Vice President

Section 5 Dance for a New Millenium Chapter 5

One of the last photographs of the Pyramid Lake prophet shows Wovoka at a political rally. It is the only instance we know of where Wovoka acted in an overtly political manner. He was not in the habit of endorsing candidates. Despite wearing a wardrobe of white man clothes there is not a lot of evidence of Wovoka participating a great deal in the white man world. Wovoka was Native American through and through. White men politics belonged to white men.

The political rally has attracted quite a large crowd, a crowd filled with people eager to change the world. In this way it is like a pow wow, a gathering of people coming together to share and affirm their beliefs. Wovoka was lending his support to Herbert Hoover. You may not have picked Wovoka as a Herbert Hoover fan, but he was. Enough time had passed since Wounded Knee so that the Wovoka was more famous than controversial and maybe more obscure than anything else. Wovoka was barely famous enough to be asked to speak to the crowd. He said a few short words to a round of polite applause. He was not one of the featured speakers and probably was not remembered or even barely noticed by most of the crowd. Still, one has to wonder what Wovoka was thinking about as he addressed the crowd. Was he remembering back to when thousands of people gathered in his name, cheering for his ideas? As he endorsed…