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On the 29th of April 1868, the United States government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie with several leaders of the Sioux tribes of the Great Plains. By November many of the older leaders of the Sioux like Red Cloud had agreed to its terms and went to live on fed-eral-run reservations. One younger leader was militant in his resistance though. Eight years later Sitting Bull would win the most famous Sioux victory over the US. How did this young member of the Hunkpapa tribe go from local tribal leader to the victor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn? This is the story of Sitting Bull and the Great Sioux War.
The man known to history as Sitting Bull was born sometime between 1831 and 1837 in Many Caches, a collection of native American storage pits located in Dakota. He was born into a noble family of the Hunkpapa, a sub-tribe of the Lakota people. The Lakota and the Dakota collectively made up the Sioux Native Americans that dominated the region from the western edges of the Great Lakes around Minnesota all the way through the Great Plains and the Dakotas to Montana. Sitting Bull had several names during his life. For instance, he was known as Ȟoká Psíče, meaning
'Jumping Badger' in his childhood years. Later he acquired the name Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, which translates as 'Sitting Bull'. Sitting Bull's father was also called Sitting Bull. At the time of his son's birth, he was chief of the Hunkpapa tribe along with his two brothers, Four Horns and Looks-for-Him-in-a-Tent. Sitting Bull's mother was Her-Holy-Door. He had two known sisters, Good Feather and Twin Woman, as well as one half-brother, Fool Dog, who lived with his mother's clan, the Arikaras. By the age of ten, Jumping Badger was recognised
as an accomplished hunter, having already killed his first buffalo. Four years later, the young boy's martial talents helped him attain his first battlefield kill against his people's most hated rivals, the Crows. In 1845 the Hunkpapa were engaged in a border war with the Crows. On the third day the war party ambushed a band of a dozen Crow riders, and in the ensuing melee Jumping Badger chased down a mounted enemy and knocked him off his horse with a tomahawk. Returning victorious to their camp, a white eagle feather representing bravery was placed in his hair to symbolise his transition to manhood. His body was painted black
from head-to-toe and he was led around the camp to rapturous applause. Then in the final act Jumping Badger was renamed Sitting Bull by his father, who also gifted his son a traditional buffalo-hide shield he would use for the rest of his life. Eager to grow his standing as a master warrior, he took part in numerous successful war expeditions throughout the 1850s that expanded Hunkpapa territory. During these skirmishes he won about a dozen one-on-one battles, all of which were independently observed and recorded by other men. Eventually his name struck so much fear that
his comrades would shout "We are Sitting Bull's boys" to demoralise the enemy before they had even started fighting. His insatiable desire for glory however would come at a price in 1856 when, challenged by a foe to a one-to-one duel with muskets, he was shot by a bullet in the foot. Despite killing his opponent, he would live for the rest of his life with a limp. In this period Sitting Bull not only excelled as a soldier, but also as a mystic. In the same year of his injury he became a Wicasa Wakan, which translates as 'sacred man' and which according
to Lakota custom was an individual who had the ability to have dream visions. In order to attain this spiritual status Sitting Bull's chest and back muscles were skewered and he was hung in the air until he was able to tear them loose in a ritual known as a sun-dance sacrifice. The following year, after being recognised as a man that exemplified the Lakota virtues of bravery and wisdom, he was made war chief of the Hunkpapa tribe in a ceremony that took place at the mouth of the Grand River, near his birthplace. As part of the tribal rites, Sitting Bull smoked a
pipe made from porcupine quills and duck feathers and drank a cup containing water and sweetgrass, before being presented with a cane that symbolised long life. Sitting Bull's father was killed around this time, in 1859, while fighting against the hated Crows. Having seen his father's dead corpse, the furious Sitting Bull chased the culprit down and killed him to exact revenge. Sitting Bull's ascension to leadership coincided with the rise of the Wasichus, the Lakota term for the new settlers, who at the end of the 1850s were emerging as the single biggest threat to
his tribe's existence. After decades of massive settlement around the Great Lakes, the influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the US from Europe every year was now fuelling American expansion further westward again towards the Great Plains in the 1850s and 1860s. More and more of these settlers began moving in and encroaching on Lakota lands bringing with them disease, alcohol, and livestock that ate the prairie grasses where wild buffalo fed. In March 1856 the power dynamic between the newcomers and natives was starkly outlined by General William Harney when he
gathered Lakota tribe leaders to inform them of a treaty of his own making that had three major stipulations. The first was that native Americans who had committed crimes against settlers were to be handed over to US authorities, the second was that stolen property must be returned to military outposts, and the third was that they were not to loiter near roads used by settlers nor were they to obstruct any non Native American travellers. In return the general pledged that they would enjoy the protection of the US government, yet this was a treaty in name only.
