The DICT Development Group

  Ghost dance \Ghost dance\
     A religious dance of the North American Indians, participated
     in by both sexes, and looked upon as a rite of invocation the
     purpose of which is, through trance and vision, to bring the
     dancer into communion with the unseen world and the spirits
     of departed friends. The dance is the chief rite of the
  
     Ghost-dance, or
  
     Messiah,
  
     religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of
        the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the
        time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead
        with the living, should be reunited to live a life of
        millennial happiness upon a regenerated earth. The
        religion inculcates peace, righteousness, and work, and
        holds that in good time, without warlike intervention, the
        oppressive white rule will be removed by the higher
        powers. The religion spread through a majority of the
        western tribes of the United States, only in the case of
        the Sioux, owing to local causes, leading to an outbreak.
        [Webster 1913 Suppl.]