The Ghost Dance Eclipse

January 1, 1889 a man stands in the darkness, experiencing the solar eclipse in the night sky has a vision from God. A message from the heavens to be shared by all.

The man stood before God in heaven and saw many of his ancestors engaged in their favorite pastimes. God showed the man a beautiful land filled with wild game and instructed him to return home to tell his people that they must love each other, not fight, and live in peace with the whites. 

God also stated that the people must work, not steal or lie, and that they must not engage in the old practices of war or the traditional self-mutilation practices connected with mourning the dead. God said that if his people abide by these rules, they would be united with their friends and family in the other world. Where in God's presence, there would be no sickness, disease, or old age.

Jack Wilson

This beautiful vision was described by a man named Jack Wilson aka Wovoka. The son of a ‘weather doctor’, Wilson was known as a gifted and naturally talented leader amongst the Paiutes living is Mason Valley (now currently known as Nevada). However, Wilson was not the first to have this powerful vision. Hawthorne Wodziwob, a Paiute man, organized a series of community dances to announce his vision. He spoke of a journey to the land of the dead and of promises made to him by the souls of the recently deceased. They promised to return to their loved ones within a period of three to four years. Wodziwob’s vision was coming off of a devastating typhoid epidemic, killing approximately one-tenth of the Paiute populace. 

Amongst the widespread psychological and emotional trauma, Wodziwob’s words of healing were embraced. He, along with a ‘weather doctor’ named Tavibo urged the use of a common circle dance in celebration of life. Referred to as the "round dance", this ritual form, characteristically includes a circular community dance held around an individual who leads the ceremony. It was used in many community rituals. Often accompanying the ritual are intermissions of trance, exhortations and prophesying.

Coming full circle, years later Jack Wilson was given the Ghost Dance in his vision and commanded to take it back to his people.He preached that if the five-day dance was performed in the proper intervals, the performers would secure their happiness and hasten the reunion of the living and deceased. Wilson said that God gave him powers over the weather and that he would be the deputy in charge of affairs in the western United States, leaving current President Harrison as God's deputy in the East. Jack claims that he was then told to return home and preach God's message.

Jack Wilson claimed to have left the presence of God convinced that if every Indian in the West danced the new dance to "hasten the event", all evil in the world would be swept away, leaving a renewed Earth filled with food, love, and faith.

Such a promising vision created hard times for the Native America nation as a whole. It’s

Chief Kicking Bear

rampant spread throughout the countries Native American population made the European settlers suspicious. To the point of causing the loss of many lives. 

In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota. Breaking it up into five smaller reservations, the Native American’s were expected to adopt the European-American culture of farming the land. 

Unfortunately South Dakota was in the throws of an intense heat wave, and coupled with minimal rainfall made the land barren and unable to produce any substantial yields. Bison had become virtually extinct in the area and the Sioux quickly reached the brink of starvation. 

In the wake of desperation the Sioux looked to their God for assistance, taking up the ritual of the Ghost dance. The dance, however, alarmed the European-American agents sent to supervise the transition. Even with the extraction of Chief Kicking Bear, the dance continued. 

The European-American agents requested additional troops, claiming Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement. Despite several protests, thousands of US Army troops were deployed to the reservations. 

On December 15th 1890 Sitting Bull was killed in a misunderstanding when one of Sitting Bull's men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head," striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull.

The Wounded Knee Massacre marked the end of the Ghost Dance when 153 Sioux men, women and children, and 25 US soldiers were needlessly killed because of a weapon’s discharge. Following the massacre,and the official surrender of Chief Kicking Bear, interest and participation in the Ghost Dance movement dropped dramatically for fear of continued violence against practitioners of the religion.

 In an interesting twist, as I was researching this article I realized the ‘weather doctor’ was also the father of Jack Wilson. Coincidence? Probably not, however I am not going to let this connection sway me (and I hope it will not for you) from the core peaceful message the Ghost Dance sought to reinforce. It is so sad to think if that message would have been somehow communicated to the European settlers the fate of the Native American Nation as a whole could have been much different. 

All we can do now is retell the story and hope we will learn from our ancestors mistakes.

A Mi'kmaq Tale : Rabbit and the Moon Man

Rabbit and the Moon Man

Long ago, Rabbit was a great hunter. He lived with his
grandmother in a lodge which stood deep in the Micmac forest. It was winter and Rabbit set traps and laid snares to catch game for food. He caught many small animals and birds, until one day he discovered that some mysterious being was robbing his traps. Rabbit and his grandmother became hungry. Though he visited his traps very early each morning, he always found them empty. 

