Wovoka

Wovoka
Wovoka – Paiute spiritual leader and creator of the Ghost Dance
Northern Paiute leader
Personal details
Born c. 1856
Smith Valley, Nevada
Died September 29, 1932[1]
Yerington, Nevada
Resting place Schurz, Nevada
Known for Spiritual leader and creator of the Ghost Dance
Nickname(s) Jack Wilson

Wovoka (c. 1856 - September 20, 1932),[2] also known as Jack Wilson, was the Paiute religious leader who founded a second episode of the Ghost Dance movement. Wovoka means "cutter"[3] or "wood cutter" in the Northern Paiute language.

Biography

Wovoka was born in the Smith Valley area southeast of Carson City, Nevada, around 1856. Quoitze Ow was his birth name.[4] Wovoka's father was Numu-tibo'o (sometimes called Tavibo), who for several decades was incorrectly believed to be Wodziwob, a religious leader who had founded the Ghost Dance of 1870.[5] From the age of eight until almost thirty Wovoka often worked for David Wilson, a rancher in the Yerington, Nevada area, and his wife Abigail, who gave him the name Jack Wilson when dealing with European Americans.[6] David Wilson was a devout Christian, and Wovoka learned Christian theology and Bible stories while living with him.[7]

One of his chief sources of authority among Paiutes was his alleged ability to control the weather. He was said to have caused a block of ice to fall out of the sky on a summer day, to be able to end drought with rain or snow, to light his pipe with the sun, and to form icicles in his hands.[8]

Wovoka claimed to have had a prophetic vision during the solar eclipse of January 1, 1889. Wovoka's vision entailed the resurrection of the Paiute dead, and the removal of whites and their works from North America. Wovoka taught that in order to bring this vision to pass, the Native Americans must live righteously and perform a traditional round dance, known as the Ghost Dance.

Anthropologists, historians, and theologians alike provide conflicting accounts on when and how Wovoka had his vision. One scholar of religions, Tom Thatcher, cites James Mooney's Smithsonian-sponsored anthropological report to claim that Wovoka received his first vision while chopping wood for David Wilson in 1887.[9] Conversely, historian Paul Bailey utilized Mooney's work along interviews with Wovoka's contemporaries and interpreters to assert that he received the vision after entering a two-day trance, awaking in tears.[10] Regardless, shortly after receiving the vision and its message, it moved quickly beyond his local Paiute community by word of mouth to Native American tribes further east, notably the Lakota.

The Ghost Dance movement is known for being practiced by the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Before the Ghost dance reached Native Americans on South Dakota plains reservations, interest in the movement came from U.S. Indian Office, U.S. War Department, and multiple Native American tribal delegations. Many tribes would arrive in Mason to listen to Wovoka intently, but language barriers existed. Visiting tribes came from different cultures, geographies, and linguistic traditions. Few delegation members could speak Wovoka's mother tongue of Paiute. This led to tribes adopting a militant form of Wovoka's teachings that emphasized an impending battle leading to the creation of the Ghost Shirts worn by Sioux and Lakota at the subsequent massacre.[11] Other Native American Leaders, such as Miniconjou, Short Bull and Kicking Bear allegedly adopted violent interpretations that emphasized the possible elimination of whites. However, Wovoka never left his home in Nevada to become an active participant in the dance's dissemination in the U.S. interior.[12]

Indian Agents, soldiers, and other federal officials were predisposed towards a militaristic posture and outright violence upon encountering the movement.

Post-Wounded Knee Life and Death

Wovoka was disheartened by how events unfolded at the massacre. He still remained a prominent Native American leader until his death.[11] Sometime between 1894-1896, he was reported to have been a sideshow attraction at a San Francisco Midwinter Fair Carnival. In 1917, an agent for the Nevada Agency named L.A. Dorrington tracked down Wovoka to report on his whereabouts to Washington. Curious to see if the former Native American messiah had any ties to Native American Peyotism, Dorrington found that Wovoka was instead living a humble life in Mason. He abstained from the practice, worked as an occasional medicine man, and traveled to events on reservations across the United States.[13]

Wovoka died in Yerington on September 20, 1932, and is interred in the Paiute Cemetery in the town of Schurz, Nevada.[14]

Native American band Redbone named their 1973 album Wovoka, and the title song, after the prophet.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ go.grolier.com
  2. ↑ Clifford E. Trafzer (April 1986). American Indian prophets: religious leaders and revitalization movements. Sierra Oaks Pub. Co. p. 108. Retrieved 23 July 2013. Wovoka, the great Ghost Dance Prophet, died on September 20, 1932 and was buried in the heart of the Paiute country. Joseph McDonald of the Reno ... his body was taken to the Paiute cemetery at Shurtz. As family and friends shoveled dirt ...
  3. ↑ Mooney, James (1896). The ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890. G.P.O. p. 765.
  4. ↑ Hittman,"Wovoka And The Ghost Dance:Expanded Edition" (Lincoln, Nebraska:University of Nebraska:Press 1997) 47
  5. ↑ Du Bois, Cora "The 1870 Ghost Dance" Anthropological Records Vol. 3, No. 1 (1939) (Berkeley, California; University of California Press) 3-4
  6. ↑ Hittman, Michael Wovoka And The Ghost Dance: Expanded Edition (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press 1997) 27-28
  7. ↑ Hittman, Wovoka 55-56
  8. ↑ Hittman, Michael (1990). Wovoka and the ghost dance. University of Nebraska Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-8032-7308-5.
  9. ↑ Thatcher, Tom (Autumn 1998). "Empty Metaphors and Apocalyptic Rhetoric". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 66: 549–570. JSTOR 1466133.
  10. ↑ Bailey, Paul (1957). Wovoka: The Indian Messiah. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press. pp. 79–83. ISBN 9781258823382.
  11. 1 2 McCann Jr., Frank D. (1966). "The Ghost Dance, Last hope of Western Tribes, Unleashed the Final Tragedy". Montana: The Magazine of Western History. 16: 25–34. JSTOR 4517018.
  12. ↑ Bailey, Paul (1957). Wovoka: The Indian Messiah. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press. p. 171. ISBN 9781258823382.
  13. ↑ Stewart, Omer C. (1977). "Contemporary Document on Wovoka (Jack Wilson_ Prophet of the Ghost Dance in 1890". Ethnohistory. 24: 219–222. JSTOR 481696.
  14. ↑ "Wovoka - Paiute Medicine Man & the Ghost Dance". Legends of America. Retrieved 2010-04-15.

Further reading

  • Michael Hittman, Wovoka and the Ghost Dance, Bison Books 1998, ISBN 0-8032-7308-8
  • John Norman, Ghost Dance, Daw Books 1970, (a fictional account) ISBN 0-87997-501-6
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