Benjamin R. Kracht

The Kiowa Ghost Dance, 1894-1916: an unheralded revitalization movement

The Kiowa Ghost Dance movement of 1894-1916 is relatively unknown. Kiowa involvement in the 1894 Ghost Dance movement involved different motives than the theories of deprivation and acculturation used to describe participation in the Ghost Dance of 1889-91. An ethnohistorical analysis of the ritual symbols in the Kiowa Ghost Dance illustrates how the Kiowa - and the others - perceived themselves as participants in the movement.

Kiowa Religion in Historical Perspective

I remember her most often at prayer. She made long, rambling prayers out of suffering and hope, having seen many things. I was never sure that I had the right to hear, so exclusive were they of all mere custom and company. The last time I saw her she prayed standing by the side of her bed at night, naked to the waist, the light of a kerosene lamp moving upon her dark skin. Her long black hair, always drawn and braided in the day, lay upon her shoulders and against her breasts like a shawl. I do not speak Kiowa, and I never understood her prayers, but there was something inherently sad in the sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. She began in a high and descending pitch, exhausting her breath to silence; then again and again-and always the same intensity of effort, of something that is, and is not, like urgency in the human voice. Transported so in the dancing light among the shadows of her room, she seemed beyond the reach of time. [Momaday 1987 11969}:10]