Aftermath: The Ghost Dance of 1871

Beginning with the Paiute prophet Wovoka in the 1870s, the Ghost Dance religion had spread to many western tribes by the1890s. The people believed that Indian dead would be brought back to life, that the white man would disappear by means of natural calamities, and life would return to the way it had been before the outsiders came. The ceremony of this new religion took the form of a dance that was usually performed over several consecutive nights, in the belief that eventually the earth would open and swallow up the white race.

Wovoka, Paiute Prophet

(Photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society)
 Within four years of the Battle of Infernal Caverns, the Ghost Dance came to Lassen and Modoc counties. It was introduced by two Paiute men who held the first dance on the Madeline Plains, just west of the town of Madeline; it included people from Alturas, Likely, Ash Valley, and Fall River. The second dance was held in the spring of 1871 at the top of Crooks Canyon, and included some two hundred people from as far away as Canby. The exact location of this Ghost Dance is not known, but the reference to the "top of Crooks Canyon" would place it at or very near one of the three encampments excavated during this archaeological project. The Ghost Dance was held in part to bring back the dead, and presumably that would have included those - like Chief Si-e-ta-who had died in this very place just four years earlier.

" I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother. "

-Wovoka, Paiute Prophet


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