God's Red Son
The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The definitive account of the Ghost Dance religion, which led to the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890
Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History
In 1890, on Indian reservations across the West, followers of a new religion danced in circles until they collapsed into trances. In an attempt to suppress this new faith, the US Army killed over two hundred Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek. In God's Red Son, historian Louis Warren offers a startling new view of the religion known as the Ghost Dance, from its origins in the visions of a Northern Paiute named Wovoka to the tragedy in South Dakota. To this day, the Ghost Dance remains widely mischaracterized as a primitive and failed effort by Indian militants to resist American conquest and return to traditional ways. In fact, followers of the Ghost Dance sought to thrive in modern America by working for wages, farming the land, and educating their children, tenets that helped the religion endure for decades after Wounded Knee. God's Red Son powerfully reveals how Ghost Dance teachings helped Indians retain their identity and reshape the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Warren, a professor of U.S. history at the University of California, Davis, provides an engrossing, readable, and carefully researched history plotting the rise, spread, and continued life of the Ghost Dance among Native Americans. Since its rise in 1890 and sudden, violent suppression at Wounded Knee, the history of the Ghost Dance has focused on its return to past practices, the promise of a land free from whites, and protection in battle. Warren does not dismiss the influence of forced resettlement and broken treaties made with Native American communities, but he persuasively argues that Native American adherents focused more on integrating with Euro-American economy and used the Ghost Dance to maintain their native culture and "Indianness." Key figures shape his narrative, including the prophet Wokova in Nevada, whose visions sparked the movement; Short Bull, the Lakota who brought it to the Plains; and James Mooney, the white anthropologist who recorded it and shaped all subsequent scholarship. Warren ties together seemingly unrelated strands to give a clear sense of the convulsing changes and challenges of the last decade of the 19th century. The work will delight fans of well-written history and appeal to historians of the West, Native Americans, and religion.
