the ghost dance religion and the sioux outbreak of 1890

Recognizing threats to their traditional ways, Native Americans throughout the American west turned to “religious” movements hoping to bring an end to their struggle.

The government focused their efforts toward the reservation system and tried to integrate Native Americans into a western education system and introduce them to agriculture. Several treaties hoped to settle the unrest, but often the US government did not uphold them and tribes did not agree with them.

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, clashes between Native Americans and white settlers escalated, resulting in the so-called Indian Wars. Culture, Contact, and ConflictĮvents such as the Louisiana Purchase, development of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Colorado Gold Rush, and Civil War propelled a wave of whites onto Indian lands. The Nuche, or Ute people, were one of the first groups to learn of the Ghost Dance teachings, which then spread through Colorado, over the mountains, and onto the plains in an attempt to create spiritual unity between the scattered Native American groups. The dances are performed to activate the movement’s prophecy of a return to traditional Native American ways of life.

By that time, most federally recognized tribes in Colorado lived on reservations outside of the state. Ghost Dances are key ceremonies within a broader Indigenous religious movement that developed in the late nineteenth century in response to the brutal conquest of Native American nations by the US government and white settlers.

The ghost dance religion and the sioux outbreak of 1890