Chief Sitting Bull and Standing Rock

Today is the 126th anniversary of the killing of Chief Sitting Bull in 1890 on the Standing Rock reservation in present-day North Dakota.

Sitting Bull’s death came in the midst of a national hysteria over the rise of an Indian spiritual practice called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance was part of a nonviolent movement (which included Christian overtones of the Resurrection) that prophesied the end of manifest destiny, a halt to the westward expansion of settlers, and a return of Native lands.

While there is no evidence that Sitting Bull was a practitioner of the religion, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison ordered the Army to forcibly suppress the Ghost Dance. The Indian police — personally hostile to Sitting Bull’s clan and now authorized under military orders — were sent to capture him.