THE GHOST DANCE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The Ghost Dance movement that swept through the Plains reservations in 1889 and 1890 was a response to exactly what Moving Robe Woman and her generation had experienced: the destruction of their way of life, the loss of the bison, the confinement of the reservation, the suppression of traditional practices, the systematic assault on Lakota culture.

The Ghost Dance originated with a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, who received a vision during a solar eclipse in January 1889.

In the vision, he was taken to the spirit world and shown the ancestors living in happiness, the bison returned to the Plains, the world restored to what it had been before the Americans came.