Sitting Bull

1834-90, American Indian warrior: leader of the Hunkpapa; victor at Little Bighorn, 1876.

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born с 1831, near Grand River, Dakota Territory, U.S.

died Dec. 15, 1890, on the Grand River in South Dakota

Teton Sioux chief under whom the Sioux peoples united in their struggle for survival.

Frequent skirmishes between the U.S. Army and Sitting Bull's warriors occurred in 1863–68, at the end of which the Sioux agreed to accept a reservation in southwestern Dakota Territory. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills in the mid-1870s, further outbreaks occurred. At the Battle of the Rosebud, troops under Gen. George Crook were forced to retreat; and at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his men were killed. In 1877 Sitting Bull led his followers into Canada, but, with the buffalo reduced to near extinction, starvation eventually drove the Sioux to surrender. From 1883 Sitting Bull lived on Indian Agency lands, at one point (1885) traveling with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. During the Ghost Dance movement, Sitting Bull was arrested. He was killed when his warriors tried to rescue him.

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▪ Sioux chief

Indian name Tatanka Iyotake

born c. 1831, near Grand River, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota], U.S.

died Dec. 15, 1890, on the Grand River in South Dakota

 Teton Dakota Indian chief under whom the Sioux tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains. He is remembered for his lifelong distrust of white men and his stubborn determination to resist their domination.

      Sitting Bull was born into the Hunkpapa division of the Teton Sioux. He joined his first war party at age 14 and soon gained a reputation for fearlessness in battle. He became a leader of the powerful Strong Heart warrior society and, later, was a participant in the Silent Eaters, a select group concerned with tribal welfare. As a tribal leader Sitting Bull helped extend the Sioux hunting grounds westward into what had been the territory of the Shoshone, Crow, Assiniboin, and other Indian tribes. His first skirmish with white soldiers occurred in June 1863 during the U.S. Army's retaliation against the Santee Sioux after the “Minnesota Massacre,” in which the Teton Sioux had no part. For the next five years he was in frequent hostile contact with the army, which was invading the Sioux hunting grounds and bringing ruin to the Indian economy. In 1866 he became principal chief of the northern hunting Sioux, with Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, as his vice-chief. Respected for his courage and wisdom, Sitting Bull was made principal chief of the entire Sioux nation about 1867.

      In 1868 the Sioux accepted peace with the U.S. government on the basis of the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which guaranteed the Sioux a reservation in what is now southwestern South Dakota. But when gold was discovered in the Black Hills in the mid-1870s, a rush of white prospectors invaded lands guaranteed to the Indians by the treaty. Late in 1875 those Sioux who had been resisting the whites' incursions were ordered to return to their reservations by Jan. 31, 1876, or be considered hostile to the United States. Even had Sitting Bull been willing to comply, he could not possibly have moved his village 240 miles (390 km) in the bitter cold by the specified time.

      In March General George Crook took the field against the hostiles, and Sitting Bull responded by summoning the Sioux, Cheyenne, and certain Arapaho to his camp in Montana Territory. There on June 17 Crook's troops were forced to retreat in the Battle of the Rosebud. The Indian chiefs then moved their encampment into the valley of the Little Bighorn River. At this point Sitting Bull performed the Sun Dance, and when he emerged from a trance induced by self-torture, he reported that he had seen soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky. His prophecy was fulfilled on June 25, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (Custer, George Armstrong) rode into the valley and he and all the men under his immediate command were annihilated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

      Strong public reaction among whites to the Battle of the Little Bighorn resulted in stepped-up military action. The Sioux emerged the victors in their battles with U.S. troops, but though they might win battle after battle, they could never win the war. They depended on the buffalo for their livelihood, and the buffalo, under the steady encroachment of whites, were rapidly becoming extinct. Hunger led more and more Sioux to surrender, and in May 1877 Sitting Bull led his remaining followers across the border into Canada. But the Canadian government could not acknowledge responsibility for feeding a people whose reservation was south of the border, and after four years, during which his following dwindled steadily, famine forced Sitting Bull to surrender. After 1883 he lived at the Standing Rock Agency, where he vainly opposed the sale of tribal lands. In 1885, partly to get rid of him, the Indian agent allowed him to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, in which he gained international fame.

      The year 1889 saw the spread of the Ghost Dance religious movement, which prophesied the advent of an Indian messiah who would sweep away the whites and restore the Indians' former traditions. The Ghost Dance movement augmented the unrest already stirred among the Sioux by hunger and disease. As a precaution, Indian police and soldiers were sent to arrest the chief. Seized on Grand River, Dec. 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was killed while his warriors were trying to rescue him. He was buried at Fort Yates, but his remains were moved in 1953 to Mobridge, S.D., where a granite shaft marks his resting place.

Additional Reading

Biographies include Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux (1932, reissued 1989); and Alexander B. Adams, Sitting Bull: An Epic of the Plains (1973).

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