The two Ghost Dance movements have been much studied from different scholarly perspectives. My view of the Ghost Dances as attempts at demographic revitalization is rooted partly in the existing scholarly literature on the movements. For my purposes, this literature may be adequately subsumed under four general topics: descriptive accounts, studies attributing the dances to evolutionary or unique origins, accounts of conditions of differential participation, and the study of social movements. All seem of at least some relevance to the work here presented.

Descriptions

Basic descriptions of the 1870 Ghost Dance are limited, in comparison to the 1890 dance, probably because of the time difference between the two and the larger area of the 1890 movement. The 1890 dance also occurred perhaps in closer proximity to larger populations of whites, who became aware of it either directly through observation or indirectly through word-of-mouth or newspaper accounts. Further reasons undoubtedly include the development of anthropology and ethnology as scholarly disciplines and the founding of the Bureau of American Ethnology, both during the late 1800s. Contemporary accounts of the 1890 Ghost Dance were published in scholarly sources, but no contemporary scholarly accounts of the 1870 dance are to be found.

The earliest located publication on the 1870 Ghost Dance movement is Kroeber's 1904 paper “A Ghost-dance in California,” published thirty-five years after the movement's origin and fourteen years after the first publication on the 1890 movement.