Sitting Bull
The Last Stand of the Lakota
In the summer of 1876, on a ridge above the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, the largest gathering of Plains Indians in living memory watched as the 7th Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a camp they had fatally underestimated. The man who had made this moment possible was not carrying a weapon. Two weeks earlier, at a Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek, Sitting Bull — Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake — had offered one hundred pieces of flesh cut from his arms and danced until he collapsed. In the vision that followed, he saw American soldiers falling upside down into the Lakota camp “like grasshoppers.” The Battle of Little Bighorn was the fulfillment of that vision, the high-water mark of Native resistance on the Great Plains, and the beginning of Sitting Bull’s long, defiant decline.
“It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows.”
c. 1831–1890
Born as Jumping Badger (Hoká Psíče) near the Grand River in present-day South Dakota. Killed at fifty-nine by Indian police at Standing Rock Reservation during the Ghost Dance crisis of December 1890.
Entire Lakota Nation
Around 1869, Sitting Bull was named supreme chief of the whole Lakota nation — an unprecedented title. No single leader had ever held authority over all seven bands of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the Seven Council Fires.
100 pieces of flesh
At the Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek in June 1876, Sitting Bull had his adopted brother Jumping Bull cut fifty small pieces of skin from each arm. He danced for hours until he fainted and received his prophetic vision.
4 years
From 1877 to 1881, Sitting Bull led his followers to Wood Mountain in Saskatchewan, beyond the reach of the U.S. Army. Starvation, not soldiers, finally forced his return and surrender at Fort Buford.
Battle of Little Bighorn, Lakota resistance, spiritual leadership
Defining Events
The Battle of Little Bighorn
The greatest Native American military victory in history unfolded along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance vision had galvanized thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors into a massive encampment. When Custer divided his 7th Cavalry and attacked, he rode into a force that outnumbered him many times over. Within an hour, Custer and all 210 men of his immediate command were dead. Sitting Bull did not fight in the battle itself — at forty-five, his role was spiritual, not martial — but every warrior on that field knew whose vision they were fulfilling. The victory was total, and the consequences were devastating: the United States would never forgive it.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
Four years after surrendering at Fort Buford, Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show for a single touring season. He was paid fifty dollars a week and a $125 signing bonus — plus the exclusive right to sell photographs of himself and keep the proceeds. Audiences booed him as “the killer of Custer,” but Sitting Bull had his own reasons for joining: he wanted to see the white world with his own eyes and to meet President Cleveland, which he did. He gave most of his earnings to the homeless and hungry children he encountered in American cities, baffled that a society of such wealth could tolerate such poverty. He befriended sharpshooter Annie Oakley, whom he adopted and called “Little Sure Shot.”
Life on Standing Rock
After his surrender and two years of imprisonment at Fort Randall, Sitting Bull was transferred to the Standing Rock Reservation under the authority of Indian Agent James McLaughlin. The two men despised each other. McLaughlin saw Sitting Bull as an obstacle to assimilation; Sitting Bull saw McLaughlin as a functionary of theft. When government commissioners arrived in 1889 to break up the Great Sioux Reservation, Sitting Bull organized opposition. He failed — the land was taken — but he remained the most powerful symbol of Lakota resistance. When the Ghost Dance movement reached Standing Rock in late 1890, McLaughlin saw his chance to remove Sitting Bull permanently.
Timeline
Born on the Grand River
A boy named Jumping Badger (Hoká Psíče) is born near the Grand River in present-day South Dakota, into the Hunkpapa band of the Lakota Sioux. Quiet and deliberate as a child, he earns the nickname “Slow” (Húŋkešni). His father, Returns-Again (also called Jumping Bull), is a respected warrior of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ — the Seven Council Fires of the Sioux.
Earns His Name
At around fourteen, the boy counts his first coup in a raid against the Crow. His father, recognizing his son’s courage, gives him his own sacred name: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake — Sitting Bull. The name carries spiritual weight: a buffalo bull sitting immovably, a symbol of strength and resolve. From this day forward, the young warrior will live up to the name in ways his father could not have imagined.
