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A People without history is like wind on the buffalo grass

This is the story of Sitting Bull – the last of the great Sioux Indian Chiefs

How Sitting Bull Got his Name

According to Indian legend the story of Sitting Bull started about 1828. A group of warriors were sitting around a camp fire behind the western mountains. There were no trees on the plains, and their camp fire was made from dried buffalo chips. They were hungry, tired and cold. All they wanted was to eat their roasted buffalo ribs, smoke their pipes and curl up in their sleeping robes for the night. They heard a strange shuffling noise approaching their campfire, and they drew their arrows and turned to face the intruder.

Suddenly a bull buffalo tatanka emerged from the night and came into the circle of light from the campfire. This didn’t disturb most of the Indians. Quite often a wild animal would investigate their camp fire, and would leave when their curiosity was satisfied and they were not threatened. Three of the warriors returned to the campfire and their roasting meat. However one brave, Returns Again, could not tear himself away from the animal.

Returns Again was a name feared by other plain tribes, for after besting their enemies in combat and leaving in victory, Returns Again would swing his horse back for one last swipe before leaving. He and the other warriors were members of the Teton Lakota or Dakota Indians. Teton means Western, and Lakota means “us”, or literally “alliance of friends”.

Besides being a valiant warrior and hunter, Returns Again had another talent.The Indians believed him to be a healer, but even more important, they felt he could talk to animals.

Returns Again approached the animal, and as he stared into buffalo’s eyes, the animal gave a series of grunts and growls. Then he shook his head furiously, and left the campfire. Returns Again translated what the bull had told him. By speaking in a deep Indian voice., the buffalo revealed himself to be the buffalo God. and not one of the ordinary four legged animals. He had come to give Returns Again a precious gift. This is what the warrior heard – “Titant’ke lyota ‘lee, Titant’ke lyota Pai’Ca, Tianti’ke , and Tianti’ke lyota en angi’ le.

Returns Again realized that the names represented four divisions of an Indian warrior’s life. “Sitting Bull” was the early life, the late teens and early manhood time. The second division was the name “Jumping Bull” which represented a wiser and more mature time, the third division translated to Bull, Standing with Cow, or middle age, and the last division was “Lone Bull”which represented old age.

The Lakota Indians often took several names during their life time. The first one was given to him by his mother, and reflected the first thing she dreamed of, or saw after giving birth. Another name might reflect a brave deed, a good hunt, a victory in battle with another tribe, or perhaps a very successful hunt. Returns Again had a teen age son they called Slow. This was not because he was slow witted – quite the opposite. It was because from baby hood he never ate anything without first examining it thoroughly. If he was given an arrow to shoot, or a spear to throw, he always carefully looked it over before trusting it, so he was called Slow to Act..

After Returns Again translated what the Buffalo had told him, he took the name Sitting Bull for himself. Later, when his son, Slow, showed himself to be a brave and fearless warrior while still in his early teens, he gave Slow the name of Sitting Bull, and took Jumping Bull for his name.

The buffalo was very much a part of Indian life, and they respected the animals for their strength. They depended on the buffalo for food, for clothing and warmth, and even for the chips that built their bon fires. The name, if named after a buffalo, was a good name. They used every portion of an animal they killed. The meat was for food, the skin for robes and the stretched hide of the older beasts would work for the lodges and teepees they built for homes. The dried and preserved meat often got them through a harsh winter.

So this book is about Sitting Bull, the son, who became the last of the great chiefs to make the history books.

I am not going to tell you the details of this book, although the author takes you through all aspects of Sitting Bull’s life, including photos, sketches and maps. Albert Merrin, the author, has written over two dozen award winning books for young people, and this book is one of them. He has also written scholarly books on Military History, religion, higher education, and anti war movements. Although he is now chairman of the history division at Yeshiva University in New York City, he spent nine years teaching in junior high school, and in high school. He felt that American History could be taught by biographical and documented incidents if put it a readable language. He was successful, and was pleased to learn that adults loved his books for children as well as the kids in their teens for whom the books were targeted.

Sitting Bull became a great Lakota warrior. In 1876 he led the greatest alliance of Southern Plains Indians that was ever established , and defeated Custer in the famous battle of Little Bighorn.

“There have been many great Indian leaders. In the 1760s. during the French and Indian war, the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, nearly drove the British out of Michigan. During the war of 1812 between Britain and the United States , Tecumseh of the Shawnee tribe tried to unite all Indian people against the Americans in the Ohio Valley. Another great chief, Geronimo, let the Apache on a dogged defense of his homeland in Arizona and New Mexico against invading whites. Chief Quanah Parker, who had a white mother and a Comanche father fought for Indian survival in Texas. Crazy Horse, who was also a Lakota (Sioux) but of the Oglala tribe was a master technician and devised a new way to fight the U.S. Calvary”

“To quote the author, “Sitting Bull was more then a Chief. He was a holy man and an astute judge of men, a singer and speaker for his people’s ways. Withstanding the ravages wrought by the army, the railroad, the discovery of gold, and the abuses of Washington, he led his band to Canada rather then come in to the white man’s reservation.”

