GHOST DANCE

ghost dance, an american-indian ritual dance, sometimes called the spirit dance, the dancers wearing a white cloak. it is connected with the doctrine of a messiah, which arose in nevada among the paiute indians in 1888 and spread to other tribes. a young paiute indian medicine-man, known as wovoka, and called jack wilson by the whites, proclaimed that he had had a revelation, and that, if this ghost dance and other ceremonies were duly performed, the indians would be rid of the white men. the movement led to a sort of craze among the indian tribes, and in 1890 it was one of the causes of the sioux outbreak. see j. mooney, _14th report (1896) of bureau of american ethnology_.