He was told that if the people danced the Ghost Dance — a circular dance of communal prayer — and lived rightly, this world would return.

Some versions of the prophecy added a specific element: the Earth would swallow up the white settlers, and the ancestors would return.

The Ghost Dance spread rapidly through the Plains reservations.

For people who had lost almost everything — their land, their food source, their freedom of movement, their cultural practices, their children (taken to boarding schools designed to eliminate Native languages and culture) — the vision of restoration was powerful beyond words.

At Standing Rock, where Sitting Bull lived under the watchful eye of Indian agent James McLaughlin, the Ghost Dance became a specific source of tension.