The movement, which had originated with a Paiute man named Wovoka and had spread rapidly across the Plains, promised a spiritual renewal in which the world would be transformed, the buffalo would return, and the suffering of reservation life would end.

Different communities interpreted the movement differently; some versions were purely spiritual and explicitly peaceful, while others incorporated elements that alarmed reservation agents and military commanders.

The military response to the Ghost Dance, which culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890 — two weeks after Sitting Bull’s death — was catastrophic.

An estimated 250 to 300 Lakota people, many of them women and children, were killed by the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The massacre effectively ended the Ghost Dance movement and stands as one of the most notorious episodes of violence in the history of the American West.