On October 9 Kicking Bear of Cheyenne River agency, the chief high priest of the Ghost dance among the Sioux, went to Standing Rock by invitation of Sitting Bull and inaugurated the dance on that reservation at Sitting Bull’s camp on Grand river. The dance had begun on Cheyenne river about the middle of September, chiefly at the camps of Hump and Big Foot. On learning of Kicking Bear’s arrival, Agent McLaughlin sent a force of police, including two officers, to arrest him and put him off the reservation, but they returned without executing the order, both officers being in a dazed condition and fearing the power of Kicking Bear’s “medicine.” Sitting Bull, however, had promised that his visitors would go back to their own reservation, which they did a day or two later, but he declared his intention to continue the dance, as they had received a direct message from the spirit world through Kicking Bear that they must do so to live. He promised that he would suspend the dance until he could come and talk the matter over with the agent, but this promise he failed to keep. Considering Sitting Bull the leader and instigator of the excitement on the reservation, McLaughlin again advised his removal, and that of several other mischief makers, and their confinement in some military prison at a distance. (_G. D., 25._) The two centers of excitement were now at Standing Rock reservation, where Sitting Bull was the open and declared leader, and at Pine Ridge, where Red Cloud was a firm believer in the new doctrine, although perhaps not an instigator of direct opposition to authority. At Rosebud the movement had been smothered for the time by the prompt action of Agent Wright, as already described. At the first-named reservation McLaughlin met the emergency with bravery and ability reinforced by twenty years of experience in dealing with Indians, and, while recommending the removal of Sitting Bull, expressed confidence in his own ability to allay the excitement and suppress the dance. At Pine Ridge, however, where the crisis demanded a man of most positive character—somebody of the McGillycuddy stamp—Gallagher had resigned and had been succeeded in October by D. F. Royer, a person described as “destitute of any of those qualities by which he could justly lay claim to the position—experience, force of character, courage, and sound judgment.” (_Welsh, 2._) This appears in every letter and telegram sent out by him during his short incumbency, and is sufficiently evidenced in the name by which the Sioux soon came to know him, Lakota-Kokipa-Koshkala, “Young-man-afraid-of-Indians.” Before he had been in charge a week, he had so far lost control of his Indians as to allow a half dozen of them to release and carry off a prisoner named Little, whom the police had arrested and brought to the agency. On October 12 he reported that more than half of his 6,000 Indians were dancing, and that they were entirely beyond the control of the police,