Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull was born in the early 1830s; Sitting Bull College and the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains give the year as probably 1831, while the National Park Service places it between 1831 and 1837. He was born at a place the Lakota called Many Caches, on the Grand River near present-day Bullhead, South DakotaSouth DakotaSouth Dakota is a U.S. state bordered by North Dakota to the north, Minnesota and Iowa to the east, Nebraska to the south, and Wyoming and Montana to the west. Its capital is Pierre and its largest city is Sioux Falls. It was admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, as the 40th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 886,667 residents.Open the full entry, into a prominent family of the Hunkpapa band of the Lakota; his father and two uncles were chiefs. His father, Jumping Bull, was a noted warrior and hunter, and his mother was named Her Holy Door.⁠[1][2][3][4]

As a boy he was called Jumping Badger, and also Hunkesni (“slow”) for his deliberate manner. He killed his first buffalo at about ten and, at about fourteen, counted coup on an enemy in a raid against the Crow, after which his father gave him the name Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotanka) in a ceremony. He joined the Kit Fox and Strong Heart warrior societies, becoming a sash wearer in the latter, and as a mature man joined the Silent Eaters.⁠[4][1][3]

Sitting Bull fought the U.S. Army at Whitestone Hill (1863), Killdeer Mountain (1864) and Fort Rice (1865), and in 1866 he drew national attention with attacks on soldiers and settlers at Fort Buford. In 1866 or 1867 he was recognized as an important military and political leader of the northern Lakota bands, and some accounts call him “supreme chief”; he could not, however, give orders, and decisions were reached through group discussion.⁠[5][2][1]

In 1867–1868 Sitting Bull rejected the peace overtures of the Catholic missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet, declaring his determination to protect his people’s homeland and way of life. The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 created the Great Sioux Reservation and granted the Black Hills to the Western Dakotas. Red Cloud’s Lakotas accepted the treaty and a reservation, but Sitting Bull refused to take part in the negotiations or accept its terms and became a leader of the non-treaty Indians; the American Battlefield Trust judges that this began a deep fracture among the Lakotas.⁠[2][5][3][4]

In 1874 an expedition led by George Armstrong Custer confirmed gold in the Black Hills, bringing a rush of miners, and many Lakotas joined Sitting Bull’s people. The government offered to buy the Black Hills, the tribes refused, and the Lakotas were ordered onto the reservation by January 31, 1876, or be considered hostile; Sitting Bull’s group remained outside it.⁠[2][5][4]

At a Sun Dance in mid-June 1876, Sitting Bull had flesh cut from his arms and described a vision of soldiers falling into the camp, which the Lakotas took as a sign of a coming victory. Two days later the Lakotas fought Gen. George Crook’s troops at the Rosebud; Sitting Bull said this was not the event he had foreseen.⁠[3][1]

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. Custer’s 7th Cavalry attacked a camp of about 7,000 Lakotas and Cheyennes on the Little Bighorn River; the Hunkpapa circle was the first struck by Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalion, which killed several women and children. Sitting Bull, then forty-five and beyond fighting age, did not take part in the fighting but directed Lakota and Cheyenne warriors where to attack and sent his nephews White Bull and One Bull into battle with his medicine. Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors defeated Reno’s and other troops and annihilated Custer’s command.⁠[3][6][1]

In October 1876 Gen. Nelson Miles demanded Sitting Bull’s surrender in Montana Territory, and he refused. In May 1877 he crossed into Canada with about 400 followers, taking refuge in present-day Saskatchewan between Wood Mountain and Fort Qu’Appelle. The Dominion of Canada provided no food or other support; with harsh winters, scarce food and disease, many people drifted back to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, and by 1881 bison were too scarce to sustain his people.⁠[2][5][4][3]

On July 19, 1881, Sitting Bull and about 200 followers crossed back into the United States and surrendered their horses and weapons at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory (the National Park Service’s Sitting Bull page gives July 20), reluctantly accepting the Standing Rock Reservation. After the surrender he and about 100 of his people were held at Fort Randall in southeastern Dakota Territory for about two years; there he drew his life story in a ledger book now held by the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry.⁠[2][6][3][5]

In May 1883 Sitting Bull was allowed to join his people at Standing Rock, where he came under the authority of the Indian agent James McLaughlin; the two clashed over policy. The agent treated him as no longer a leader and assigned him to farm work, and he earned money from autographs and photographs. The 1868 treaty had assigned the Hunkpapa to the Standing Rock Agency, whose reservation, in present-day North and South Dakota, is the Hunkpapa homeland today.⁠[2][5][4][1][3]

In 1885 Sitting Bull toured for one season, about four months, with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, after which McLaughlin refused to let him return. During the tour he often gave money to street children and said he could not understand how there could be so much poverty amid such wealth. In 1889 the Sioux lost some nine million acres of land.⁠[3][5][7][2]

In 1890 the Ghost Dance movement, which promised the return of the buffalo and the ancestors and the restoration of Indian freedom, reached Standing Rock. Sitting Bull allowed the Ghost Dance in his camp on the Grand River, and McLaughlin, who believed he was involved, petitioned for his arrest; orders went out from Washington on December 12. At six in the morning on December 15, more than forty Lakota Indian police came to his cabin to take him in for questioning; a crowd gathered, gunfire broke out, and Sitting Bull was killed by a shot to the chest. Eight of his followers and six of the police were dead or dying. The Wounded Knee Massacre followed two weeks later.⁠[3][2][6]

Sitting Bull was first buried at Fort Yates, on the North DakotaNorth DakotaNorth Dakota is a state in the north-central United States; its capital is Bismarck. It was admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, as the 39th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 779,094.Open the full entry side of the reservation. In April 1953 relatives and the Dakota Memorial Association moved the remains to the Grand River near Mobridge, South Dakota, where a memorial burial site was dedicated on April 11, 1953; the historical marker there states that his life ended at the very place where he was born. A Dakota Datebook essay from Prairie Public states that on April 9, 1953, a group from the South Dakota side took the bones and reburied them near Mobridge to help promote the Sitting Bull Stampede rodeo.⁠[4][8][9]

The identity of the remains is disputed: the Prairie Public essay notes that most Lakota maintain the bones taken were not Sitting Bull’s; that North Dakota sued South Dakota and a bone that was tested proved to be female; that the historian LaDonna Brave Bull says the original grave was robbed or opened six times between 1890 and 1900; and that residents of the Rock Creek district believe the remains were moved long ago to an unmarked grave.⁠[8]

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council founded Standing Rock Community College in 1973; it was renamed Standing Rock College after full accreditation in 1984 and, by charter amendment on March 6, 1996, Sitting Bull College. Its main campus is at Fort Yates, North Dakota, with a site in Mobridge, South Dakota.⁠[10]

A military historian called Sitting Bull a “natural strategist of no mean courage and ability.” North Dakota Studies notes that for years people talked of his actions and repeated his words, and that he remained an outspoken advocate for his people until his death.⁠[5][7]

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (National Park Service): Web page: https://home.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/sitting-bull.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Sitting Bull College: Web page: https://sittingbull.edu/about/community/visitor-center/sitting-bull/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]