Millenialism is, generally speaking, the religious belief that salvation and material benefits will be conferred upon a society in the near future as the result of some apocalyptic event. The term derives from the Latin word for 1,000; in early Christian theology, believers held that Christ would return and establish his kingdom on earth for a period of a thousand years.
Millenialist movements, Christian and non-Christian, have arisen at various points throughout history, usually in times of great crisis or social upheaval. In "nativistic" millenialist movements, a people threatened with cultural disintegration attempts to earn its salvation by rejecting foreign customs and values and returning to the "old ways." One such movement involving the Ghost Dance cults, named after the ceremonial dance which cult members performed in hope of salvation, flourished in the late 19th century among Indians of the western United States.
By the middle of the 19th century, western expansion and settlement by whites was seriously threatening Native American cultures. Mining, agriculture and ranching encroached on and destroyed many Indian land and food sources. Indian resistance led to a series of wars and massacres, culminating in the U.S. Government's policy of resettlement of Indians onto reservations which constituted a fraction of their former territorial base. Under these dire circumstances, a series of millenialist movements began among western tribes.
The first Ghost Dance cult arose in western Nevada around 1870. A Native American prophet named Wodziwob, a member of a Northern Paiute tribe, received the revelation of an imminent apocalypse which would destroy the white man, restore all dead Indians to life, and return to the Indians their lands, food supplies (such as the vanishing buffalo), and old way of life. The apocalypse was to be brought about with the help of a ceremonial dance and songs, and by strict adherence to a moral code which, oddly enough, strongly resembled Christian teaching. In the early 1870s, Wodziwob's Ghost Dance cult spread to several tribes in California and Oregon, but soon died out or was absorbed into other cults.
A second Ghost Dance cult, founded in January 1889, evolved as the result of a similar revelation. This time Wovoka another Northern Paiute Indian, whose father had been a disciple of Wodziwob received a vision during a solar eclipse in which he died, spoke to God, and was assigned the task of teaching the dance and the millennial message. With white civilization having pushed western tribes ever closer to the brink of cultural disintegration during the previous twenty years, the Ghost Dance movement spread rapidly this time, catching on among tribes from the Canadian border to Texas, and from the Missouri River to the Sierra Nevadas an area approximately one-third the size of the continental United States.
Wovoka's Ghost Dance doctrine forbade Indian violence against whites or other Indians; it also involved the wearing of "ghost shirts," which supposedly rendered the wearers invulnerable to the white man's bullets. In 1890, when the Ghost Dance spread to the Sioux Indians, both the ghost shirts and the movement itself were put to the test. Violent resistance to white domination had all but ended among the Sioux by the late 1880s, when government- ordered reductions in the size of their reservations infuriated the Sioux, and made them particularly responsive to the millenialist message of the Ghost Dance. As the Sioux organized themselves in the cult of the dance, an alarmed federal government resorted to armed intervention which ultimately led to the massacre of some 200 Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in December of 1890. The ghost shirts had been worn to no avail, and Wounded Knee marked the end of the second Ghost Dance cult.
The author answers all of the following questions EXCEPT:
- What was the magical property attributed to the "ghost shirts"?
- Was there any connection between the prophets of the two Ghost Dance cults?
- What distinguishes "nativistic" millenialist movements from other millenialist movements?
- What caused the first Ghost Dance cult to die out?
Answer(s): D
Explanation:
This seeks the answer choice that asks a question which the author didn't address in the passage. Quickly scan the choices, looking for one that leaps out immediately. If this dies not reveal the correct answer, carefully check the choices one by one. Choice (A) asks about the magical powers of the "ghost shirts." This refers back to the first sentence of paragraph 5, where the author says that the shirts "supposedly rendered the wearers invulnerable to the white man's bullets." Thus, choice (A) will not be the answer to Q42. Choice (B) asks
if there was a connection between the prophets of the two Ghost Dance cults. This is answered in the second sentence of paragraph 4, where the author states that the father of the second prophet, Wovoka, "had been a disciple of Wodziwob," prophet of the first cult. There was a connection, so choice (B) is also eliminated. Choice (C) inquires whether the passage describes the difference between "nativistic" and other millenialist movements. That question is answered in the third and fourth sentences of the first paragraph, where the author says that millenialist movements are brought on by crises and social upheavals, while nativistic millenialist movements arise out of the specific threat of cultural disintegration. In addition, believers in nativistic millenialist movements are said to have a specific recipe, as it were, for being saved: they try to earn salvation by "rejecting foreign customs" and "returning to the `old ways.'" No such plan of attack is mentioned for non- nativistic millenialist movements, so choice (C) is eliminated, and choice (D) is left as the correct answer.And indeed, the author never says why the first Ghost Dance cult died out. He only notes, at the very end of the third paragraph, that it "soon died out or was absorbed into other cults," without explanation.
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