Background
Sitting Bull was born on the Grand River in South Dakota.
Sitting Bull was born on the Grand River in South Dakota.
By the mid-1870s his influence had been extended through several Sioux subtribes and to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. He headed the combined war council of these nations although he was not a war chief. After miners encroached on Sioux territory during the Black Hills gold rush in 1875, Sitting Bull led his people from the reservation and chose to fight. Warned by Gen. Alfred Terry to return to the reservation, Sitting Bull replied, "You won't need any guides; you can find me easily; I won't run away. "Gen. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry found Sitting Bull and several thousand warriors at the Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876. Sitting Bull did not take part in the fighting that day but made medicine while Gall and Crazy Horse annihilated Custer and 264 men. Custer's death, however, changed nothing. Gen. Terry and Gen. George Crook pressured the Sioux, and Sitting Bull was forced to lead his people to Canada. Conditions there were no better, and Sitting Bull's following dwindled, especially after 1879, when the U. S. government offered amnesty to those Indians who would surrender.
In July 1881 Sitting Bull, with 187 followers, arrived at Ft. Buford to accept the government's offer. Placed on the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakota Territory, Sitting Bull found himself famous. During his residence in Canada, stories had circulated in the United States that the Sioux leader was white, a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, and a Catholic. In 1878 a book, The Works of Sitting Bull, was published ascribing Latin and French poems to his authorship. When the "ghost dance craze" swept the Indian reservations in 1890, Sitting Bull took no part in it. But soldiers arrested him that December for fear he would lead the Sioux on the warpath. In the fight that followed, Sitting Bull was fatally shot, possibly by accident, possibly by design. He was buried at Ft. Yates, North Dakota, but in 1953 his body was reinterred near Mobridge, South Dakota.
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance to United States government policies.
Following Sitting Bull's death, his cabin on the Grand River was taken to Chicago for use as an exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Native American dancers also performed at the Exposition. On September 14, 1989, the United States Postal Service released a Great Americans series 28¢ postage stamp featuring a likeness of Sitting Bull. On March 6, 1996, Standing Rock College was renamed Sitting Bull College in his honor. Sitting Bull College serves as an institution of higher education on Sitting Bull's home of Standing Rock in North Dakota and South Dakota.
In August 2010, a research team led by Eske Willerslev, an ancient DNA expert at the University of Copenhagen, announced their intention to sequence the genome of Sitting Bull, with the approval of his descendants, using a hair sample obtained during his lifetime.
He gained some fame as a warrior while in his 20s, but he chose to become a medicine man and a political leader rather than a war chief. He hated the white men and their encroachment on Indian lands. Therefore he stayed off the reservation as much as possible.
Sitting Bull had five wives and four children, two of which where adopted.
1826 – December 29, 1890
August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926
March 1854 – December 24, 1931
April 1849 – June 21, 1947
