Sitting Bull (c. 1831–1890) was a Sioux warrior, holy man, and chieftain who may be best known for defeating the US Army’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. The unexpected Sioux victory over Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a huge shock to the American public—and it elevated Sitting Bull to heroic status among Native Americans.
Born near the Grand River in what is now South Dakota, Sitting Bull was a member of the Hunkpapa Lakota branch of the Sioux, a tribe that stretched across the Great Plains from Minnesota to Montana. He became a warrior as a teenager and fought in his first battle, against the Crow, at age fourteen. Sitting Bull fought against the US Army for the first time in June 1863.
Meanwhile, the pace of US expansion into the West had quickened dramatically after the Civil War. Railroads and telegraph lines were built across ancient Sioux hunting grounds, and the bison herds that provided the tribe’s food were hunted to the brink of extinction. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota, a sacred territory for the Sioux, brought a fresh wave of settlers. The Black Hills had been specifically protected in a treaty between the Sioux and the US Government, but the United States canceled the treaty in 1876.
The Battle of Little Bighorn—which Sitting Bull had supposedly foreseen in a dream—occurred on June 25, 1876, when Custer’s cavalry attacked an encampment of Sioux warriors. Custer, a decorated Civil War veteran, had badly underestimated the size of the Sioux force, and his entire detachment was destroyed by warriors led by Sitting Bull and the Oglala Lakota Sioux war chief, Crazy Horse (c. 1842–1877).
When news of the massacre reached Washington, thousands more soldiers were dispatched to the Dakota Territory. For the next five years, the army hunted down the Sioux chiefs; Sitting Bull escaped to Canada in 1877, but was forced to return and surrender in 1881. “I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle,” he said.
In 1890, confined to reservations, the Sioux tribes conducted a series of Ghost Dances, religious ceremonies they believed would drive away the whites and restore their old way of life. Federal authorities, fearing that the dances would revive Native American resistance, sent policemen to arrest Sitting Bull to prevent him from joining the ceremonies; he was killed in a gun battle during his arrest.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Sitting Bull is buried in Mobridge, South Dakota. Plans to build a $12 million memorial at the site were put on hold in 2007 after some of the chief ’s descendants objected to turning the grave into a tourist attraction.
- American Indian activist and actor Russell Means (1939–), who was born on an Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation, played Sitting Bull in the 1995 movie Buffalo Girls.
- According to the 2000 US Census, the Sioux tribe is the third most populous in the United States, after the Cherokee and the Navajo.
