The Ghost Dance

The prophet's own teaching, dictated and published in 1896, was explicitly pacifist. The belief that a ceremonial 'ghost shirt' could stop bullets belonged above all to the Lakota and was not part of the founder's message: Wovoka expressly disclaimed any responsibility for the ghost shirt, which was not worn in his own valley.

James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (1896), pp. 789–791, with Wovoka's dictated message; the Wounded Knee massacre (29 December 1890)

A Native American religious movement prophesying renewal, whose spread among the Lakota in 1890 ended in the Wounded Knee massacre.

Sources and verificationThe reading is attributed above

No formal citations for this entry yet. The reading above carries its own attribution.