The US Senate had not ratified it and it had no legal basis. Most of the Lakota and Dakota people simply chose to ignore it, leading to a surge in violent confrontations between the two races in what are now Minnesota and Iowa, west into the Dakotas and Nebraska. Tensions between the various Sioux tribes and the Euro-American settlers intensified in 1862 when the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains transformed the Missouri River and surrounding areas into a popular transportation hub for miners heading westwards, leading to further encroachment on the lands of the Lakota and Dakota. Within a very short space of time the Missouri River was
riddled with prospectors, steam-boat captains and miners. The Dakota War of 1862 marked the beginning of more intense clashes between the US government and the various Sioux tribes as huge numbers of Dakota tribespeople were displaced from Minnesota and pushed into the Dakota Territory. Others were rounded up and sent to reservations in Nebraska. Sitting Bull and his followers had their power base further west and were only peripherally involved in the Dakota War, but they would have been completely aware of the implications of this westward expansion of the United States. The next
year the invaders signalled their intention to permanently stay in the area with the construction of Fort Sully, located a couple of miles above Fort Pierre on the west bank of the Missouri. This set the stage for the Battle of Kildeer Mountain at the end of July 1864, where the gulf in technology between the two sides was evident as the US forces used accurate long-range rifles, cannons, and artillery. By 1865 Sitting Bull's attitude towards the settlers was clear among his compatriots. With the notable exception of traders who sold guns to his people, he believed
that all other non Native Americans must leave Lakota territory and never return. Over the next four years the chief practised what he preached by leading the offensive against the newcomers. Others amongst the Lakota, having witnessed the superiority of the invaders on the battlefield, favoured a more diplomatic approach and believed that negotiating with the settlers was the only realistic survival option. This difference in opinion caused fractures within the Lakota best exemplified by Sitting Bull's multiple raids on the military stronghold of Fort Rice in
the spring of 1865. As more and more of his countrymen bent the knee to the invaders, Sitting Bull stepped up his resistance throughout 1866 and 1867, focusing his military efforts on another installation called Fort Buford which, built deep in Lakota territory, represented the most egregious incursion yet. To the west, his ally, Red Cloud, harassed the newly-erected US military forts. Red Cloud, however, would eventually give in the following year when he signed a peace deal that put an end to his guerrilla campaign in the Northern Plains.
Having proven time and time again his determination to rid his domains of settlers, and as a highly-respected Lakota chieftain who was still relatively young, Sitting Bull was deemed the perfect candidate for a new position concocted by his uncle, Four Horns, that broke with tradition. With the plight of his people only worsening year after year, Four Horns proposed that his nephew become the head chief of a Sioux Confederation that would unite the Lakota and Dakota tribes under one banner. This coalition of survival came into being in 1869 when, in the middle of Rosebud Creek, the Hunkpapas, Blackfeet, Miniconjous, Sans Arcs,
Oglalas, and Cheyennes elected Sitting Bull as the chief of their confederacy, a position which gave him authority to make war and peace. His ascension to this position also marked a decisive shift away from the aggression that had characterised much of the 1860s to a more defensive strategy. Having been the spear of his people Sitting Bull now became their shield, withdrawing from direct attacks on forts and instead prioritising the retention of their remaining territory. Soon enough they would be drawn back into conflict though.
Since the Hunkpapas were practitioners of polygamy, Sitting Bull had many wives throughout his life including Light Hair, Snow-on-Her, and Red Woman or Scarlet Woman, with the latter two becoming bitter rivals. In 1872 he wed the sisters Four Robes and Seen-By-Her-Nation. He had six daughters, male twins, as well as two adopted sons, One Bull and Jumping Bull. In appearance Sitting Bull was just under six feet tall and, though he had a solid, muscular build, he was much more agile than met the eye. He had striking eyes, a flat nose, thin lips, and a large head with long dark hair which, often braided to one side with otter fur,
went down to his shoulders. In personality he was famously generous, spending later earnings he got from his celebrity status on lavish feasts for his friends and kinsmen. Supposedly able to communicate and talk with them in their song, he was so fond of birds that one time he even stopped a feast to fix up a wounded meadowlark. A nature lover, he was also a man of many talents, and, aside from being a feared warrior and respected war chief, was a champion sprinter, a knowledgeable healer and a revered holy man who frequently experienced prophetic visions. As America grew, so did its transport system, leading to plans for a Northern
Pacific Railway that would cut right through the heart of the Lakota territory. Swapping their old powder muskets for superior rifles with cartridge bullets, indigenous resistance against the railroad intensified in the early 1870s, with nighttime assaults on encampments of railroad engineers on the north bank of the Yellowstone River which cut through the sacred Elk Valley of the Lakota homeland. According to Lakota lore, during one battle at Arrow Creek, Sitting Bull took some tobacco, his pipe, bow, and rifle, and calmly walked straight into the middle
of the contested, open plains. Then, with enemy bullets whistling past or hitting the dirt around him, he sat down, lit his pipe, and exclaimed: "Who other Indians with to smoke with me come" upon which four of his compatriots joined the smoking party. After they had finished the tobacco bowl and Sitting Bull had cleaned his pipe, his companions rushed back to safety but the Sioux chieftain didn't follow their lead, instead taking his time to get up and walk serenely back to friendly lines. Despite his bravery, Sitting Bull's war bands inflicted very few casualties
against the better armed and organised railroad expedition, which they shadowed for a week or so after the initial fighting at Arrow Creek. With plans for the railway still in full swing despite Siting Bull's opposition, the next year another survey expedition set off towards the Yellowstone. Leading the Seventh Cavalry was Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who was nicknamed Long Hair for the distinctive red-gold hair that tumbled down to just above his shoulders. In early August 1873, from the time his soldiers were spotted by the Sioux,
Custer pursued a series of inconclusive skirmishes with the Lakota, a stark contrast to what would happen during their second meeting years later. For now though, the natives held their ground in what would turn out to be their last battle with the railroad companies and their protection escorts for some time. In 1873 an economic crash occurred in the US owing to excessive speculation on the railways. American and European economic markets were crippled for several years, literally stopping the development of the Northern Pacific Railway in its tracks.
With the pace of non Native American expansion temporarily slowing down, over the next few years Sitting Bull intensified his military campaigns against the Crows who were one of the tribes who, having accepted the 1868 treaty, had allowed the settlers to establish a reservation and support agencies on their territory. Simultaneously he also repulsed an invasion of around 150 prospectors who had trespassed on his homeland in February 1874 to look for sources of gold. By this point Sitting Bull's consistent hostility had made it clear that he would never willingly
acquiesce to US rule, fuelling speculation that a bigger, more devastating war was inevitable. The Great Sioux War of 1876 kicked off when Sitting Bull refused to sell a sacred piece of his domain called the Black Hills to the US government, who wanted to mine it for gold. On the 17th of March 1876 in snowy and icy conditions, American troops launched a surprise attack against the Northern Cheyenne tribe on the Powder River in the Montana Territory, during which they burned down half of their camp, leaving them without shelter and provisions and forcing them to find refuge with
Sitting Bull, who offered it generously. With the enemy closing in, Sitting Bull appealed to the spiritual world to guide him and in June, after completing sacred rites over four days he was suddenly struck by a profound vision of the invaders turned upside down. To Sitting Bull and those who deciphered it, this was a portent of a great victory to come very soon. On the 17th of May 1876, Lieutenant Colonel Custer had led a column of 750 men out of Fort Abraham Lincoln with the intention of destroying Sitting Bull's forces for good. Aided by Crow scouts,
