Sitting Bull (c. 1834–1890)

Sitting Bull, Native American chief of the Dakota Sioux. He led the defeat of General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on 25 June, 1876 in Montana, USA.

American Indian chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux during the Plains Wars of 1865–90, the struggle between the Plains Indians and the USA. In 1868 Sitting Bull agreed to Sioux resettlement in North and South Dakota, but when gold was discovered in the Black Hills region, miners and the US army invaded Sioux territory. With the treaty broken, Sitting Bull led the Sioux against Lt-Col Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana, in 1876.

Sitting Bull was pursued by the US Army and forced to flee to Canada. He was allowed to return in 1881, and he toured in the Wild West show of ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody. He settled in South Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation and was killed by Red Tomahawk, a Sioux police officer, during his arrest on suspicion of involvement in Indian agitations. His death represented one of the final acts of the defeat of the freedom and traditional way of life of the Plains Indians.

The warrior and mystic Sitting Bull was a hero to the young warriors of the Hunkpapa Sioux. He earned his reputation as a war chief through his bravery in battle. It was said that on one occasion Sitting Bull walked out into the middle of a battlefield, and sat down while he smoked a pipe, with bullets flying around him. It was this seeming invincibility in battle that drew warriors to him at a time when the Plains Indians were losing their battle for the Plains.

Sitting Bull was not only a chief, he was also regarded as a mystic and seer of visions. Prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he took part in an extended religious ceremony and then had a vision of victory, in which American soldiers fell out of the sky over the valley walls and down into his camp, where they were all killed. The prophecy came true at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, when Custer led his 7th Cavalry headlong into the Sioux camp and was completely wiped out. Sitting Bull also had a vision that he would be killed by one of his own people, and this was also borne out.

Peace and war During the American Civil War (1861–65) Sitting Bull led attacks on white settlers in Iowa and Minnesota. In 1868 he agreed to the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie with the USA following the victories of the Sioux in Red Cloud's War (1865–68). The treaty gave the Sioux most of South Dakota west of the Mississippi, including the Black Hills region. It also allowed the Sioux to hunt in the Powder River country of Montana, part of their traditional hunting grounds to the west of the Black Hills, although the US government reserved the right to ban them from this land. In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills and prospectors flooded in. The US government tried to buy the area from the Sioux but were refused as the Black Hills were sacred ground. The Sioux were ordered back to their reservations, but Sitting Bull and Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse stayed in the Powder River country. In 1876 the US Army were sent in to remove the Sioux from Montana.

On 25 June 1876 Lt-Col Custer led his 7th Cavalry into the Sioux encampment on the Little Bighorn River in Montana. Scouts had warned him not to attack the huge camp, a major gathering of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, but Custer ignored all advice and his detachment was massacred. However, although Sitting Bull led the Plains Indians to overwhelming victory against Custer's forces, he found it impossible to keep the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho together. Insufficient food supplies and the threat of retaliatory attacks from a vengeful US Army forced the Indian groups to disperse. He led his band of a few hundred Sioux northwards to escape the pursuing forces and went over the border into Canada where he was allowed to stay. However, he always wanted to go back to his spiritual home of the Black Hills, and life in Canada was as hard as on any reservation.

Retirement and death In 1881 Sitting Bull was allowed to return and went to live on the Oglala Sioux reservation of Standing Rock. Here he lived the life of an elder chief and counselled peace with the USA. In a twist to this more settled life, Sitting Bull went to work for William Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill’, in his travelling Wild West show for a one-year period in 1886. In this he re-enacted the Battle of the Little Bighorn for the American crowds. His part in the show typified the mixing together of fact and fiction by the creators of the Western story by people such as Buffalo Bill.

However, Sitting Bull's aims for peace were shattered with the arrival of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement on the Oglala reservation in 1890. Sitting Bull did not believe that the Ghost Dance would bring back the old way of life, but allowed his people to participate as he recognized their need for hope. Unfortunately the reservation's Indian agent, James McLaughlin, from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, accused him of stirring up trouble on the reservation by allowing the Ghost Dance to take place. A group of reservation police, Sioux working for the US government, were sent to arrest him, and in the struggle he was shot dead on 15 December 1890.

The death of Sitting Bull, supposedly while resisting arrest, caused the Hunkpapa and other Sioux peoples on the reservations involved in the movement to flee. This led to the tragic events of 29 December 1890 when members of Chief Big Foot's Miniconjou Sioux from the Cheyenne River Reservation and Sitting Bull's remaining Hunkpapa were killed at the Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry.