as though this were the past itself speaking to him — the imprint of events, long gone by. The scene continues with Bean expressing dislike for his piece, while Donelle insists on the contrary. The exchange that follows ultimately indicates that Bean knows that his article is well-written. Rather, his insecurities derive from the internal crisis of identity that he faces and the looming shadow of Wovoka.

Much of this insecurity comes from the challenges he faces as a mixed-race, white-indigenous man living in an area that is predominantly Native American. Despite his Paiute background, and the fact that he himself identifies as an Indian, Bean often finds himself the target of ridicule by the Lakota residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation, who often deride him for his partial Indian heritage, saying he looks “too white” and calling him a “half-breed.” There is a certain irony to this, given that Bean is the descendent of the Ghost Dance’s founder, and the fact that the Ghost Dance is of significant importance in the history of the Lakota Sioux, arguably more than any other tribe; this can be attributed to the cultural trauma they experienced as a result of the Wounded Knee Massacre — a trauma that ultimately served as a means to invigorate their assiduous quest towards revitalization.

Bean’s hecklers represent an exclusionary view of Indianness. Ever since the ethnogenesis of the American Indian, there has been a history of prejudice within both American indigenous and Canadian first-nation communities against peoples of mixed heritage. Initially rooted from a place of defensiveness regarding the intrusion of whites into indigenous spaces, this eventually evolved into antipathy towards individuals of mixed parentage exhibiting predominantly European features. While exclusionism has always existed within the broader history of Native American societies, the phenomenon we see today is not rooted in the same paradigm as that of historic indigenous communities organized along tribal lines. Instead, it is directly symptomatic of Pan-Indianism itself — a sign of an emergent “nationalism” that has been slowly gestating since the American Indian ethnogenesis. While certainly an empowering force, as all nationalism tends to be, this sentiment is indicative of an ironic misunderstanding of what Pan-Indian unity — the ethos of the Ghost Dance — was initially all about. Today, within these communities, it is more common to be concerned about the extent of a person’s “Indianness,” as opposed to his or her specific tribal heritage, as it had been previously. And herein lies another irony.

The idea of “blood quantum” — determining Native American identity and tribal membership based on a minimum percentage of “pure” Native ancestry — has its origins in colonial policies aimed at gradually phasing out Native identities as a means of engineering assimilation. By defining Nativeness in these rigid, quantifiable terms, the U.S. government was able to sever the Indian’s connection with his tribal heritage systematically. So, it is indeed ironic that some Native communities internalized similar exclusionary attitudes towards people of mixed heritage, in effect mimicking the very mechanisms of “blood quantum” used to undermine their identity and sovereignty. This speaks to the complex legacy of assimilation itself and how it can sometimes manifest in tensions and divisions within Native communities themselves; one might even say that, in many ways, they succumbed to the Western psyche. Yet that does not mean that their sense of identity has necessarily become eroded. Quite the contrary.

Following the Ghost Dance, indigenous peoples of all tribes across the continental United States and Canada began to view themselves as a unified race or nation. For the first time in Amerindian history, intermarriage between the tribes became commonplace. Among the Plains Indians, physical characteristics became less and less distinct. And by the middle of the 20th century, it didn’t matter what tribal background you were from. What mattered was how Indian you were.

V. Indian Time & Survivance

As stated earlier, one of the most prevalent themes in Louis’s novel is that of timeless interconnectedness of past, present, and future — a philosophical motif that Louis applies within the framework of the book’s overarching theme regarding the existential nature of Indianness. Even in a post-assimilation world it is common for indigenous American authors to utilize literary styles, narrative structures, themes, and metaphysical undertones that more or less reflect a personal worldview. Louis does a skilled job at this in his book, particularly in his thematic implementation of Indian, spiraling time and fluid temporality.