the plan was for Custer to march up the Rosebud River to Sitting Bull's village and attack it. After overpowering them, the Sioux were expected to flee north where a force overseen by generals Alfred Terry and John Gibbon would block their path and finish them off. By the 24th of June, Custer knew that his force had already been spotted by Lakota scouts who had been observing them from a distance. Fearing that the warriors in the village he intended to take would scatter out in all directions, he then made the fateful decision to attack on the afternoon of the 25th,
rather than waiting until the morning of the 26th. In doing so, Custer was essentially going in blind because the size of Sitting Bull's war party was unknown. Then, on the afternoon of the 25th of June, as the Lakota hurriedly painted themselves and readied their weapons, Custer made another tactical blunder when he divided his regiment into three separate groups, meaning each was isolated from the rest. Custer's cavalry, led by Major Marcus Reno, were the first to charge down into the southern end of the village. As they let off their first
volleys of bullets, Sitting Bull hurriedly donned his war gear while his stepson, One Bull, handed him a Winchester repeating rifle and a six-shooter pistol. As the horsemen approached the first Hunkpapa tipis just before a river-bend, some of them dismounted, forming a thin static line of fire. After advancing about a hundred yards they dropped to their bellies on open ground. But the return fire was so intense that the soldiers were forced to retreat into the cover of a thicket of forest to the right. With the momentum shifting in the Hunkpapa's favour, a
squadron of mounted horsemen led by Sitting Bull's staunch ally, Crazy Horse, swarmed the enemy position from all directions forcing them to fall back to a clearing in the woods. Their unity lost, isolated pockets of Custer's soldiers hid and fired from behind bushes. In utter panic, the American troopers who weren't being cut down by tomahawks and rifles either fled on horses across the south-east plain or were washed away by the strong river current along with their steeds. 100 or so survivors out of 175 scrabbled to a high point to the east of the river as their
wounded comrades were killed below. As this was happening, Custer and his division were approaching the village from the north. He stationed his three regiments of 210 men in the upper part of Medicine Tail. Expecting to see his commander Frederick Benteen arrive, he was instead met by the horde of Sioux warriors who had made their way north. For a short time, Custer's men held off the encroaching warriors, then one massive native charge panicked the horses into a great stampede. Galloping in the direction of the river, they were caught by Cheyenne women
who emptied their saddlebags of ammunition and tossed them to the attacking warriors. The panicked columns split into two, with those in the south cut down individually or in groups while the other stragglers, including Custer, scrambled to a hilltop at the end of a ridge to make their last stand. There he and his men met their demise in a flurry of dust, smoke and hand-to-hand fighting, with the last of them finished off by a final assault. The other regiments led by Reno and Benteen were the last to be defeated at dawn on the 26th of
June. Broken and demoralised, Sitting Bull allowed them to retreat. In total nearly half of Custer's 700-strong regiment had been killed or wounded, in what had been without doubt the greatest military triumph in their history and an emphatic fulfilment of Sitting Bull's dream vision. Sitting Bull had spent most of the battle observing and tending to the wounded, a not unusual thing for a leader in his forties who was beyond the peak of his fighting abilities. Following this victory, the Sioux confederacy was at the pinnacle of its powers, but they had also spelled their own destruction as the horrified American public demanded vengeance. In
the aftermath of Little Bighorn, several small and mostly inconclusive battles were fought between the Sioux and the Americans in and around Yellowstone. The increased presence of government soldiers and the planned construction of permanent forts in the middle of hunting ranges was designed to starve the Native Americans out by disrupting their main food supply, the buffalo herds. This proved so effective and demoralising that the Sioux Confederacy began to break apart, with the Sans Arc and Miniconjou chiefs the first major groups to defect from the alliance,
giving up their freedom in exchange for life on government-run reservations. During the freezing winter of 1876 to 1877, after being identified by the US media as the evil savage responsible for Custer's fall, the American military attempted to hunt down Sitting Bull and his shrinking circle of allies. The Sioux were chased from camp to camp, their supplies and shelters set aflame. In May 1877, after a traumatic winter, he and his men crossed the northern frontier into Canada to seek refuge. Sitting Bull quickly became acquainted with the North-West Mounted Police,
