2130_american lit module 1_"the ghost dance" "wounded knee"

The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company

The Ghost Dance


While all goes well with the tribe the religious feeling finds sufficient expression in the ordinary ritual forms of tribal usage, but when misfortune or destruction threaten the nation or the race, the larger emergency brings out the prophet, who strives to avert the disaster by molding his people to a common purpose through insistence upon the sacred character of his message.

—James Mooney (1896)

The Ghost Dance


Wounded Knee Massacre


• Ghost Dance Songs

• Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk and John G. Neihardt

• From the Deep Woods to Civilization by Charles Alexander Eastman

• Statement of Valentine T. McGillycuddy

Texts in the Cluster


Se’iicooo hei’towuuneinoo—Eiyohei’eiyeiFlat Pipe is telling me. Eiyohei’eiyeiHeisonoonin—Yohei’eiyeiOur Father. Yohei’eiyeiHootniizoowuce’woohonoteino’—Eiyohei’eiyeiWe shall surely be put together again.

Eiyohei’eiyei!

Ghost Dance Songs


“My father died in the first part of the winter from the bad sickness that many people had. This made me very sad. Everything good seemed to be going away.”

“I was surprised, and could hardly believe what I saw; because so much of my vision seemed to be in it”

Black Elk


“The ‘Messiah craze’ in itself was scarcely a source of danger, and one might almost as well call upon the army to suppress Billy Sunday [an evangelical Christian minister] and his hysterical followers.” “All of this was a severe ordeal for one who had so lately put all his faith in the Christian love and lofty ideals of the white man.”

Charles Alexander Eastman


“As for the ghost dance, too much attention has been paid to it. It was only the symptom or surface indication of deep-rooted, long-existing difficulty.”

Valentine T. McGillycuddy

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The Ghost Dance and

Wounded Knee

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2130_american lit module 1_"the ghost dance" "wounded knee"

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