" This is a compellingly nuanced and sophisticated study of Indian peoples as negotiators and shapers of the modern world."—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

Classic of American anthropology explores messianic cult behind Indian resistance, from Pontiac to the 1890s. Extremely detailed and thorough. Originally published in 1896 by the Bureau of American Ethnology. 38 plates, 49 other illustrations.

"In Hostiles? Sam A. Maddra relates an ironic tale of Indian accommodation - and preservation of what the Lakota continued to believe was a principled, restorative religion. Their alleged crime was their participation in the Ghost Dance. To the U.S. Army, their religion was a rebellion to be suppressed. To the Indians, is offered hope in a time of great transition. To Cody, it became a means to attract British audiences. With these "hostile indians," the showman could offer dramatic reenactments of the army's conquest, starring none other than the very "hostiles" who had staged what British audiences knew from their newspapers to have been an uprising.".

First published a century ago, The Ghost Dance is a unique first-hand account of a messianic movement against white subjugation that arose among Native Americans of the West and the Plains in the latter part of the 19th-century.

For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often act

The relationship between religion and dance is as old as humankind. Contemporary methods for studying this relationship date back a century. The difference between these two time frames is significant: scholars are still developing theories and methods capable of illuminating this vast history that take account of their limited place within it. A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance takes on a primary challenge of doing so: overcoming a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries. Beginning with its enlightenment roots, LaMothe narrates a selective history of this dichotomy, revealing its ongoing work in separating dance studies from religious studies. Turning to the Bushmen of the African Kalahari, LaMothe introduces an ecokinetic approach that provides scholars with conceptual resources for mapping the generative interdependence of phenomena that appear as “dance” and/or “religion.”

A broad range of perspectives from Natives and non-Natives makes this book the most complete account and analysis of the Lakota ghost dance ever published. A revitalization movement that swept across Native communities of the West in the late 1880s, the ghost dance took firm hold among the Lakotas, perplexed and alarmed government agents, sparked the intervention of the U.S. Army, and culminated in the massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in December 1890. Although the Lakota ghost dance has been the subject of much previous historical study, the views of Lakota participants have not been fully explored, in part because they have been available only in the Lakota language. Moreover, emphasis has been placed on the event as a shared historical incident rather than as a dynamic meeting ground of multiple groups with differing perspectives. In The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, Rani-Henrik Andersson uses for the first time some accounts translated from Lakota. This book presents these Indian accounts together with the views and observations of Indian agents, the U.S. Army, missionaries, the mainstream press, and Congress. This comprehensive, complex, and compelling study not only collects these diverse viewpoints but also explores and analyzes the political, cultural, and economic linkages among them.