Refuses the Fort Laramie Treaty
The Treaty of Fort Laramie promises the Lakota permanent ownership of the Black Hills and vast hunting grounds. Red Cloud and other chiefs sign. Sitting Bull refuses. He has seen too many treaties broken, too many promises dissolved the moment gold or land became convenient. His refusal marks him as the leader of the “non-treaty” Lakota — those who will not surrender their freedom for rations and reservations.
Named Supreme Chief
In an unprecedented act, the Lakota bands name Sitting Bull supreme chief of the entire nation. No single leader has ever held this authority. It is a recognition not of military prowess alone but of spiritual power — Sitting Bull is a holy man, a wičháša wak’áŋ, whose visions and prayers carry the weight of prophecy. He is now the political, military, and spiritual center of Lakota resistance.
The Sun Dance Vision and Little Bighorn
In June, at Rosebud Creek, Sitting Bull performs the Sun Dance. He offers one hundred pieces of flesh and dances until he faints. In his vision, soldiers fall upside down into the Lakota camp like grasshoppers. Two weeks later, on June 25, the vision is fulfilled at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Custer and his entire command are wiped out. It is the greatest military victory in Native American history — and the beginning of the end.
Exile in Canada
As the U.S. Army launches a relentless campaign of retaliation after Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull leads his followers north across the border to Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan. The Canadian authorities, led by Major James Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police, treat him with cautious respect. But Canada will not grant the Lakota a reservation. With the buffalo herds vanishing and his people starving, Sitting Bull faces an impossible choice.
Surrender at Fort Buford
On July 19, Sitting Bull — the last major Sioux chief still free — crosses back into the United States and surrenders at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory. He hands his rifle to his young son Crow Foot and tells the boy to give it to the commanding officer, saying he wished to be remembered as “the last man of his tribe to surrender his rifle.” He is sent to Fort Randall as a prisoner of war.
Killed at Standing Rock
On December 15, thirty-nine Indian police and four volunteers arrive at Sitting Bull’s cabin on the Grand River to arrest him. Authorities fear his support for the Ghost Dance — a spiritual movement promising the return of the buffalo and the dead — will spark an uprising. In the struggle that follows, Sitting Bull is shot by Lieutenant Bull Head and Sergeant Red Tomahawk. His son Crow Foot, approximately seventeen years old, is dragged from under blankets and killed. Fourteen people die in total. Two weeks later, the 7th Cavalry massacres over 250 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee.
Key Figures
Crazy Horse
Tȟašuŋke Witkó — Crazy Horse — was the Oglala Lakota war chief whose tactical brilliance on the battlefield complemented Sitting Bull’s spiritual authority. While Sitting Bull unified the nation and provided the prophetic vision, Crazy Horse led the warriors in combat. He commanded the forces that destroyed Custer’s column at Little Bighorn and defeated General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud eight days earlier. Crazy Horse surrendered in May 1877 and was bayoneted to death at Fort Robinson on September 5 of that year, at roughly thirty-five years old. He never allowed his photograph to be taken.
George Armstrong Custer
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was the flamboyant Civil War hero turned Indian fighter whose ambition led him and 210 men to their deaths at the Little Bighorn. Custer had built his reputation on aggressive cavalry charges and surprise attacks on Native villages, including the 1868 massacre at Washita River. At Little Bighorn, he divided his regiment and attacked a camp he had badly underestimated, riding directly into the fulfillment of Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance vision. His death transformed him into a martyr in the American press and turned the full fury of the U.S. government against the Lakota.
The Legacy of Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull’s life is the story of the American frontier told from the other side. He was born into a world where the Lakota controlled an empire of grass stretching from the Missouri River to the Bighorn Mountains. He died on the floor of his cabin, shot by his own people in the service of a government that had taken everything. Between those two points, he did something no Lakota leader had done before: he united an entire nation, held it together through its greatest victory, and refused — year after year, treaty after treaty, ultimatum after ultimatum — to pretend that surrender was peace.
He was not a warmonger. He was a holy man who wanted to be left alone. “What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken?” he asked a government commission in 1883. “Not one. What treaty that the whites ever made with us red men have they kept? Not one.” He asked the question because he already knew the answer. Read his story in his own words in the first-person ePub.
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