Why did the Prophet Dance movement develop among Plateau peoples in the 1830s?

The Prophet Dance movement emerged among Plateau Indian peoples in the 1830s primarily as a response to the profound despair caused by devastating epidemic diseases that accompanied European colonization.1

These millenarian, syncretic religious practices were led by charismatic prophets who claimed to have received supernatural instructions. Participants performed the dance with the goal of hastening the renewal of the world and the return of the dead to the state that existed prior to European contact. This movement served as a precursor to the later Ghost Dance of the 1870s and 1890s, reflecting a period of significant cultural stress and loss of life as indigenous groups faced the encroachment of missionaries and settlers.12