The Ghost Dance provided a pretext — a justification for an arrest order that McLaughlin had wanted to issue on other grounds long before the dance began to spread.

Sitting Bull’s relationship to the Ghost Dance was ambiguous.

He did not become a formal adherent of the movement, and the historical record does not support a clear picture of what he believed about its religious content or its political implications.

He permitted Ghost Dance ceremonies to take place near his camp, which was enough for McLaughlin to cite as justification for the arrest order.

The broader context of the Ghost Dance — a religious movement that spread across multiple reservation communities in 1889 and 1890 — is relevant to understanding why federal authorities responded to it with the alarm they did.