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Ghost dance   /goʊst dæns/   Listen
noun
Ghost dance  n.  A religious dance of the North American Indians, participated in by both sexes, and looked upon as a rite of invocation the purpose of which is, through trance and vision, to bring the dancer into communion with the unseen world and the spirits of departed friends. The dance is the chief rite of the Ghost-dance, or Messiah religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead with the living, should be reunited to live a life of millennial happiness upon a regenerated earth. The religion inculcates peace, righteousness, and work, and holds that in good time, without warlike intervention, the oppressive white rule will be removed by the higher powers. The religion spread through a majority of the western tribes of the United States, only in the case of the Sioux, owing to local causes, leading to an outbreak.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ghost dance" Quotes from Famous Books



... Manning, who was unarmed. The three waited the approach of the unseen demons. Not a light, not the glint of a weapon could be seen. But before their eyes, in and out among the trees making up the dense growth, shadows flitted back and forth in a sort of ghost dance. In addition to the hoarse shouting, the air was rent from time to time by the sound of a blast as ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... red men for holding the cedar sacred and ascribing to it certain mystic powers. They burned cedar twigs as incense in some of their sacred ceremonies, and surely they could have found no finer aroma. Some of tribes always set a cedar pole for the centre of their ghost dance, and they gave the tree an untranslatable name which referred to power, mystery and immortality. The Dakotas burned cedar to drive away ghosts, and in the lodge at night when anyone lay sick there was always a fire of cedar wood to protect from evil spirits. Often a ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... occult art, occult sciences; magic, the black art, necromancy, theurgy, thaumaturgy[obs3]; demonology, demonomy[obs3], demonship[obs3]; diablerie[Fr], bedevilment; witchcraft, witchery; glamor; fetishism, fetichism, feticism[obs3]; ghost dance, hoodoo; obi, obiism[obs3]; voodoo, voodooism; Shamanism [Esquimaux], vampirism; conjuration; bewitchery, exorcism, enchantment, mysticism, second sight, mesmerism, animal magnetism; od force, odylic ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... scientific expedition to the Bad Lands, charging certain frauds at the agency and apparently proving his case; at any rate the matter was considered worthy of official investigation. In 1890-1891, during the "Ghost Dance craze" and the difficulties that followed, he was suspected of collusion with the hostiles, but he did not join them openly, and nothing could be proved against him. He was already an old man, and became almost ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... affection and homage, with the general purpose of conciliating the departed and procuring their aid; the belief being, apparently, that the dead see these demonstrations and are pleased with them. A Ghost Dance formerly performed in California had for its object ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy



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