Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake in the Lakota language, meaning literally “Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down”), Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief (born in 1831; died 15 December 1890 at Standing Rock, South Dakota). Sitting Bull led the Dakota (Sioux) resistance against US incursion into traditional territory. After the most famous battle at Little Big Horn, in which General George Custer’s forces were completely annihilated, Sitting Bull left the United States for the Cypress Hills in Saskatchewan. Sitting Bull symbolized the conflict between settlers and Indigenous culture over lifestyles, land and resources.
Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull
(courtesy McCord Museum)
Early Life
As a youth, Sitting Bull was trained as a warrior and medicine man. He lived in a time when traditional ways of life for Indigenous peoples on the Plains were increasingly challenged by the influx of white settlers (see Indigenous People: Plains). Sitting Bull eventually rose to prominence as a leader of the resistance against American expansion into Dakota territory in the late 1860s.
The Great Sioux War of 1876
With the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of what is now South Dakota, American prospectors and settlers flocked to the area, encroaching on traditional Sioux lands and increasing tensions (see Indigenous Territory). The lands were legally those of the Sioux, having been guaranteed in an 1868 treaty, but the military was unwilling to evict the thousands of settlers who saw the right to mine the gold of the Black Hills as God-given. When the Sioux and the Cheyenne under Sitting Bull began to resist this encroachment with force, both sides prepared for war — a conflict later known as the Great Sioux War or the Black Hills War.
Battle at Little Bighorn
On 25 June 1876, at Little Bighorn, in what is now the state of Montana, Sitting Bull’s forces killed American Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer and 262 of his men, including 209 under his direct command. Now facing the full might of the United States army, Sitting Bull tried to negotiate peace, but the Americans’ terms —to surrender their guns and horses and move to reserves —had not changed. After rejecting the offer, many Sioux began crossing the border into Canada, near Wood Mountain, SK (then part of the North-West Territories).
