this short, 22-second film is another one of edison's black maria studios' motion picture camera experiments, this time heise and dickson immortalize fully war-painted American natives performing the mystical ghost dance.
the film itself is quite dark, you can barely see what's going on. ironically the ghost dance, as far as i understand, was a native American ritual/religion to separate the natives from the white man, his alcohol, weapons and _technology_.
'sioux ghost dance' was shot five years after, according to the story, wovoka's peyote induced vision where he saw the future evils of white man and the second coming of Christ, who (surprise surprise), came in wovoka's shape. as the word spread, the lakota came to meet him and learn the ghost dance. the most fanatic followers of the cult, big foot and his band, mostly women and children, got slaughtered by whites at wounded creek in 1890, only two weeks after the arrests where the lakota chief sitting bull was shot in the head by the lakota police during a gunfight between the police and the ghost dancers, an event precipitating the wounded creek massacre.