White Doe, aka Virginia Dare
Human female, age 443 (b. 1587-08-18), effectively early 20s. Shamaness of the Croatoans.
Virginia Dare was the first child born to English parents in America. She was born in the Roanoke Colony, shortly before its destruction. (Historical fact)
The Legend of White Doe
She survived the destruction caused by Rhys, aka Blackheart. She and the other survivors were rescued by Croatoan Indians, who took them to their lands and eventually integrated them. Virginia was marked by the event--???
and perhaps it was because of the magic unleashed there that she manifested such potent magical talent. The tribal shaman took her in and taught her the ways of the Croatans.
She took to the training with aplomb, her eagerness suprising even the fiercest Croatan warriors. She dedicated herself to the destruction of monsters...especially vampires like Blackheart, who destroyed her family and her home. She insisted on training and trying as a warrior as well as a shaman. She earned the name "White Doe", for her ability to transform into that animal shape (and later, many others), but don't let its seeming passivity fool you...she is not prey. She is Hunter.
In her early days, she helped defend Indian and Englishman alike from the monsters of the wild. However, at the budding of her womanhood, she went on a vision quest, and learned that Blackheart still lived, and roamed the country, terrorizing the People. She could not abide this, and despite the urging of the tribe, her new family, she left to track him. Sadly, she would never see them alive again.
For years, she roamed the mountains and plains, finding each devastated village and pueblo in turn, always one step behind her quarry. Finally, she found him in the lands of the Diné, and cornered him at the edge of the Grand Canyon. There, she called upon the Thunder Gods, channeling all the might of Earth and Sky; as the story his told, Blackheart simply stood still, as the Darkness within burst forth from him, a mass of tentacles, mouths, and claws, raking desperately at the forces arrayed against it.
White Doe triumphed over her foe, and smote his ruin upon the canyon floor, whereupon the Earth opened to swallow him, and he was never seen again. So the legend goes, so wounded was she by her battle, that she went to sleep in a cave, and shall sleep for 500 years to restore her strength. Others say she became one with the Earth, restful, but vigilant, in case her foe should ever rise again. In all the centuries since, white does have often been seen, guiding the lost to safety, or forfending creatures of the dark from the innocent.
Ghost Dance Religion
In December 1888, Wovoka (Jack Wilson) of the Northern Paiute(Numu), who was thought to be the son of the medicine man Tavibo (Numu-tibo'o), fell sick with a fever during an eclipse of the sun, which occurred on January 1, 1889. Upon his recovery he made the claim that he had visited the spirit world and the Supreme Being and made the prediction that the world would soon end then be restored to a pure aboriginal state in the presence of the messiah. All Native Americans would inherit this world, including those who were already dead, in order to live eternally without suffering. In order to reach this reality, Wovoka stated that all Native Americans should live honestly, and shun the ways of whites (especially the consumption of alcohol). He called for meditation, prayer, singing, and dancing as an alternative to mourning the dead, for they would soon resurrect. Wovoka's followers saw him as a form of the messiah and he became known as the "Red Man's Christ."
His supposed father, Tavibo, had participated in the Ghost Dance of 1870 and had a similar vision of the Great Spirit of Earth removing all white men, and then of an earthquake removing all human beings. Tavibo's vision concluded that Native Americans would return to live in a restored environment and that only believers in his revelations would be resurrected.
This religion spread to many tribes on reservations in the West, namely the Shoshone, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux (Dakota, Lakota, Nakota). In fact, some bands of Sioux were so desperate during wartime for hope that they strengthened their militancy after making a pilgrimage to Nevada in 1889-1890. They provided their own interpretation of the Gospel to their people which emphasized the elimination of white people. A Ghost Dance gathering in December 1890 actually led to the massacre of Sioux, who believed their Ghost Dance Shirts could stop bullets, at Wounded Knee.1516