- Born
- Died
- Birth nameTatanka-Iyotanka
- Height5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
- Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux) holy man and war chief, was born in 1831 near the Grand River in what is now the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was named after his father, who was killed by Crow warriors--the Crow tribe being a longtime enemy of the Lakota--in an ambush. In the mid-1860s, during what became known as Red Cloud's War, Sitting Bull led the Sioux in a series of attacks on US Army posts and civilian wagon trains in the Powder River area of the Dakotas. Although other Indian tribes signed a peace treaty with the US government ending the war in 1868, Sitting Bull refused to and continued his attacks on military and civilian targets into the 1870s. He attacked crews building railroads across the Indian territory and miners who were panning for gold in the Black Hills, an area sacred to the Sioux. His attacks prompted the US government to send federal troops to the area, under the command of Col. George Armstrong Custer, to stop them. In 1875 the US Interior Department ordered all Sioux living outside the area known as The Great Sioux Reservation to move onto it, and any who did not would be declared "hostile" and could be forcibly removed to the reservation. Rather than persuading Indians to follow the Department's orders, this policy resulted in several tribes previously hostile to each other, such as the Cheyenne and Kiowa, to unite in alliance with the Sioux against the army, although many chiefs who had previously fought the army--such as Red Cloud, Gall and Spotted Tail--decided it was in their best interests to take their followers and live on the reservation.
In 1875 the Cheyenne and several Sioux clans joined forces to resist the army's attempts to place them on the reservation. They used Sitting Bull's camp as their main assembling point, as did many other Indians who had bolted from the reservation. As more and more Indians arrived the camp expanded in size, until there were an estimated 16,000 Indians living there. It was this camp that Custer stumbled across on June 25, 1876. His attack on the camp, and the subsequent defeat and annihilation of his command, became known as the Battle of the Little Big Horn, named for the river that ran through the camp. Contrary to popular opinion, however, Sitting Bull had nothing to do with the defeat of Custer's forces--his task was to organize a defense of the camp, and it was other chiefs who led the counterattack on Custer.
Custer's defeat led the US army to assign thousands of troops to the area to track down and capture Sitting Bull, and over the next year or so many Sioux chiefs surrendered their bands due to the intense pressure from the army. Sitting Bull, however, refused to surrender and in 1877 led his band across the border into Canada, where he knew the US army could not reach him. However, conditions in Canada deteriorated for the Indians, with cold and hunger taking their toll. On July 19, 1881, he crossed back into the US and led his band of nearly 200 Indians to Fort Buford, South Dakota, and surrendered. Initially taken to Fort Yates, near the Standing Rock Reservation, Sitting Bull's band was transferred to Fort Randall, where they were kept for almost two years as prisoners of war. They returned to Standing Rock in 1883.
The next year Sitting Bull was given permission to leave the reservation to join the "wild west show" of Buffalo Bill Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill", and he became an audience favorite. He returned to the reservation after only four months with the Cody show, however. By that time he had become somewhat of a celebrity and many whites visited the reservation hoping to see him. He turned a tidy profit charging his "fans" to have their pictures taken with him.
In 1890 a movement known as the "Ghost Dance" swept the Standing Rock reservation. Part of the movement's message was to encourage Indians to defy the authorities and leave the reservation. The Indian Agency administrators were concerned that Sitting Bull, who was still considered a leader among the Sioux and wielded great influence over them, was planning on taking as many Indians as he could and flee the reservation. They ordered the tribal police to arrest and jail him to keep that from happening. On December 15, 1890, a force of more than 40 Indian police arrived at Sitting Bull's house. As they prepared to take him away, nearby Indians who had heard what was happening began to gather around the house. Sitting Bull refused to go with the police, and the crowd became angry. Reportedly a Sioux onlooker grabbed a rifle and fired it at the officer in charge, hitting him. The officer then pulled his weapon and shot Sitting Bull in the chest, and another officer fired a round into his head. The crowd then attacked the police, who fought back, and in the ensuing mêlée eight Indian police and seven Indians in the crowd, along with Sitting Bull, were killed.- IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com - Sitting Bull was born in March, 1831 near the site of present-day Bullhead, South Dakota. His father bore the name Sitting Bull; his mother, Her-Holy-Door. They named their son Jumping Badger. He was a member of the Hunkpapa Sioux, one of 7 Sioux tribes known collectively as the Teton, or Lakota, Sioux, who made their living hunting buffalo on the plains of North and South Dakota. Jumping Badger inherited his father's name at age 14 as part of the ceremonies celebrating his accession to warrior status. His new name connoted a stubborn buffalo bull planted firmly on his haunches. He was soon inducted into the Strong Hearts, the Hunkpapa warrior society that guarded the encampments and organized the hunting parties. Sitting Bull accumulated a superlative war record in fighting with Assiniboins, Crows, Flatheads, Blackfeet, and other enemy tribes. In 1856, on a raiding party to steal horses, Sitting Bull killed a Crow chief, and at the age of 25 he was elected leader of the Strong Hearts. He waged war against the other tribes and extended the hunting grounds of the Sioux. Sitting Bull's father was killed by a Crow warrior in 1859. Profound spirituality characterized his entire life, and scars on his chest, back, and arms testified to repeated sacrifices in the Sun Dance. During the early years of the Civil War, Sitting Bull tried to isolate his people from the conflict, ignoring the new United States forts being built along the Missouri River and the white settlers pouring into the Dakota territory. But in 1864, while camped in the Killdeer Mountains with other Sioux tribes, he was attacked by soldiers under General Alfred Sully. The Indians beat back the soldiers and then counterattacked at the Battle of the Badlands. The battle was inconclusive, but Sitting Bull began to realize that the Sioux's greatest danger came not from other Indians, but from the white soldiers. The territorial governor of the Dakotas announced a plan to put all the Sioux onto reservations where they could be "civilized," and Sitting Bull led the resistance to the program. In 1865, Sitting Bull's warriors routed United States troops at the Battle of Powder River, and in 1867, at the age of 36, he was elected head war chief of all the Teton Sioux, with Crazy Horse, chief of the Oglala Sioux, his second-in-command. In July, 1868 Sitting Bull negotiated the Treaty of Laramie with the United States, which created the Great Sioux Reservation in western South Dakota and forbid white settlers from entering the region. In 1872, a surveying party for the Northern Pacific Railroad, protected by soldiers, entered the reservation. Sitting Bull attacked, letting the whites know that he took the treaty seriously. Soon the United States was demanding that the Sioux confine themselves to a smaller area of land. When Sitting Bull refused, the War Department in Washington authorized military operations against the Sioux. In 1876, United States troops under General George Crook entered Indian territory and destroyed a Cheyenne village by the Little Powder River. When Sitting Bull heard of the attack, he sent out a call for all the tribes to come together to fight. Soon thousands of Indians - Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and others - began to assemble at Sitting Bull's camp near the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana. By June 1876, the camp contained 15,000 tepees and almost 5,000 warriors and their families. On July 17, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse attacked General Crook's troops at the Rosebud River and forced them to retreat. The army quickly reorganized and began to march toward the Little Bighorn from three separate directions under the commands of General Crook, General Alfred Terry, and General Custer. Custer, who hoped to boost his prial ambitions with a big victory over the Indians, pushed the 7th Cavalry to arrive ahead of the other columns. Ignoring the size of the Indian camp, which stretched for miles along the Little Bighorn, Custer split his force of 650 men, and on the morning of June 25, 1876 tried to simultaneously attack the northern and southern ends of the encampment. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse organized the defense, first driving back the southern attack led by Major Reno and then overwhelming Custer in the north with superior numbers. Custer and his entire command of 225 men were killed. Sherman was sent after Sitting Bull and his men. Sitting Bull and about a thousand warriors retreated north, pursued by troops under Colonel Nelson A. Miles. Sitting Bull crossed into Canada in the spring of 1877. He spent 4 years in Canada, but there were not enough buffalo to feed his people, and his numbers dwindled. In July 1881, Sitting Bull and 180 starving warriors recrossed the border and surrendered to the United States Army at Fort Buford, North Dakota. Sitting Bull was held as a prisoner of war for 2 years, and released in May 1883. Sitting Bull retired to the Standing Rock Reservation. Life for the Sioux was changing. As he continued to speak out against the destruction of his tribe, Sitting Bull was encouraged to travel away from the reservation so that he would not stir up futher resistance. In 1885, he toured the United States and Canada with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. In 1887, he retired to a small log cabin near his birthplace by the Grand River. By 1890, a new cult, the Ghost Dance religion, swept through the desperate Indian communities. Sitting Bull encouraged the cult as a new form of resistance to the whites. White settlers were panicked by the cult, and the army decided to arrest Sitting Bull. On December 15, 1890, he was shot and killed by Indian police officers while resisting arrest.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma
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