A Native American Legend, Sitting Bull

Also know as Tatanka Yotanka,which describes a buffalo bull sitting intractably on its haunches. A Lakota, born in what is now South Dakota, probably in 1831, son of a respected Sioux warrior named Returns-Again. The child wanted to follow in his father's footsteps but showed no particular talent for warfare, so he was given the name "Slow" until he could earn a better one. He earned Tatanka Yotanka (aka Sitting Bull) during a fight with rival Crow Indians.

Sitting Bull’s position on the white man was largely negative, having been quoted saying "The whites may get me at last... but I will have good times until then."

In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, and while a treaty had been given to the Sioux for the land, the white settlers continued to come and clashes between the two became inevitable. When government efforts to purchase the Black Hills failed, the Fort Laramie Treaty was set aside and the commissioner of Indian Affairs decreed that all Lakota not settled on reservations by January 31, 1876, would be considered hostile. Sitting Bull and his people held their ground.

Sitting Bull summoned the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho to his camp on Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory. There he led them in the sun dance ritual, offering prayers to Wakan Tanka, their Great Spirit, and slashing his arms one hundred times as a sign of sacrifice.

**Sitting Bull gave 100 pieces of flesh from his arms in a Sun Dance offering. He had a vision of soldiers falling into the Indian camp and heard a voice say, "I give you these because they have no ears."**

The Lakota moved their camp and were joined by 3,000 more Indians who had left the reservations to follow Sitting Bull. Here they were attacked on June 25 by the Seventh Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer, whose badly outnumbered troops first rushed the encampment, as if in fulfillment of Sitting Bull's vision, and then made a stand on a nearby ridge, where they were destroyed. The blood bath of Custer and his men, known as the battle of Little Big Horn, brought thousands more cavalrymen to the area.

Over the next year they relentlessly pursued the Lakota, forcing chief after chief to surrender. In May 1877 he led his band across the border into Canada, beyond the reach of the U.S. Army. Four years later, however, with buffalo almost extinct, and his people starving, Sitting Bull finally came south to surrender. On July 19, 1881, he had his young son hand his rifle to the commanding officer of Fort Buford in Montana, explaining that in this way he hoped to teach the boy "that he has become a friend of the Americans." Yet at the same time, Sitting Bull said, "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle."

Allowed to travel on occasion, Sitting Bull met Ms. Annie Oakley in 1884. So impressed by her

marksmanship he adopted her into the Lakota family naming her “Little Sure Shot”. Sitting Bull then joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show as an attraction in the opening procession. He enjoyed the work, compensated $50 a week in addition to all of the autographs he could sell.

**I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.** 

The money he earned went to feeding orphan boys. He once made this comment to Annie Oakley regarding the way orphans were treated. "The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it."

Returning to Standing Rock in 1889, Sitting Bull lived in a cabin on the Grand River. Refusing to give up his old ways, he did consent to his children being educated in a nearby Christian school. He held the belief the next generation of Lakota would need to be able to read and write.

In the fall of 1890, a Miniconjou Lakota named Kicking Bear came to Sitting Bull with news of the Ghost Dance. A ceremony promising to rid the land of white people and restore the Indians' way of life, the Lakota had already adopted the ceremony at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations. At Standing Rock, the authorities feared that Sitting Bull, still revered as a spiritual leader, would join the Ghost Dancers.

Before dawn on December 15, 1890, police burst into Sitting Bull's cabin and dragged him outside. His tribe gathered to protect him, but in the gunfight that followed, one of the Lakota policemen put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head.

**Legend says that when his gray horse heard the shots, he went into his Wild West Show routine, sitting on his haunches and pawing the air over Sitting Bull’s body. Many thought that the spirit of Sitting Bull entered his favorite gray horse.**

Buried at Fort Yates in North Dakota, and in 1953 his remains were moved to Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks his grave. He is remembered not only as an inspirational leader and fearless warrior but as a loving father, a gifted singer, a man always affable and friendly toward others, whose deep religious faith gave him prophetic insight and lent special power to his prayers.