 At first Rabbit thought that the robber might be a cunning wolverine, until one morning he found long, narrow footprints alongside his trap line. It was, he thought, the tracks of the robber, but they looked like moonbeams. Each morning Rabbit rose earlier and earlier, but the being of the long foot was always ahead of him and always his traps were empty.

Rabbit made a trap from a bowstring with the loop so cleverly fastened that he felt certain that he would catch the robber when it came. He took one end of the thong with him and hid himself behind a clump of bushes from which he could watch his snare. It was bright moonlight while he waited, but suddenly it became very dark as the moon disappeared. A few stars were still shining and there were no clouds in the sky, so Rabbit wondered what had happened to the moon. 

Someone or something came stealthily through the trees and then Rabbit was almost blinded by a flash of bright, white light which went straight to his trap line and shone through the snare which he had set. Quick as a lightning flash, Rabbit jerked the bowstring and tightened the noose. There was a sound of struggling and the light lurched from side to side. Rabbit knew b the tugging on his string that he had caught the robber. He fastened the bowstring to a nearby sapling to hold the loop tight.

Rabbit raced back to tell his grandmother, who was a wise old woman, what had happened. She told him that he must return at once and see who or what he had caught. Rabbit, who was very frightened, wanted to wait for daylight but his grandmother said that might be too late, so he returned to his trap line.

When he came near his traps, Rabbit saw that the bright light was still there. It was so bright that it hurt his eyes. He bathed them in the icy water of a nearby brook, but still they smarted. He made big snowballs and threw them at the light, in the hope of putting it out. As they went close to the light, he heard them sizzle and saw them melt. Next, Rabbit scooped up great pawfuls of soft clay from the stream and made many big clay balls. He was a good shot and threw the balls with all of his force at the dancing white light. He heard them strike hard and then his prisoner shouted.

Then a strange, quivering voice asked why he had been snared and demanded that he be set free at once, because he was the man in the moon and he must be home before dawn came. His face had been spotted with clay and, when Rabbit went closer, the moon man saw him and threatened to kill him and all of his tribe if he were not released at once.

Rabbit was so terrified that he raced back to tell his grandmother about his strange captive. She too was much afraid and told Rabbit to return and release the thief immediately. Rabbit went back, and his voice shook with fear as he told the man in the moon that he would be released if he promised never to rob the snares again. To make doubly sure, Rabbit asked him to promise that he would never return to earth, and the moon man swore that he would never do so. Rabbit could hardly see in the dazzling light, but at last he managed to gnaw through the bowstring with his teeth and the man in the moon soon disappeared in the sky, leaving a bright trail of light behind him.

Rabbit had been nearly blinded by the great light and his shoulders were badly scorched. Even today, rabbits blink as though light is too strong for their eyes; their eyelids are pink, and their eyes water if they look at a bright light. Their lips quiver, telling of Rabbit's terror.
The man in the moon has never returned to earth. When he lights the world, one can still see the marks of the clay which Rabbit threw on his face. Sometimes he disappears for a few nights, when he is trying to rub the marks of the clay balls from his face. Then the world is dark; but when the man in the moon appears again, one can see that he has never been able to clean the clay marks from his shining face.

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The Mi'kmaq Nation, is a member of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Confederacy controlled northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes. The Micmacs are original natives of the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick region. They also settled in Quebec, Newfoundland, and Maine. Today, most Mi'kmaq people live on the Canadian side of the border, but the Aroostook Micmacs live in northeastern Maine.
The Micmac were great traders, carrying goods between northern tribes like the Innu and Cree and New England tribes like the Abenaki and Pennacook. They were also fierce warriors, fighting with the powerful Iroquois and the Beothuk of Newfoundland.

But their most important neighbors were the Maliseets,

Passamaquoddies, Abenakis, and Penobscots. These five tribes formed an alliance called the Wabanaki Confederacy. Before this alliance, the Micmacs were not always friends with these other tribes. Sometimes they even fought wars. But once they joined the Confederacy, the Wabanaki tribes never fought each other again, and are still allies today.

Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, the famous American Indian activist, was Mi'kmaq from Nova Scotia. She worked for Native American rights and an important figure in the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1975 she was assassinated and the crime is still unsolved. Anna Mae is still an important figure for many Native Americans in the United States and Canada today.

To find out more about the Micmacs visit here.