Little Big Horn , Custer ’s Last Stand , the Wild West Show and the Ghost Dance . These are all events associated with one legendary frame who start life with the nickname " dumb . " Of naturally , we ’re talking about none other than Sitting Bull , a Hunkpapa Lakota warrior , holy valet de chambre , shirt wearer and drawing card .
His image today is recognizable , but the facts about his life are often puddle by misrepresentations and nineteenth - century political machinations .
Sitting Bull’s Early Life
Sitting Bull became a shirt wearer , a type of residential area leader who counseled higher - ranking tribal council members , had bureau over annual gatherings and decide who would becomeakicita , a Lakota word often understand as " warrior " but at that time mean something more likepolice . In other Word , shirt wearer were important . He also gather credit as a holy human race and even volunteered for theSun Dance , an significant and abominable ceremonial occasion that left some men shock by the experience .
" That ’s an ordeal , " saysGary Clayton Anderson , George Lynn Cross Professor at University of Oklahoma and author of " Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood . " The Sun Dance require forfeit to the Great Spirit . It was brutal and painful , and included the dancer being pierce with a skewer in the upper bureau or back . The skewer were attached to a heavy physical object or pole the participant would dance around until his skin pull innocent or he buckle under to exhaustion . " All vernal men did n’t do that , " Anderson enjoin . But Sitting Bull enter many times to the point where his visions were said to usually come rightful .
His early clashes were with other Indians , as Sitting Bull work out to expand the soil of his kin group . However , in 1863 , he faced the U.S. Army on behalf of the Santee Sioux and again the following class at theBattle of Killdeer Mountain . These experience solidified his belief against sign language accord that would force his people onto a reservation , according toHistory .
By the 1870s , most Lakota bands had , however , settled on reservations , but the Hunkpapa were not one of those groups , explains Anderson . They remain independent of the U.S. government . sit down Bull had become a war leader early on and was involved in at least 30 engagement . He rose through the ranks to become a major chief by the early 1870s , and his conduct was fabled . One storytells that he calmly smoked a organ pipe while bullets flew around him during an 1872 battle on the Yellowstone River .
The Gold Rush and the Black Hills
Despite being most known for the 1876 Battle of the small Big Horn against the ground forces of Gen. George Armstrong Custer , Sitting Bull was not at the fight in which Custer died , agree to Anderson . He wasassociatedwith the struggle and many would say he played a persona in its results .
A rush for atomic number 79 had led prospector to move into the Dakota Territory ’s Black Hills despite the1868 Fort Laramie Treaty , which held that the sacred commonwealth was off limits to white colony . The U.S. government attempted to purchase the Black Hills , an fling reject by the Lakota . In answer , the government void the treaty and decreed all Lakota must leave the expanse for reservations by Jan. 31 , 1876 . The Lakota decline to leave .
" In the end , you have several things colliding at once , " says Anderson . US Army officers were conspiring to start wars with the Sioux , of which the Lakota are a confederated tribe . There was a push to get the aureate rush move , which would necessitate U.S. governing auspices of miners . what is more , the Northern Pacific Railway was planned to be constructed through the Dakota dominion .
" It ’s a complicated story , but Sitting Bull is at the inwardness of it , " say Anderson . While three column of Union soldiery converged on the field , Lakota , Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes join Sitting Bull ’s opposition .
It was the Oglala Lakota warfare chiefCrazy Horsewho led an initial conflict against the army chromatography column under Gen. George Crook . At the Battle of the Rosebud , Crazy Horse storm the U.S. troops to retreat . The Lakota propel camp to the piddling Big Horn River , where they were joined by 3,000 additional Indians .
Sitting Bull led the Sun Dance ritual and offered prayer to the Great Sprit Wakan Tanka and whip his arms between 50 and 100 time in ritual killing . He is say to have trip the light fantastic toe for 36 hr . It was during this ceremonial thatSitting Bull had a visionof U.S. soldier " falling into the Lakota camp like hopper fall from the sky , " which he interpreted as a portent of U.S. Army defeat .
The Seventh Cavalry under Custer assault the Indians at small Big Horn with just a few hundred men June 25 , 1876 . Crazy Horse led the Indians to triumph , killing Custer and all of the U.S. soldiers on - site . Contrary to democratic belief , Sitting Bull was not there . He was in recuperation from the taxing Sun Dance , agree to Anderson .
After the Battle of the slight Big Horn , the Lakota dispersed even as the U.S. Army hunt them down in revenge for Custer ’s licking . As some chiefs were forced to surrender , Sitting Bull lead his mass to Canada in 1877 . However , the buffalo population had all but disappeared , and the Hunkpapa were starving . By 1881 , Sitting Bull had no other choice but to give up , too . For two years , he was reserve prisoner at Fort Randall before being allowed to turn back to his hoi polloi , who were atStanding Rock Reservationin what is now North Dakota .
On the Road With Buffalo Bill
sit Bull had a brief second life after his day of war end , even though he never commute in his beliefs about white settlement and encroachment on Indian lands .
After contact sharpshooterAnnie Oakley , Sitting Bull joined her inBuffalo BillCody ’s Wild West Show in 1884 . If it seems like an odd mix , the " circus - same spectacle " at that time broadly prove to portray Native Americans and in a positive light . In fact , Sitting Bull was the last routine of the show , bait out on a horse , then standing and asterisk down the white audience , according to Anderson .
His time with Buffalo Bill ’s Wild West Show was curtly - lived , and Sitting Bull returned to Standing Rock after just a few months .
The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee
By 1890 , theGhost Dance movementhad begun , founded by Miniconjou Lakota Kicking Bear . Already performed in nearby reservations , including Pine Ridge , the Ghost Dance movement anticipate the expulsion of the white people , a restoration of the Amerindic agency of life and a coming back of thebuffalo . The people conceive that their ascendent would retrovert to Earth if they prepared by dance .
Amerindic Agents grew concerned about the bed cover of the ceremony and occupy that Sitting Bull would or had adopted it for his people . Dozens of Lakota police officers working for the U.S. government went to arrest Sitting Bull Dec. 15 , 1890 , and as his people move to protect him , a gunplay began . One of the police officer shot Sitting Bull during the clash .
" It ’s just an inviolable tragedy , " says Anderson . " It did n’t have to happen . "
ride Bull ’s death set off a concatenation response that led about two weeks afterward to theWounded Kneemassacre , he tell . The holy man was swallow at Fort Yates in North Dakota , then was motivate to Morbridge , South Dakota , in 1953 .
Many years subsequently , the National Museum of Natural History in Washington , D.C. began tracingSitting Bull ’s know descendantsin an effort to repatriate a lock of tomentum and a pair of wool leggings collected by an army doctor at Fort Yates after Sitting Bull ’s end . The museum determined thatErnie LaPointeand his three sisters are the only living relatives of the leader . LaPointe has posit yet another belief about Sitting Bull , take that he was not born in South Dakota but on the Yellowstone River in Montana .
