Chippewa Dream Dance?

Question

Chippewa Dream Dance?

Answer 1

Go to your local library tomorrow and request that this book be ordered for you.  It should arrive in two days or so:

Dream Dance of the Chippewa and Menominee Indians of Northern Wisconsin (Bulletin of the Public Museum of Milwaukee : Vol 1) (Hardcover)

by S. A. Barrett (Author)

Answer 2

The Dream Dance, regarded as one form of the messiah cult, originated among the Sioux in the late 1870’s from the visions of a Santee Sioux girl named Wananikwe. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, American Indians, dependent, and bewildered, sought new ways of handling reservation life by turning to the Ghost Dance, alcohol, peyotism, the Sun Dance, and the Dream Dance.  The sudden popularity of the Dream Dance demonstrated that many Indians of the 1880’s felt adrift, seeking a new anchor, a reassurance of their identity as Indians. The Dream Dance originated as a ‘nativistic’ movement—a reaction to the disorganizing and threatening impact of Western civilization.

The Dream Dance came into Wisconsin in 1878, when the Sioux girl visited the Chippewas and instructed them on its doctrines and forms. Interviewed by two white men near Ashland, Wisconsin, the girl told of events in the spring of 1876 when she had hidden in a pond while her band was being massacred by the U.S. army. Spirits told her to teach a new dance and to teach it to all the Indian tribes . . . tribes must put away their small drum and make a larger one, ending their war and pipe dances and performing only the new dance. Interviews of Chippewa and Menominees in later years added details of the girl’s rise into the sky where the Great Spirit told her the songs and ceremonies to teach her people. Back on earth, Sioux leaders regarded the girl’s story as a direct revelation and from that time on the dream dance cult spread from tribe to tribe and has superseded almost completely the older ceremonies.

Wananikwe’s vision and subsequent message struck a responsive chord in the upper Midwest, where the political impotence and military inferiority were driving Native Americans to desperation. . . Like the Sun Dance, the Dream Dance condemned alcoholism, adultery, individual violence, and gambling, and like the Ghost Dance it also promised a restoration of the old tribal world. Missionary disciples of the Dream Dance traveled widely, hoping to create harmony within individual tribes . . . and to stimulate the development of a pan-Indian unity . . . so that the traditional conflicts of the past that prevented Native Americans from uniting against non-Native Americans could be resolved.