Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance was a religious movement among the Native peoples of the Plains and Rocky Mountains. It was initiated in 1870 by the spiritual vision of a Paiute prophet named Wodziwob, in which he saw the dead resurrected, the wild game returned in their former numbers, and traditional Native lifeways restored. The circle dance called for in the vision in order to bring these things about spread among the Paiute’s neighbors in the Great Basin and Northern California. In 1890, following the vision of another Paiute prophet named Wovoka, the Ghost Dance resumed and became even more widespread, an expression of both the hope and the desperation of the Native peoples.