Legend of the Ghost Dance

 

There was a time in Yap when the terrible disease leprosy was brought by foreign sailors. A man in the village of Akaw, Weloy was inflicted with the disease, which they named “bliss”. When all local medicines failed to cure the disease his family took him out of the village in fear of it spreading to others. They built him a shelter high up on a hill outside the village and took him food daily. More sores appeared each week on his body and he began to hallucinate. He saw people walking going to practice a dance in the village remembering it as a dream.

One night while he was sleeping people came again. One person asked if he would like to join the dance practice. Agreeing he practiced with them every night until he learned the dance well. When his family came to bring food he asked them to bring his traditional dancing clothes. They were alarmed and concerned that he was loosing grasp of reality. But he insisted and finally one of the family members agreed to bring his thuw, hibiscus, lavalava and dancing leis. That night when the people came he was dressed in his best traditional clothes somehow realizing that night would be the ”hang up dance” a final dance which traditionally puts the dance away. They danced through the night and when the sun came up the next morning the sick man noticed all the dancers had disappeared.

He found himself alone hanging on a branch in the largest Banyon tree on the island. He began shouting for help. People from his village heard him and came running. They were shocked to find the sick man in his dance clothes hanging in the tree. They were even more shocked to see that the sick man’s sores were gone and he seemed well again. As they helped him down from the tree be began telling them about the dancers in the night. Back in the village he called all the people to the dance platform where he repeated his story and began to teach the dance before he forgot it.