Ghost Dance Messiah

by Paul Dayton Bailey

From Wovoka (c. 1856 - September 20, 1932),[1] also known as Jack Wilson, was the Northern Paiute religious leader who founded the Ghost Dance movement. Wovoka means "cutter"[2] or "wood cutter" in the Northern Wovoka was born in Smith Valley area southeast of Carson City, Nevada, around the year 1856. Wovoka's father may have been the religious leader variously known as "Tavibo" or "Numu-Taibo" whose teachings were similar to those of Wovoka. Regardless, Wovoka clearly had some training as a medicine man. Wovoka’s father died around the year 1870, and he was taken in by David Wilson, a rancher in the Yerington, Nevada area, and his wife Abigail. Wovoka worked on Wilson’s ranch and used the name Jack Wilson when dealing with European Americans. David Wilson was a devout Christian, and Wovoka learned Christian theology and Bible stories while living with him. Wovoka gained a reputation as a powerful medicine man early in adulthood and is now perceived to have been adept at magic tricks. One feat he often performed was being shot with a shotgun, which may have been similar to the bullet catch "trick".[3] Reports of this feat potentially convinced the Lakota that their "ghost shirts" could stop bullets. Wovoka also performed a feat of levitation. 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.[4] Wovoka claimed to have had a prophetic vision during the solar eclipse on 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.

206 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1981

About the author

Paul Dayton Bailey was a publisher, editor, and author. He was a prolific chronicler of the Mormon Church and the American West. He was born in American Fork, Utah on 12 July 1906. He left home at age 13 to travel the rails until 1922, when he returned to Salt Lake City and enrolled at the University of Utah. He began his career as a journalist working as a reporter for the Salt Lake Telegram. In 1943 he purchased the Eagle Rock Advertiser and also started Westernlore Press to publish his and other authors books, in Los Angeles, California.

Baily wrote and published over forty books on western history, as well as articles, book reviews, and tributes. His works include Polygamy Was Better Than Monotony (1972), Holy Smoke, a dissertation on the Utah War (1978), For This My Glory: a Story of a Mormon Life (1940), An Unnatural History of Death Valley: With Reflections on the Valley's Varmints (1978), Virgins, Vandals, and Visionaries (1978), and several biographies.

Paul Bailey died in Claremont, California on October 26, 1987 and is buried in Fillmore, Utah.

(source: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:...)

Reviews

[Danél · Rating 2 out of 5]

My biggest issue with this particular retelling -- a historical and speculative fiction concerning the life of Wovoka, the Paiute founder of the Ghost Dance -- is that it cannot seem to make up its mind on whether Wovoka was a con man, a civil rights leader, or a cult leader. By presenting him as debilitatingly self-absorbed and unthoughtful, the book fails to make him compelling as any of these possible scenarios. Bailey, who suggests an appreciation for Wovoka in his intro, presents the mystic as feeling entitled to greatness, and the author -- who writes with a plodding and uninspired prose -- never pauses the story or considers Wovoka's actions beyond his obsession with his own legacy. There are some interesting scenes, such as Wovoka's fascination with Mormon undergarments, but Wovoka seems mostly upset that someone else thought of it before he did than concerned that the Mormons are using such theology to assimilate his people. The massacre at Wounded Knee, where Sitting Bull and other ghost dancers were murdered by an army ignoring the peaceful nature of this movement, suggests that Wovoka taught nonviolence with mystical metaphors (and, admittedly, with some magician's tricks to draw attention to his message)-- he introduced a dance as an alternative to war, encouring Native Americans of all tribes to unite and wait out the inevitability of whites killing each other over their own greed. Such teachings -- and such a following -- should rank Wovoka amongst the foremost civil rights activists in American history. So why does this account never allow him to consider his own movement beyond a narcissistic need to be recognized as a messiah? I have a hard time believing a man who led a revolution this massive and influential could be this unlikable and boring. I suspect a great fiction could be written around the life of this complex figure, but this isn't it.

[Susan Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew who Wovoka was but that's where my knowledge stopped. In very readable form, Paul Bailey brings the man and the Ghost Dance movement of the late 1800s vividly to life. From his earliest vision to his later ones and the downfall of the movement in 1890 at Wounded Knee, I could hardly put the book down!