The Indian conception of time is cyclical as opposed to linear. Additionally, Indian time is not divided into increments, and history is not measured by years or by ages. According to Anishinaabe academic Grace Dillon, this Native way of thinking “views time as pasts, presents, and futures that flow together like currents in a navigable stream, and thus replicates nonlinear thinking about spacetime.” To expand on this, it is important for us to draw a distinction between the conventional view of the past versus that of Indian time. For Westerners, when we look back at historical events or struggles, we tend to see them as things that are behind us. “They’re in the past!” we tell ourselves. “So let’s look to the future instead!” The issue here is that Indian time views past, present, and future as happening simultaneously. Whereas today the average American will look at an isolated past event, such as Manifest Destiny or the Wounded Knee Massacre, as something that has since culminated, often through a lens of cause and effect, the American Indian will look at it as a continuous struggle that simultaneously exists in past and present, and that will persist into the future.

From here we come to the topic of “survivance.” A term first coined by Chippewa writer Gerald Vizenor, survivance is the sense of functional presence over nothingness; it is the struggle of actively preserving oneself, through perseverance, rather than simply a reaction. Where survival is primarily concerned with enduring struggle and merely staying alive, survivance is to thrive resiliently, all the while seeking to overcome tragedy and hardship. “Survivance,” Vizenor writes, “is the heritable right of succession or reversion of an estate and, in the course of international declarations of human rights, is a narrative estate of native survivance.” Thus, the American Indian community, even amidst demographic renewal and the establishment of a distinct pan-indigenous identity, is still in the midst of this process of “survivance”; by their own cultural perception, they are still living through the events of the late 19th century by experiencing the consequences which have carried over into the 21st. But Vizenor does not characterize survivance as being solely indicative to people’s lives. He identifies it as a literary device as well, one which is both common, yet fundamentally unique, particularly in how it continues to remain relevant:

The nature of survivance is unmistakable in native stories, natural reason, remembrance, traditions, and customs and is clearly observable in narrative resistance and personal attributes, such as the native humanistic tease, vital irony, spirit, cast of mind, and moral courage.

Though a work of satire, The Ghost Dancers is nonetheless a serious meditation on survivance. Not just for Bean, but for everybody. The reservation itself, depicted as a microcosm of Indianness, is far from a perfect place. It is ridden with poverty. Alcoholism runs rampant. The residents reside in the shadow of their own generational trauma, contemporarily perpetuated in a subtle, more systemic form. There is a notion of identity, or, rather, the notion of a notion, but the Ghost Dance still has yet to fulfill its promise.

A quarter of the way through the book, Bean joins a secret society who call themselves “The Ghost Dancers,” dedicated to the preservation and performance of the Lakota Ghost Dance. This plot point is both literal and metaphorical. On one hand, as is the case for many tribal societies today, the society performs a variant of the Ghost Dance as a means of honoring their heritage. Covertly, however, they are hellbent on slaying the monster who — though reduced to only a specter — continues to haunt the reservation. The Ghost Dancers can be best described as an organization which seeks to liberate the peoples of the reservation, emotionally and psychologically, from the yoke of the past. They ultimately seek a full renewal by discharging the promises of the Ghost Dance once and for all, as a matter of survivance.

Upon becoming a Ghost Dancer, Bean and his comrades ultimately decide on a target — Mount Rushmore, which is likened to a symbol representing the specter of oppression. In a pivotal scene, Bean and his fellow Ghost Dancers blow up George Washington’s nose and inflict further damage upon the monument. To Bean, this is viewed as a symbolic victory against the specter of Wounded Knee and other past transgressions. It is a rather ironic and poetic twist: Bean, the “half-blood” grandson of Wovoka’s bastard son — the object of ridicule among many in his community — is the one who is, along with his fellow Ghost Dancers, responsible for fulfilling the mission that his ancestor started nearly a century earlier. And although the buffalo has yet to return, the victory nonetheless brings him catharsis, which the penultimate paragraph of the book illustrates:

Bean got out of the backseat and drove, passing through the American night like a hot knife through butter. He felt better, stronger, and had a renewed sense of contempt for America. America was a state of mind that had castrated his ancestors. Washington’s defaced nose would remind America of its genocide against the Indian nations. (p. 245)