who accepted their presence on the condition that they respect their laws, one of which would strip away their right to asylum if they went over the frontier and back into the USA. At first assured by the Canadians they would protect them from any cross-border American attack, the decision to come to a territory known as the Grandmother seemed like a wise one. Yet while the elders of the Sioux were willing to follow Canadian law, hot-blooded youngsters of their clan disregarded it, continuing hostilities with other tribes or American troops and hunting
buffalo on the other side of the border. Thus, soon enough, diplomatic tensions between the US and the Canadians escalated over the fugitives and a big diplomatic row erupted. Still, during a meeting with American envoys sent to urge them to surrender, on the 16th of October 1877, Sitting Bull made it clear that he would not return to the US under any conditions. Sitting Bull and his men now attempted to settle more permanently in the Prairies of Canada, busying themselves with hunting innumerable buffalo herds that roamed freely north of the
border. In the spring of 1878, his ranks were swelled with the addition of more refugees, the total number of indigenous immigrants increasing to roughly 6,500 people. With so many more mouths to feed the once flourishing buffalo herds, which also fed the indigenous Canadian tribes, began to reduce in size dramatically, creating tensions between the newcomers and the natives here north of the border. In response, Sitting Bull and his men began raiding south of the border again. During one of these illegal, southward migrations, on the 17th of July 1879,
Sitting Bull and 600 of his followers were caught by surprise by an American force led by General Nelson Miles. During the Battle of Milk River, as both parties took potshots at each other, a senior Crow commander called Magpie, who was allied with the US contingent, rode out and challenged Sitting Bull to single combat, which he accepted. Riding their horses towards each other with rifles cocked, Magpie's weapon jammed and misfired and an instant later the crown of his head was blown off by a deadeye shot from Sitting Bull, who cut off what was left of his scalp to claim triumph.
and the Canadian authorities deteriorated further, as the frequent cross-border raids by the Lakotas and others continued. The Canadian provincial authorities had entered into clandestine talks with the Americans with the goal of transferring Sitting Bull and his followers back south of the border. By early 1881, while he and a group of hardcore loyalists sat hungrily at their village on the frontier just near the Wood Mountain police post, the majority of Sitting Bull's people had already deserted him to go to live on the Indian reservation at Fort Buford. Finally,
on the 12th of July 1881, Sitting Bull made the agonising decision to forfeit his freedom after being convinced to do so by a trader by the name of Jean Louis Legaré who had become friendly with the Lakota during their four-year long Canadian exile. Eight days later, tired, hungry and with rotting clothes, Sitting Bull and nearly 200 followers entered the courtyard of Fort Buford. To mark the start of his imprisonment the defeated rebel handed over his weapon to the commanding officer and poignantly remarked: "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man
of my tribe to surrender my rifle." Having handed himself in, Sitting Bull was promised by Major David Brotherton he would spend the rest of his days at the Standing Rock Agency where most of his brethren who had already surrendered were living, but the higher-ups were soon starting to reconsider. Worried that the defeated renegade could potentially become the centre of renewed rebellion, he and his entourage were to be delivered further up the Missouri River to Fort Randall. Informed in September 1881 of the change, Sitting Bull flew into a wild rage as his captors had once again broken their promise. Nonetheless,
he and his group of followers were ushered on board a steamer called the Sherman bound for Fort Randall where he spent twenty miserable months. Seeing that the ageing commander posed little further threat to the government by then, several army officers appealed to the Secretary of War, Robert Lincoln, requesting to transfer them back to Standing Rock. The petition worked and by the end of April 1883 the captives were being boated back down the Missouri River to Fort Yates and the Standing Rock Agency. Disembarking in May 1883 to Fort Yates, Sitting Bull,
who had begun to begrudgingly accept that the old ways of his ancestors were dead, resolved to tow a middle line between preserving them and adapting to the new life imposed on him. He would learn how to sow and harvest the land like his jailers and he would even enrol his children in their education systems. At the same he would still try to act as the Hunkpapa chief of old, protecting his people from the injustices of the new order. In this regard, his main nemesis over the coming years would be the overseer of Standing Rock, James McLaughlin, a man who imposed order
by keeping his subjects divided into squabbling factions and by using the coercive power of ration control to achieve his aims. In an indication of the dynamic that would define their relationship, Sitting Bull told the agent upon his arrival that, since he had no experience of doing it, he would not be planting seeds this year and that instead, he would look around to see how it was done before he tried it out. MacLaughlin remarked that the chief was "pompous, vain, and boastful" and a man "of very mediocre ability, rather dull, and much the inferior of
