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Why did the Ghost Dance movement spread among the Oceti Sakowin?

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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.

The Ghost Dance movement spread among the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux) in 1890 primarily because it offered a spiritual promise of relief from the severe hardships they were enduring. At that time, the Oceti Sakowin were suffering from extreme hunger, disease, and the loss of their traditional way of life due to confinement on reservations and the depletion of game, particularly the buffalo.123

The movement, promulgated by the Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka, provided a messianic message that resonated with these communities. Wovoka prophesied that through the performance of the Ghost Dance and adherence to a moral code, the ancestors of the Native Americans would rise from the dead, the buffalo would return to the plains, and the white colonizers would vanish, restoring their traditional lands and lifestyles.142

While the movement was fundamentally a peaceful religious attempt to revitalize traditional culture, it was viewed with suspicion by the U.S. government, which feared it as a threat to its authority and its efforts to force assimilation upon the Oceti Sakowin.152