Whites and Native Americans differed greatly in their view of the meaning of progress. The white settlers were from a capitalistic system, while the Native Americans had a more communal economic system. This alone gave the two groups differing perspectives. The white settlers saw progress in terms of manifest Destiny, as stated by thomas Jefferson, the idea that as a people they were fated to expand their dominion from one ocean to the next and so to dominate the continent. The Native Americans were in their own way just as warlike, but they directed their hostility to neighboring tribes without ever forgetting that they were indeed neighbors, with their own regions, their own beliefs, and their own attitudes. The Native Americans tended to see other beliefs as manifestations of a central truth, and so they were better able to accommodate different ideas. The Ghost Dance shows this clearly, for the native Americans adopted ideas from the new religion to which they were exposed by the whites and combined Christian beliefs with their own nativist beliefs. White settlers adapted some Native American ideas but tended to see their role as conquerors and supplanters rather than as adapting to what they found already entrenched in the New World.
These two tendencies clashed around the development of the Ghost Dance, creating fears in the white power structure that not only were the Native Americans not being made into Christians but that Christians were being seduced into pagan ways with the spread of the new religion. The Americans made matters worse by breaking promises and by not keeping treaties and other agreements, but this as well was a reflection of the white attitude of dominance.
We have seen similar events in recent years without the racial component. Religious groups that are at all different and that are seen as in any way posing a threat of violence are demonized as was done with the Branch Davidians in Waco, T...