| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century. By Gregory E. Smoak. (Berkeley: University of California Press. xiii + 289 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95.)

Gregory Smoak shatters many commonly held beliefs about the Ghost Dance religion in this meticulously researched, carefully historicized account of how the Newe peoples of the northern Great Basin constructed and transformed their identities. Ghost Dances were central to this dynamic. Shamanic and prophetic traditions emphasizing invincibility and weather control existed among those who came to be the Shoshone and Bannock peoples before the 1870 religious complex. They were fertile ground for Wodziwob, who initiated the 1870 movement by introducing to Newe people a mourning ceremony from the Fish Lake and Owens Valley Paiute. Epidemic diseases gave them much to mourn. Facing acutely devastating circumstances, a prophecy of world renewal was equally appealing. Numataivo (Ta'vibo), Wovoka's father, likely had nothing to do with the Ghost Dance. Ghost Dances persisted between 1870 and 1890 and continue to this day. They were not simply desperate fantasies and did not derive solely from conditions of deprivation.

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