The Ghost Dance Religion

This sweeping ethnographic account traces the Ghost Dance from earlier Native prophetic movements to its spread among Plains and Western tribes, following visionary leaders such as the Delaware prophet, Tenskwatawa, Tecumtha, Smohalla, and Wovoka. Born from dispossession, longing, and the hope of renewal, the movement becomes a living religious crisis as James Mooney gathers testimony, documents, and firsthand observations across Indian Territory, the Plains, and the Southwest. The result is both historical witness and cultural archive, culminating in the Sioux Ghost Dance upheaval and the tragedy of Wounded Knee. Alongside the narrative are extensive song collections, tribal sketches, glossaries, translations, and illustrations, preserving the emotional vocabulary of grief, sacred power, family, warfare, and transformation among Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Paiute, Sioux, Kiowa, Caddo, and others. The book also records the military buildup, the panic of fleeing families, the surrender and killing of Big Foot's band, the grim burial of the dead, and intimate stories of surviving children. Through songs, testimony, and stark eyewitness detail, it reveals a movement of hope and endurance shadowed by frontier violence. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.