his other lieutenants in intelligence." In the spring of 1884 Sitting Bull settled on a spot south of the river on the reservation, extremely close to where he had been born about 50 years earlier. This would be his final residence. Serious about adapting to the lifestyle of the new world, over the next couple of years his estate swelled to 20 horses, 45 cattle, 80 chickens, and fields full of oats, corn, and potatoes. Sitting Bull had transformed easily enough from chief to farmer, while his adopted son, One Bull, had even swapped the warrior lifestyle for a job
in the local police force. In the meantime any pretensions to power that Sitting Bull still had would be ended when, emphasising the importance of his position as chief in front of a government committee called the Dawes Committee, one of America's most esteemed senators, John A. Logan, gave him the most brutal dressing down of his life when he replied: "You were not appointed by the Great Spirit. Appointments are not made that way. You have no following, no power, no control, and no right to any control. If it were not for the government, you would be freezing and starving
today in the mountains." Yet, while his formal rights of chief may have all but disintegrated, Sitting Bull still had the power of his newfound celebrity to fall back on. Despite the predicament he found himself in, the former vanquisher of Custer became a subject of fascination for the American public in his later years. He embarked on a nationwide tour with the Buffalo Bill theatre troupe headed by the showman Bill Cody during which, fully clad in traditional garb, he smoked a pipe and cooked food while a presenter delivered a lecture on the inner workings of the
Native Americans. He made a handsome amount of money through his participations in one of the world's most famous entertainment troupes in the late nineteenth century. Eventually, though, Sitting Bull's time in the limelight was cut short and he was prevented from going out on tour again in 1886. After this, Sitting Bull led a quiet and peaceful life at his homestead by the Grand River, even sending a tomahawk to former Secretary of the Interior Samuel J. Kirkwood as a gesture of appreciation. That was until the passing of the General Allotment Act of 1887 compelled him to intervene on behalf of the Lakota once again. A
law so horrific it even led to the reconciliation of the Hunkpapa with their old rivals, the Crows, the idea was that every native family was to receive 160 acres or less of land in return for US citizenship. Once every indigenous family had received their small parcel, any land that was left was to be bought at a cut-price 50 cents an acre to encourage non Native American settlement. The once boundless Sioux lands, reduced to the size of a reservation, were to be subdivided into even smaller reservations. Although the scheme was rejected by most of the Sioux,
through intimidation and manipulation the government coerced three-quarters of the natives to accept the agreement by 1890. Thus, with the last vestiges of their old life crumbling around them Native Americans turned to spirituality as a bastion of opposition. Beginning in March 1890, an indigenous holy man and self-proclaimed messiah named Wovoka, claimed that by performing something called a Ghost Dance his people could be transported to a perfect, pre-contact paradise of peace, buffalo and untouched wilderness that represented the world before the destructive
arrival of the Europeans. Inspired by this, in mid-1890, after a particularly poor harvest, the Ghost Dance movement erupted across the Standing Rock Reservation. Most worryingly for the men overseeing the land allotment, prophets of the movement claimed that the Ghost Dance would even protect its acolytes from bullets. Sitting Bull did not do anything to halt its spread, as his people abandoned their cabins, set up their tipis and engaged in the Ghost Dance. He perhaps viewed this as an opportunity to revitalise the power and influence that
had been stripped away from him years earlier, but equally, from McLaughlin's viewpoint, this was a chance to finally take Sitting Bull down by painting him as the high priest of a destabilising religious movement that was threatening the newfound peace of the Great Plains. As the ghost dances assumed a more violent undertone, President Benjamin Harrison ordered his Secretary of War to contain it if it got out of hand, resulting in the arrival of troops to the region on the 20th of November 1890 at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud agencies near the Standing Rock
reservation. As ominous clouds gathered, Sitting Bull was reminded of a vision that had come to him soon after his transfer to Standing Rock from Fort Randall in which a meadowlark had warned him that his own people, the Lakotas, would be the ones that killed him. On the 27th of November, as people wildly flailed their bodies to and fro in a dance circle on the Hunkpapa chief's property, Sitting Bull was visited by a Hunkpapa policeman and one of McLaughlin's favourites, Lone Man, who on behalf of the reservation boss urged him to tell his followers to stop with the ghost dances.
