It often happens among the Plains tribes that a Medicine Man achieves so much power and has such a great influence upon the affairs of the group that he becomes more leader than advisor. Such a medicine man was Sitting Bull, whose fame as a leader of the Sioux in the difficult years of their war against the U. S. Army exceeds that of any of the official chiefs of the tribe.
Sitting Bull was born in the Grand River region of what now is South Dakota, around the year 1834. His father, Jumping Bull, and uncles, Four Horns and Hunting-His-Lodge all were Sioux chiefs. His name originally was The Sacred Stand, but when he was fourteen he became known as Tatanka Yotanka -- Sitting Bull. As a young man he displayed hostility toward the white men and thus gathered a following, but was repudiated by the tribal leaders who wanted to maintain peaceful relations with the Government.
During the Civil War, Sitting Bull led some raids into Minnesota and Iowa in which numbers of white persons were killed. The U. S. Army drove Sitting Bull and his band into the Big Horn region and to the Yellowstone River. In 1866 he made peaceful overtures to the Government, tricking the enemy into relaxing their vigilance. In less than a year he again was engaged in warfare against the U. S., also venting his wrath upon some of the Indian tribes that were friendly with the whites. He often was associated with such noted chiefs as Yellow Hand and Crazy Horse, whose implacable hatred for the white man was well known.
In May, 1870, the army reorganized its Indian-fighting forces and determined to settle the Sioux question once and for all. General Crook, the most famous Indian-fighter of all, led the troops from Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, toward the Sioux camp on the Rosebud River. When he reached the Tongue River, Crook received a message from Chief Crazy Horse telling him not to cross the Tongue. Crook sent back a reply that all the Indians in America could not stop him. On May 15, Crook left a garrison to guard his supply wagons and sent his best troops across the river. The soldiers marched to the Rosebud and made camp there on the 16th. At 8 a.m. the next morning they moved forward and were attacked by a huge army of Sioux. A pitched battle raged for three hours before the Indians withdrew. Crook remained on the battlefield, had his dead buried, then returned to the Rosebud camp. The wounded were returned to Fort Fetterman and reinforcements were sent for. The Sioux, in the meantime, flushed with victory, were ready to take on all comers.
The discovery of gold in the Black Hills brought more white men into the region the Sioux claimed as their own. Towns grew where the best bison hunting grounds had been, kindling redskin fury to new heights. On June 22, 1876, the Seventh Calvary under General George Armstrong Custer left its Powder River camp under orders from General Terry to proceed up the Rosebud and follow the trail of the Sioux until Sitting Bull's camp was located. Terry was supposed to join Custer in a few days and consolidate a campaign against Sitting Bull.
On the evening of June 24 Custer's troops camped on the Little Big Horn. The vainglorious Custer, apparently ill-informed as to the strength of his enemy, wanted to attack without waiting for additional troops, believing that he could wipe out the Sioux forces without Terry's assistance. On the morning of June 25, 1876, Major Reno crossed the river with about 200 men and headed toward the Sioux camp. Hidden in the high ground, the Indians opened fire and routed Reno's detachment, killing about half of the soldiers. Reno and his remaining troops dispersed, pursued by a wave of Sioux warriors. Meanwhile, another detachment attacked the Indian camp from another direction, and they, too, were quickly surrounded and decimated. After an all night siege, in which almost every soldier in Custer's command died, the Sioux set fire to the grass and rode off into the Big Horn Mountains. Thus ended the battle of the Little Big Horn, the most famous Indian massacre of all. Custer and 266 of his men were dead. Although Custer's tactics were foolhardy and stupid, the Sioux reported that the troopers fought with unexcelled bravery. Not one man offering to surrender. Controversy over this battle rages still.
Such famed Indian fighters as Crook, Mackenzie, Miles, and Meritt entered the north country in an attempt to subdue the Sioux and their allies, the Comanches. These raids were better planned and more successful than the bungled attempts of previous years, and now the Indians were kept on the run. Sitting Bull's group was defeated on the Yellowstone by Miles, although Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and some 400 braves escaped. Most of the Sioux Nation had given up and reported to the Red Cloud Agency. Miles defeated Crazy Horse in a spectacular fight on a cliff overlooking the Tongue River in January, 1877, and the demoralized chief was forced to surrender. The following May two other leading Sioux Chiefs, Lame Deer and Iron Star, were killed by Miles' troops and their villages were captured.
Of the great Sioux leaders, only Sitting Bull had managed to escape capture. Leading a small band of followers into British Columbia, where they remained for years. A fugitive unable to return to his own country. At last, General Miles offered terms of amnesty to Sitting Bull and his people, and the old medicine man agreed to return. On July 10, 1881, Sitting Bull left Canada with 187 men, women, and children, arriving 10 days later at Fort Buford, North Dakota. On July 29 the Indians were put aboard the steamer General and sent to Fort Yates and the Standing Rock Agency. There, they were declared prisoners of war and moved to Fort Randall. Sitting Bull, surrounded by the might of the U. S. Army, knew that further resistance was futile.
Still recognized as the spiritual leader of the Sioux Nation, Sitting Bull received Indian visitors from every direction, all of them seeking advice as to what to do. he told them that the cause of Indian independence was hopeless because there were no more buffalo herds and too, many white men. Himself the last Sioux leader to lay down his arms, Sitting Bull's capitulation brought to an end the resistance of his people.
On May 10, 1883, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota, where he was to live the rest of his life. About five years later the Sioux and some of the other tribes took up a new religious movement introduced by a Paiute Indian named Wovoka. This man claimed to have had a vision in which he was named the Messiah, for Christ, having been crucified by the white men, had decided to return as an Indian. The new religion promised that to those who believed there would be a return to the earth of the great bison herds and the warriors slain by the white men. The believers were told to join in the sacred Ghost Dance to prove their faith. Each convert was given a special shirt which was supposed to make them impervious to the bullets of the white men.
The religious revival spread like wildfire among the hopelessly demoralized Indians. It promised them the return of the life they loved. Like the Christianity of which it was an offshoot, the Ghost Dance religion was a peaceful one, advocating tolerance, honesty and non-violence and promising a bright future in the hereafter. The Indian agents, appointees of the Republican administration, viewed the Ghost Dance phenomenon calmly, seeing no harm in it. Most of these agents were forced to resign, however, when the Democratic party came into power. In their places came new agents and frightened at being surrounded by the recently hostile redmen.
At the Pine Ridge agency, where Red Cloud's Ogalalas now lived, the Ghost Dancing ceremonials brought terror to the new Indian agent. He saw in it the probability of a new uprising, and in a moment of panic he sent out a call for troops. General John Brooke arrived at Pine Ridge on November 19, 1890, with a large number of soldiers. The Ghost Dancers, thinking they were being attacked, set fire to their lodges and haystacks and fled into the Badlands. Reports from the agency, distorted and garbled, made the Ghost Dance affair sound like an outbreak of warfare.
At Standing Rock, the news triggered an order for the arrest of the Sioux. Indian police under the command of Lieutenant Bullhead were sent to Sitting Bull's log cabin in the early morning hours of December 15, 1890. The revered old medicine man was dragged from his bed. The police immediately were surrounded by a crowd of outraged Sioux. Among them was Catch-the-Bear, a loyal friend of Sitting Bull, who fired a bullet into Bullhead. As Bullhead fell, he shot Sitting Bull. Another policeman, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull through the head. A fierce battle followed in which 12 men were killed and three others seriously injured. Within minutes troops arrived to quell the fighting. Sitting Bull was buried in the Fort Yates cemetery, but later was reinterred near Mobridge, South Dakota.
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