Just like his great-grandfather before him, Bean dances the Ghost Dance, and, ultimately, his doing so brings him closer to his prophetic ancestor. Though more metaphorical, Bean’s time with the Ghost Dancers teaches him to speak with Wovoka on a transcendent level, across time and space. While Wovoka does not appear in the novel itself, and is only mentioned, his presence is nonetheless felt throughout, and through the memories of Bean — memories of the stories of the great Prophet Wovoka — they are able to communicate. And as the book wears on, Bean does not only come closer to understanding himself, but also comes closer to understanding the kind of man his great-grandfather — Wovoka — is as well. But perhaps most importantly of all, he comes to understand the true underlying meaning of the Ghost Dance:

Stories never die. They are carried in the wind, choosing, as they must, the ears of each generation they will enter. In the bright January sunshine, the dancing sheets across the house made me think of that man who almost united the Indian nations into retaking what was rightfully theirs. That man was my great-grandfather. (p. 125)

Bean understands that the Ghost Dance is far from over. He knows that his people will be forever forced to live in the shadow of the atrocities of the past. The traumas that the American Indian was made to suffer — prior to and during the second Ghost Dance — were always going to be a key element of the American Indian’s own identity, but also the source of the American Indian’s strength. Every generation would need a ghost dancer, if survivance was to be guaranteed. Thus, Bean looks to the future, anticipating a new generation of Ghost Dancers just as Wovoka surely did one hundred years before:

I cannot help but think that on some reservation, in some ramshackle house, there is a young man growing — a young man who will unite all Indian people — a new messiah who will lead us back to what we were. (p. 125)

Louis’s novel is, at its most fundamental, a book about identity — of individuals, of communities, and of an entire people. One might even read it as an allegory for the historic Ghost Dance. Both the novel and the historical movement share a core, central premise — the quest for identity. Through its grounded use of slipstream and literary themes it paints a vivid picture of contemporary American Indian life — one that is just as celebratory as it is self-deprecating — and provides a blunt look into how American Indians perceive their own identity today. Just as the historic Ghost Dance allowed for indigenous Americans to find a new identity for themselves, the protagonist’s fight for survivance allows him to realize his own identity fully — not just as a white man, nor as a mixed man, nor even as a Paiute man. He realizes that he is, above all, an Indian. For better or worse.

Conclusion

The Ghost Dance movement was a transformative cultural phenomenon that transcended the limited identities of individual tribes, forging a new unified sense of “American Indian” identity. The fragmentation and assimilation of indigenous communities in the late 19th century threatened to extinguish distinct tribal cultures, but the Ghost Dance offered a vision of renewal, empowering the Indian to reassert his identity while engaging with the modern world. By emphasizing shared spiritual beliefs and cultural trauma, the Ghost Dance catalyzed the emergence of a Pan-Indian consciousness. In providing dispersed indigenous populations with a shared spiritual tradition, communal dances, and sense of hope for the future, the Ghost Dance helped facilitate cultural exchange and foster a sense of solidarity between tribes across America. This contributed directly to the development of a brand-new, overarching “American Indian” ethnicity — something that all native peoples could embrace in addition to, or sometimes in place of, older tribal affiliations. With a strengthened sense of common culture and purpose, the American Indian bore witness to a population growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demonstrative of the demographic revitalization sparked by the Ghost Dance movement and, subsequently, a sense of renewal.

This new Pan-Indian consciousness empowered the American Indian to fight, without need for violence and barbarism, for his birthright — his soil, his heritage, and his traditions. Organizations like the Society of American Indians, founded in 1911, lobbied the federal government and raised public awareness of issues impacting all native peoples. In more recent decades, groups like the American Indian Movement founded by the aforementioned Russell Means (who suggested privatizing ancestral native lands placed under the ownership of tribal trusts), have advocated the abolition of the reservation system and increased autonomy. Ultimately, the Ghost Dance spiritual movement left behind a legacy that made such a resurgence possible, by kindling pride in a shared Indian identity and fostering unity among countless tribes and nations. Therefore, its role in facilitating cultural continuity and ethnogenesis cannot be overlooked.