The Lakota interpretation of the Ghost Dance differed in some respects from the version practiced in other communities: it incorporated the use of Ghost Shirts — garments believed to offer spiritual protection — and some Lakota practitioners interpreted the movement’s promises in ways that gave it a more explicitly political edge than Wovoka had originally intended.

The reservation context in 1889 and 1890 made the spread of the Ghost Dance particularly understandable.

The Dawes Act of 1887 had initiated the allotment of reservation lands, a process that was already threatening the land base of reservation communities.

The Sioux Act of 1889 had taken approximately 9 million acres from the Great Sioux Reservation and divided the remainder into smaller, separate reservations.

The terms of that agreement — the food rations that the government had promised in exchange for the land cession — were being reduced by Congress just as the movement was spreading.