Sitting Bull was curious about the Ghost Dance. He did not fully embrace it, by most accounts, but he allowed it to be practiced in his community and he wanted to learn more about it. The Indian agent at Standing Rock, James McLaughlin, saw the Ghost Dance as a dangerous source of unrest and wanted it suppressed. He specifically wanted Sitting Bull removed from the equation.
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## December 15, 1890: The Assassination
On the morning of December 15, 1890, a force of Indian police — Lakota men employed by the agency — arrived at Sitting Bull’s cabin on the Grand River to arrest him. The circumstances of what followed have been debated for more than a century, but the essential facts are not disputed.
Sitting Bull was pulled from his home. A crowd of his supporters gathered. In the struggle that followed, shots were fired. Sitting Bull was shot in the head and died at the scene. His son Crow Foot, who was inside the cabin, was also killed — shot by the police, reportedly because he had urged his father to resist.
He was fifty-nine years old, by the most common accounting of his birth year.
The killing of Sitting Bull by Indian police employed by the United States government is one of the most charged events in the history of relations between the United States and the Lakota. The men who shot him were Lakota themselves — a fact that adds a layer of complexity to how the event is remembered. The agents and officials who directed the operation, however, were agents of the federal government acting on the government’s directive.