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Why did U.S. officials view the Ghost Dance as a threat?

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Plains Wars View of the army camp at Hidden Wood Creek during Lieut. Col. George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills expedition, 1874; photograph by W.H. Illingworth.

U.S. officials viewed the Ghost Dance as a significant threat to their authority and their ongoing efforts to "civilize" and control Native American tribes, particularly the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux).12

While the movement originated as a peaceful, millenarian religious practice, its message evolved as it spread to the Plains. Among the Lakota, who were suffering from extreme hunger, disease, and the theft of treaty-promised annuities by corrupt officials, the movement was interpreted as a potential catalyst for an uprising. U.S. officials feared that the Ghost Dance—which promised the resurrection of the dead, the return of the buffalo, and the disappearance of European settlers—would incite violence and challenge the government's control over the reservations.312

Believing the religion threatened the uneasy peace, government agents attempted to suppress the movement by arresting its leaders, an action that led to the death of Sitting Bull and culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where hundreds of Lakota were killed.12