Wovoka

Wovoka , c.1858-1932, Paiute , prophet of a messianic religion sometimes called the Ghost Dance religion. Also known as Jack Wilson, he was influenced by his father (a mystic) as well as by the Christian family for whom he worked and the Shaker religion. Wovoka claimed that during an eclipse of the sun (Jan. 1, 1889) he had had a vision in which God had given him a message—the time was coming when the earth would die and come alive again; all whites would disappear from the earth's surface, and all native people, living and dead, would be reunited to live a life free from death, disease, and misery. In order to bring this about, however, the Native Americans would have to follow Wovoka's doctrine of pacifism and practice the sacred dance he taught them. To make his message more convincing, Wovoka proved his supernatural powers by simple tricks, one of which, the supposedly bulletproof ghost shirt, was to play a tragic part in the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee . Before long his stature grew from Paiute prophet to Messiah, and his religion, which spread rapidly through the western indigenous nations, took on warlike overtones never intended by its founder. The great popularity of Wovoka's ghost dance waned as his prophecy failed to materialize and as his converts were forced onto reservations.

Bibliography: See biography by P. Bailey (1957, repr. 1970).

Wovoka (ca. 1856–1932), Paiute religious leader.Born in western Nevada, Wovoka was the son of Tavibo, a Paiute religious leader from the Walker Lake region. As a young man he worked for Mormon ranchers and also as an agricultural laborer in Washington and Oregon, where he was influenced by Smoholla and the Dreamers, a messianic movement among the Northwest tribes. In the late 1880s, while suffering from smallpox, he experienced visions of dances, songs, and other ceremonies that would bring dead Native Americans back to life, restore game to the plains and forests, re‐create a traditional Indian way of life, and cause all non‐Indians to disappear.

Wovoka's new religion, called the Ghost Dance, rapidly spread onto the northern plains. Like other Native American revitalization movements that arose during periods of socioeconomic stress, it found ready recipients among impoverished and demoralized Indian communities. Combining elements of traditional tribal religion with Christianity, it offered Native Americans an escape from the desperation and hopelessness of reservation existence.

Although Wovoka espoused nonviolence, in the Dakotas the Sioux dressed in what one observer called “ghost shirts or dresses” that were supposedly impregnable to bullets and sometimes carried arms during their ceremonies. U.S. Army efforts to suppress the Ghost Dance movement led directly to the killing of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull and to the Wounded Knee Tragedy in December 1890. Although the Ghost Dance declined after Wounded Knee, Wovoka remained an influential spiritual leader among the Walker Valley Paiutes until his death.
See also Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900.

Bibliography

James Mooney , The Ghost‐Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890; Fourteenth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnography, Part 2, 1892–1893, 1896.
Michael Hittman , Wovoka and the Ghost Dance: A Sourcebook, 1990.

R. David Edmunds