But he maintained, throughout his life, a commitment to Lakota sovereignty and Lakota ways of being that refused to accept the terms offered by the federal government and its reservation system.

That consistency of purpose made him a target.

It made him dangerous, in the eyes of federal officials, precisely because he was effective: because people listened to him, because his authority was real rather than merely symbolic, and because his continued influence represented an obstacle to the kind of compliance and assimilation that the reservation system was designed to produce.

His death was, in the most direct sense, the result of that danger.