Sitting Bull replied that their ceremony harmed no one, and that if the settlers had their religion his followers should be able to practice theirs too in peace. By this time McLaughlin had already decided that, when the weather turned colder, he was going to get his Lakota police to arrest their former leader, however the US military soon took over the case. A Lakota policeman by the name of Bull Head who had fought at Little Bighorn, was tasked with spying on Sitting Bull after rumours emerged that he wanted to leave the Standing Rock Agency to meet up with other ghost dancers
at nearby Pine Ridge. Planting two spies into the tribal council, they reported that Sitting Bull did in fact want to do this and that his followers would shoot any policeman who tried to obstruct their passage. Thus, on the 15th of December 1890, at 6am, a squadron of Lakota policemen led by Bull Head burst into his cabin, wrestled him to the ground, and walked him outside, but the noise they had created had alerted Sitting Bull's entire settlement. Furious crowds implored them to release him and surrounded the policemen as Bull Head and another led their culprit to a police
wagon, and then suddenly the sound of a Winchester rifle rang through the air. Bull Head's long-term rival, Catch-the-Bear, had shot him. As the Lakota policemen fell to the ground he aimed his revolver upwards and fired off his own shot at Sitting Bull. The chief caught the bullet in his chest, and then an instant later he was killed by a shot to the head by Bull Head's underling, Red Tomahawk. A point-blank firefight broke out claiming the lives of Sitting Bull's sons, Jumping Bull and 17 year-old Crow Foot, and grandson Chase-Them-Wounded, as well as five
policemen. Sitting Bull was probably nearing sixty years of age at the time of his death. Born into indigenous royalty, Sitting Bull was one of the last generations to enjoy a typical native American childhood out on the Great Plains amongst the buffalo herds. From an early age, he displayed the qualities of a great leader, earning a reputation not only for courage and martial prowess, but also for generosity, humility and spirituality. Proving his worth as a hardened warrior and skilled tactician in multiple battles, he was appointed chief of the Hunkpapa tribe in
the 1850s as the threat of settler expansion picked up speed. Over the next decade or so, he dedicated himself to preserving the independence of his people and fought valiantly to defend the lands of the Hunkpapa from westward US expansion. In the late 1860s this indomitable spirit of resistance, unmatched among his peers, was recognised when he was made head chief of the Sioux Confederation. By this point having seen enough action to know that his enemy's weapons and tactics were superior to his own, he decided to switch to a more defensive posture. After
repelling an incursion by railway companies looking to lay track down in his territory, Sitting Bull illustrated to the American government that he would never surrender. During the Great Sioux War of 1876 his astonishing victory over General George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn made him the most prominent and feared rebel in the United States. But it was a short-lived victory. It ultimately led to an American offensive so devastating that the Sioux Confederacy was broken up and Sitting Bull and his hungry band had no choice but to flee to Canada
for four years. Eventually the disappearance of buffalo there and rising diplomatic tensions between Canada and the United States, compelled Sitting Bull and what remained of his followers to join their brothers and sisters at Standing Rock Agency. There he tried to act as a shield of his people while also adapting to modern American life. While flourishing as a farmer and taking advantage of his famous name to make money on various nationwide tours, deep down Sitting Bull was a lost soul yearning for the days of old. The arrival of the Ghost Dance movement,
with its emphasis on a pre-contact utopia, filled him with purpose once more but it also spelled his downfall. Viewing it as a threat to the established order, the military tasked Lakota policemen with apprehending him. The tragedy was that the greatest of the Sioux chiefs died fighting his own people. What do you think of Sitting Bull? Was he the last great native American chief who bravely resisted US government encroachments on the lands of tribes like the Hunkpapa, or was his cause doomed from the beginning? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching.
