The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890

by Mooney, James

• ISBN13: 9780803281776
• ISBN10: 0803281773
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

Responding to the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance among tribes of the western United States in the early 1890s, James Mooney set out to describe and understand the phenomenon. He visited Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet, at his home in Nevada and traced the progress of the Ghost Dance from place to place, describing the ritual and recording the distinctive song lyrics of seven separate tribes. His classic work (first published in 1896 and here reprinted in its entirety for the first time) includes succinct cultural and historical introductions to each of those tribal groups and depicts the Ghost Dance among the Sioux, the fears it raised of an Indian outbreak, and the military occupation of the Sioux reservations culminating in the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Seeking to demonstrate that the Ghost Dance was a legitimate religious movement, Mooney prefaced his study with a historical survey of comparable millenarian movements among other American Indian groups. In addition to his work on the Ghost Dance, James Mooney is best remembered for his extraordinarily detailed studies of the Cherokee Indians of the Southeast and the Kiowa and other tribes of the southern plains, and for his advocacy of American Indian religious freedom.

Author Biography

Raymond J. DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, has edited James R. Walker's Lakota Society (1982) andThe Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984), both published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Bison Book Edition	p. xv
Notes	p. xxv
Introduction	p. 653
Paradise Lost	p. 657
The Narrative	p. 657
The Delaware Prophet and Pontiac	p. 662
Tenskwatawa the Shawano Prophet	p. 670
Tecumtha and Tippecanoe	p. 681
KänakÛk and Minor Prophets	p. 692
The Smohalla Religion of the Columbia Region	p. 708
Smohalla and His Doctrine	p. 716
The Shakers of Puget Sound	p. 746
Wovoka the Messiah	p. 764
The Doctrine of the Ghost Dance	p. 777
The Ghost Dance West of the Rockies	p. 802
The Ghost Dance East of the Rockies--Among the Sioux	p. 816
The Sioux Outbreak-Sitting Bull and Wounded Knee	p. 843
Close of the Outbreak--The Ghost Dance in the South	p. 887
The Ceremony of the Ghost Dance	p. 915
Parallels in Other Systems	p. 928
The Songs	p. 953
The Arapaho	p. 953
The Arapaho	p. 1023
The Comanche	p. 1043
The Paiute, Washo, and Pit River Tribes	p. 1048
The Sioux	p. 1057
The Sioux	p. 1078
The Caddo and Associated Tribes	p. 1092
Authorities Cited	p. 1104
Erratum	p. 77
Index to Part 2	p. 1111
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