Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. Sitting Bull was killed by Indian agency police accompanied by U.S. officers and supported by U.S. troops on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw many soldiers, "as thick as grasshoppers", falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people took as a foreshadowing of a major victory in which many soldiers would be killed. About three weeks later, the confederated Lakota tribes with the Northern Cheyenne defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876, annihilating Custer's battalion and seeming to fulfill Sitting Bull's prophetic vision. Sitting Bull's leadership inspired his people to a major victory. In response, the U.S. government sent thousands more soldiers to the area, forcing many of the Lakota to surrender over the next year. Sitting Bull refused to surrender, and in May 1877, he led his band north to Wood Mountain, North-West Territories, now Saskatchewan. He remained there until 1881, when he and most of his band returned to U.S. territory and surrendered to U.S. forces.
After working as a performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota. Because of fears that Sitting Bull would use his influence to support the Ghost Dance movement, Indian Service agent James McLaughlin at Fort Yates ordered his arrest. During an ensuing struggle between Sitting Bull's followers and the agency police, Sitting Bull was shot in the chest and head by Standing Rock policemen Lieutenant Bull Head and Red Tomahawk, after the police were fired upon by Sitting Bull's supporters. His body was taken to nearby Fort Yates for burial. In 1953, his Lakota family exhumed what were believed to be his remains, reburying them near Mobridge, South Dakota, near his birthplace.
Early life
Sitting Bull was born on land later included in the Dakota Territory sometime between 1831 and 1837. In 2007, Sitting Bull's great-grandson asserted from family oral tradition that Sitting Bull was born along the Yellowstone River, south of present-day Miles City, Montana. He was named Ȟoká Psíče at birth, and nicknamed Húŋkešni or "Slow", an allusion to his careful and unhurried nature.When Sitting Bull was 14 years old, he accompanied a group of Lakota warriors, which included his father and his uncle Four Horns, in a raiding party to take horses from a camp of Crow warriors. He displayed bravery by riding forward and counting coup on one of the surprised Crow, which was witnessed by the other mounted Lakota. Upon returning to camp, his father gave a celebratory feast at which he conferred his own name upon his son. The name, Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, in the Lakota language, roughly translates to "Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down", but Americans commonly refer to him as "Sitting Bull". Thereafter, Sitting Bull's father was known as Jumping Bull. At this ceremony before the entire band, Sitting Bull's father presented his son with an eagle feather to wear in his hair, a warrior's horse, and a hardened buffalo hide shield to mark his son's passage into manhood as a Lakota warrior.
During the Dakota War of 1862, in which Sitting Bull's people were not involved, several bands of eastern Dakota people killed an estimated 300 to 800 settlers and soldiers in south-central Minnesota in response to poor treatment by the government and in an effort to drive the whites away. Despite being embroiled in the American Civil War, the United States Army retaliated in 1863 and 1864, even against bands that had not been involved in the hostilities. In 1864, two brigades of about 2,200 soldiers under Brigadier General Alfred Sully attacked a village. The defenders were led by Sitting Bull, Gall and Inkpaduta. The Lakota and Dakota were driven out, but skirmishing continued into August at the Battle of the Badlands.
In September, Sitting Bull and about one hundred Hunkpapa Lakota encountered a small party near what is now Marmarth, North Dakota. They had been left behind by a wagon train commanded by Captain James L. Fisk to repair an overturned wagon. When he led an attack, Sitting Bull was shot in the left hip by a soldier. The bullet exited through the small of his back, and the wound was not serious.
Red Cloud's War
From 1866 to 1868, Red Cloud, a leader of the Oglala Lakota, fought against U.S. forces, attacking their forts in an effort to keep control of the Powder River Country in present-day Montana. In support of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull led numerous war parties against Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, and Fort Buford and their allies from 1865 to 1868. The uprising has come to be known as Red Cloud's War.By early 1868, the U.S. government desired a peaceful settlement to the conflict. It agreed to Red Cloud's demands that the U.S. abandon Forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith. Gall of the Hunkpapa and other representatives of the Hunkpapa, Blackfeet and Yankton Dakota, signed a form of the Treaty of Fort Laramie on July 2, 1868, at Fort Rice. Sitting Bull did not agree to the treaty. He told the Jesuit missionary Pierre Jean De Smet, who sought him on behalf of the government: "I wish all to know that I do not propose to sell any part of my country." He continued his hit-and-run attacks on forts in the upper Missouri area throughout the late 1860s and early 1870s.
The events between 1866 and 1868 mark a historically debated period of Sitting Bull's life. According to historian Stanley Vestal, who conducted interviews with surviving Hunkpapa in 1930, Sitting Bull was made "Supreme Chief of the whole Sioux Nation" at this time. Historians and ethnologists later refuted this, since Lakota society was highly decentralized. Lakota bands and their elders made individual decisions, including whether or not to wage war.
