Page 127 - Encyclopedia Of World History

dance and drill 477

We should consider every day lost in which we do not
dance at least once. • Nietzsche (1844–1900)
The 1890 Ghost Dance
The prophet of the 1890 Native American Ghost
Dance was Wovoka (1856–1932), a Paiute in
bonding by shout and song were capable of maintaining Nevada who had been trained as a religious
a solid shield front in battle and could overwhelm less healer by his father.Wovoka’s role as the Prophet
organized enemies with comparative ease. The earliest of the Ghost Dance began in 1888, when he re-
known evidence of such tactics comes from Lagash in ceived revelations from the other world concerning
Sumer about 2450 BCE in the form of a stone carving a transformation of Indian society and a return to
showing armored spearmen marching in step behind traditional ways. In January 1989, while ill and
their commander. Early Chinese warfare also relied during a solar eclipse, he went into a trance and
mainly on infantrymen who maneuvered in unison, to experienced an out-of-body experience. Upon his
drumbeat. return, Wovoka began preaching the necessity
After about 750 BCE, however, when cavalrymen and benefits of the Ghost Dance:
learned to shoot arrows from horseback, faster moving
All Indians must dance, everywhere keep on
horsemen could outflank infantry and attack with arrows
dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit
from a safe distance.Accordingly, wherever steppe cavalry
come. He bring back all game of every kind.The
raiders were the main threat they had to face, civilized
game be thick everywhere.All dead Indians come
armies of Eurasia de-emphasized infantry, put foot sol-
back and live again.They all be strong like young
diers behind walls, and let military drill decay.
men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again
In Greece and Rome, however, where steppe raiders
and get young and have fine time. When Great
seldom penetrated, drill and dance became essential ele-
Spirit comes this way, then all the Indians go the
ments of military training after about 650 BCE; and citi-
mountains, high up away from whites. Whites
zen armies, marching together and keeping time by
can’t hurt Indians then.Then while Indians way
shouting, dominated Europe’s Mediterranean battlefields
high up, big flood comes like water and all white
for several hundred years thereafter. As a result, intense
people die, get drowned. After that, water go
commitment by ordinary farmers to public affairs and
away and then nobody but Indians everywhere
war went along with citizenship in ancient Greece and
and game all kinds thick.Then medicine man tell
republican Rome, providing a model for modern democ-
Indians to send word to all Indians to keep up
racies when they arose in Europe and America in the
dancing and the good time will come. Indians
eighteenth century. Emotional responses to keeping
who don’t dance, who don’t believe in this word,
together in time undergirded and made such behavior
will grow little, just about a foot high, and stay
possible.
that way. Some of them will be turned into wood
Elsewhere in the world, war and dancing were inti-
and be burned in fire.
mately connected. Among Amerindians, Polynesians,
Source: Brown, D. (1991): Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian history of
Africans, and elsewhere warriors prepared for battle by the American West (p. 416). New York: Henry Holt.
dancing together ahead of time. Such behavior presum-
ably consolidated fellow-feeling and assured better coop-
eration even when the combatants did not array them- crossbows,and handguns,wielded by well-drilled infantry
selves in fixed ranks or learn to maneuver together.Horses units, could withstand and repel cavalry charges. This
of course cannot keep time, so cavalry was different. Drill altered long-standing military balances within Eurasia,
was ineffective, and whatever control commanders were making the superior numbers of civilized armies effective
able to exert over attacking cavalrymen was more by per- against steppe horsemen as never before. China and Rus-
sonal example than through prearranged formations. sia were the principal beneficiaries and by 1757 the last
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both Chi- steppe nomad confederacy was reduced to dependence as
nese and European and generals discovered that pikes, their expanding Imperial frontiers came together.Almost