Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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As has been noted, the Civil War years were a period of extreme colonialism and militarism in the history of the Greater Southwest. The Indian response, in the face of white encroachments that threatened their identity by destroying their subsistence economies, shrinking their populations because of warfare and disease, and assimilation programs that amounted to cultural genocide, was to adapt and survive by creating a kind of religious Indian nationalism. For many Indian groups the so-called Ghost Dance movement was a statement of identity and a worldview that continued from the early nineteenth century well into the twentieth century.

It was a pan-Indian, traditional religious belief system as well as a reaction to external conditions that deprived them of their distinctiveness. The Ghost Dance was in the tradition of the Round Dance, a ceremonial activity that would bring about regeneration and growth. This kind of doctrine could be used to develop a sense of Indian pride and social cohesion in the face of overwhelming white dominance, or it could become a message of defiance. In fact, it was both depending on the individual and his/her circumstance. Whether actively hostile to whites or passively accepting white dominance, the movement was a significant expression of Indian identity.⁹⁹