Great Sioux War of 1876
In the late 1860s, Sitting Bull's band of Hunkpapa continued to attack migrating parties and forts. In 1871, the Northern Pacific Railway conducted a survey for a route across the northern plains directly through Hunkpapa lands, it encountered stiff Lakota resistance. The same railway people returned the following year accompanied by federal troops. Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa attacked the survey party, which was forced to turn back.In 1873, the military accompaniment for the surveyors was increased again, but Sitting Bull's forces resisted the survey "most vigorously." The Panic of 1873 forced the Northern Pacific Railway's backers, such as Jay Cooke, into bankruptcy, which halted construction of the railroad through Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota territory.
After the 1848 discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada and dramatic gains in new wealth from it, other men became interested in the potential for gold mining in the Black Hills.
In 1874, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led a military expedition from Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck to explore the Black Hills for gold and to determine a suitable location for a military fort in the Hills. Custer's announcement of gold in the Black Hills triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Tensions increased between the Lakota and European Americans seeking to move into the Black Hills.
Although Sitting Bull did not attack Custer's expedition in 1874, the U.S. government was increasingly pressured by citizens to open the Black Hills to mining and settlement. Failing in an attempt to negotiate a purchase or lease of the Hills, the government in Washington had to find a way around the promise to protect the Sioux in their land, as specified in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. It was alarmed at reports of Sioux depredations, some of which were encouraged by Sitting Bull.
In November 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant ordered all Sioux bands outside the Great Sioux Reservation to move onto the reservation, knowing that not all would likely comply. As of February 1, 1876, the Interior Department certified as hostile those bands who continued to live off the reservation. This certification allowed the military to pursue Sitting Bull and other Lakota bands as "hostiles".
Based on tribal oral histories, historian Margot Liberty theorizes that many Lakota bands allied with the Cheyenne during the Plains Wars because they thought the other nation was under attack by the U.S. Given this connection, she suggests the major war should have been called "The Great Cheyenne War". Since 1860, the Northern Cheyenne had led several battles among the Plains Indians. Before 1876, the U.S. Army had destroyed seven Cheyenne camps, more than those of any other nation.
Other historians, such as Robert M. Utley and Jerome Greene, also use Lakota oral testimony, but they have concluded that the Lakota coalition, of which Sitting Bull was the ostensible head, was the primary target of the federal government's pacification campaign.
During the period 1868–1876, Sitting Bull developed into one of the most important Native American political leaders. After the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation, many traditional Sioux warriors, such as Red Cloud of the Oglala and Spotted Tail of the Brulé, moved to reside permanently on the reservations. They were largely dependent for subsistence on the U.S. Indian agencies. Many other chiefs, including members of Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa band such as Gall, at times, lived temporarily at the agencies. They needed the supplies at a time when white encroachment and the depletion of buffalo herds reduced their resources and challenged Native American independence.
In 1875, the Northern Cheyenne, Hunkpapa, Oglala, Sans Arc, and Minneconjou camped together for a Sun Dance, with Sitting Bull in alliance with the Cheyenne medicine man Ice. This ceremonial alliance preceded their fighting together in 1876. Sitting Bull had a major revelation.
At the climactic moment, "Sitting Bull intoned, 'The Great Spirit has given our enemies to us. We are to destroy them. We do not know who they are. They may be soldiers.' Ice too observed, 'No one then knew who the enemy were – of what tribe.'...They were soon to find out."
Sitting Bull's refusal to adopt any dependence on the U.S. government meant that at times he and his small band of warriors lived isolated on the Plains. When Native Americans were threatened by the United States, numerous members from various Sioux bands and other tribes, such as the Northern Cheyenne, came to Sitting Bull's camp. His reputation for "strong medicine" developed as he continued to evade the European Americans.
After the ultimatum on January 1, 1876, when the U.S. Army began to track down as hostiles those Sioux and others living off the reservation, Native Americans gathered at Sitting Bull's camp. He took an active role in encouraging this "unity camp". He sent scouts to the reservations to recruit warriors and told the Hunkpapa to share supplies with those Native Americans who joined them. An example of his generosity was Sitting Bull's provision for Wooden Leg's Northern Cheyenne tribe. They had been impoverished by Captain Reynolds' March 17, 1876, attack and fled to Sitting Bull's camp for safety.
Over the course of the first half of 1876, Sitting Bull's camp continually expanded as natives joined him for safety in numbers. His leadership had attracted warriors and families, creating an extensive village estimated at more than 10,000 people. Lt. Col. Custer came across this large camp on June 25, 1876. Sitting Bull did not take a direct military role in the ensuing battle; instead, he acted as a spiritual leader. A week prior to the attack, he had performed the Sun Dance, in which he fasted and slashed his arms over 100 times as a sign of sacrifice.