Sitting Bull, who had fled to Canada in 1876, returned to Dakota in the early eighties in time to witness the rapid settlement of the northern plains and the growth of the territories towards statehood. After his revolt the Black Hills had been taken away from the tribe, as had been the vague hunting rights over northern Wyoming. Now as statehood advanced in the later eighties, and as population piled up around the edges of the reserve, the time was ripe for the medicine-men to preach the coming of a Messiah, and for Sitting Bull to increase his personal following. Bad crops which in these years produced populism in Kansas and Nebraska, had even greater menace for the half-civilized Indians. Agents and army officers became aware of the undercurrent of danger some months before trouble broke out.
The state of South Dakota was admitted in November, 1889. Just a year later the Bureau turned the Sioux country over to the army, and General Nelson A. Miles proceeded to restore peace, especially in the vicinity of the Rosebud and Pine Ridge agencies. The arrest of Sitting Bull, who claimed miraculous powers for himself, and whose "ghost shirts" were supposed to give invulnerability to his followers, was attempted in December. The troops sent out were resisted, however, and in the mêlée the prophet was killed. The war which followed was much noticed, but of little consequence. General Miles had plenty of troops and Hotchkiss guns. Heliograph stations conveyed news easily and safely. But when orders were issued two weeks after the death of Sitting Bull to disarm the camp at Wounded Knee, the savages resisted. The troops within reach, far outnumbered, blazed away with their rapid-fire guns, regardless of age or sex, with such effect that more than two hundred Indian bodies, mostly women and children, were found dead upon the field.
With the death of Sitting Bull, turbulence among the Indians, important enough to be called resistance, came to an end. There had been many other isolated cases of outbreak since the adoption of the peace policy in 1869. There were petty riots and individual murders long after 1890. But there were, and could be, no more Indian wars. Many of the tribes had been educated to half-civilization, while lands in severalty had changed the point of view of many tribesmen. The relative strength of the two races was overwhelmingly in favor of the whites.