Wovoka

Wovoka was born a Northern Paiute In Nevada’s Smith Valley some time around 1856.  Very little is known of his childhood and his father is a bit of mystery also.  Some have speculated that his father was Tavibo, a Paiute religious leader and mystic, who prophesized that all whites would be swallowed up by the earth and all dead Indians would come back to life and they would be free of the white man forever.  He preached that before this could happen they must perform a traditional dance, while singing special songs.  Tavibo didn’t find an audience for his preaching, but his son, Wovoka, would.

    At age fourteen Wovoka’s father died and the young boy was taken in by David and Mary Wilson and given the name Jack Wilson, which he used when dealing with white people.  His foster parents were ranchers and Jack worked on the ranch well into adulthood.  The Wilsons were devout Christians and they taught Jack their faith.   He learned English, learned theology and could recite many Bible stories.

    No one knows for sure why Jack Wilson left the Wilson home.  He returned to live among the Paiute people where he gained a reputation as a powerful medicine man.  He began to make prophecies similar to the ones his father had made.

    Wovoka asserted that he could control the weather.   People claimed he could cause a block of ice to fall from the heavens, could end droughts with rain or even snow, could light his pipe with the sun and could form icicles in his hands.  He demonstrated his power by performing several seemingly impossible feats.  One of them was being shot with a shotgun and miraculously surviving.  Apparently no one questioned this even though magicians for many years had performed the same trick.  

    The Paiutes considered Wovoka a messiah based on a vision he had had during the solar eclipse of 1889.  It was a prophecy of things to come.  In it he saw the destruction of the whites, a replenishing of wildlife, the Indian dead would be resurrected and reunited with their families, suffering, starvation, pain and disease would disappear completely.  He taught that in order to bring his vision to reality, all Indians would have to live righteously and perform a traditional round dance.  Because ancestors were going to be resurrected, the dance became known as the ghost dance.  He told his followers that they must “not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone.  You must not fight.  Do right always...Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them.”  News of his vision and the ghost dance spread like wild fire across the Rockies and onto the plains.  The Lakota people, the largest tribal group on the plains, adopted it with a fury and began performing the dance.   Wovoka’s teachings were now known as the ghost dance religion.

a Lakota ghost shirt

    Believers made ghost shirts, which they claimed would ward off any bullet fired at it.  While Wovoka’s preaching emphasized nonviolence, the Lakotas saw a chance to eliminate the whites once and for all.  News of their dancing and the ghost shirts caused great concern among the white settlers who had homesteaded former Indian lands.

    The year was 1890 and most of the Indian tribes were now living on reservations under the control of the US government.   However settlers on the plains began demanding the army do more to protect them and the army was concerned that Sitting Bull, the great Lakota chief, would lead the ghost dancers into battle again, so Sitting Bull was ordered to put a stop to the ghost dance, but the dancing continued.  Sitting Bull was arrested and during the arrest shot and killed.  A reorganized 3,000 member 7^th Cavalry, who fourteen years previous had been desimated in the battle at Little Big Horn, was ordered to the Lakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.  The Indians were told that they must bring all their guns to a central location, which was located on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.  During the confiscation of guns, a deaf Lakota either refused to lay down his gun or simply didn’t understand the order.  A struggle ensued and someone fired a shot.  The calvary commander order his troops to open fire.  The resulting gunfire was choatic and indescriminant and at close range.  There is disagreement as to the number of casualties.  Estimates as to the number of dead range as high as 300 Indians, which included men, women and children.  Twenty-five troopers also died, while 39 were wounded (It’s believed that many of the army’s casualties were from friendly fire). The tragedy became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.  It marked the end of an era of Indian wars.  Just as quickly as the ghost religion had grown it died there at Wounded Knee.

    Soon after the massacre, Wovoka all but vanished.  Many years later he turned up at sideshows in county fairs.  He even become for a short time an extra in silent movies.  Wovoka died in 1932 basically a forgotten man.  It wouldn’t be until the 1970s that activitists would resurrect his memory and the memory of what happened at Wounded Knee.