This book takes us through all of that. The Indians were considered savages, and in a way by our “civilized” standards they were. My great grandparents, on both my grandfather and grandmother’s side, came to the Dakota area to settle land deeded to them by the Government, and had many horrific tales to tell of Indian brutality and barbarism from their point of view. My grandfather, as a little child, remembered the Scout that had been sent ahead to spot danger who came running down a hill to fall before the first wagon in the train. He had been skinned alive, and died. there. He remembered the wagons making a circle as quickly as they could. He remembered hiding under the wagon with his sister, while his mother and father each held rifles at the ready, kneeling in front of them. He remembered the whoops as the band of warriors circled the train. They circled a couple of times, whooping, and then departed – obviously seeing that the settlers had more rifles showing then they thought they would have.

My grandmother remembered being told that if she was outdoors playing and saw Indians approaching, she and her little sister should hide, no matter what happened. One day they did see a small band of about four warriors, replete with war paint, approach the house. She tried to keep her little sister with her, but the girl broke free and ran for the house with my grandmother right behind her. Just as they reached the house, the youngest fell.
My grandmother tried to lift her up, but the Indians were there. They simply ignored the children. They stepped over the youngest, and entered the house. They gestured for food, and my great- grandmother gave them the stew she was cooking for supper, and a loaf of bread. They were hungry, said my grandma, and ate it quickly. Then one of them gave my great grandmother a deer skin, and they left . Later they learned that the leader was the father of a small child that my great-grandfather had found in the field. He had apparently fallen from a horse, and had a broken leg. He took the boy home, and my great grandmother had set the boy’s leg, and bound it with a home made plank and a torn blanket to form a cast. They kept the child a couple of weeks until the leg was almost
healed, and taught to boy to walk with home-made crutches. When he was able, my great grandfather took him back to where he found him, and turned him over to an Indian woman who was still searching for he lost son. This was the Indian’s way of repaying my great grandmother.

Later, they learned that this same band had murdered three whole families of other settlers, in methods that included torture.

They had many horror stories, which were true, but they just didn’t seem to grasp that the Indians were only trying to protect their land. The whites bought disease that could wipe out whole villages at a time. The whites would give them useless trinkets and beads for land, meat and buffalo robes. When the railroads came through, the whites would shoot and kill hundreds of precious buffalo, and leave the carcasses to rot. It was a dreadful clash of cultures, and the Washington government thought of the Indians as vermin that needed to be exterminated by the army people they sent out.

The Indians were driven back from the plains, and were promised that they could have the Black Hills for their own. That would have been acceptable to Sitting Bull, but, alas, gold was discovered and the Homestake mine was opened. The rush for gold started, and the Black Hills no longer belonged to the Indians.

The Indians were being driven to a corner, and were becoming .desperate. Their food supply was becoming scarce, and they could no longer follow where the buffalo led for food.

The military was appalled at the cruelty of the Indians when they captured anyone. They would hack the culprit up, while still breathing, and drag pieces of the body around the camp to entertain the village. However, General George Crook, a veteran Indian fighter,thought the white man had nothing to feel morally superior about when it came to cruelty in war. Crook told a group of young officers, “With all his faults, and he has many, the American Indian is not half as black as he has been painted. He is cruel in war, but so were our forefathers.” “And”,and,adds the author of this book, “so were their decendents. During the Vietnam War, for example, some Americans collected the ears of dead enemy soldiers, which they kept on strings.”

The author told of several other incidents which I see no point in reporting. Suffice to say that cruelty existed in both areas.

Historians agree that tribes on the northern Great Plains, Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow generally did not torture captives. George Bird Grinnell, who interviewed hundreds of warriors on reservations in the early 1900s, said “they never practiced torture, except, perhaps in some cases where they were very angry over some injury they believed they had received “

They also showed mercy. Sitting Bull once took a young Indian captive for his brother when the lad showed extreme bravery. He even named him Jumping Bull after his late father.

Another time, for instance, when the Lakota captured a small band of Pawnee men, woman and children, they invited them to a feast, and later released them with gifts of horses.

The soldiers dreaded nothing more than having their loved ones captured. Husbands made their wives understand that falling into Indian hands meant torture. Almost all of the wives who traveled with their husbands learned to shoot a carbine or a six shooter, which they called pocket cannons. They also used carried derringers which were tiny single shot pistols of the sort that John Wilkes Booth used to kill Abraham Lincoln.

Custer gave a standing order to his officers to shoot his wife, Elizabeth, if it became necessary. This was alarming to Elizabeth. Once, she said, she was riding with a small cavalry escort when they came upon a group of young warriors seated in their motionless way in the underbrush. “My danger in connection with the Indians was twofold”, she said. “I was in peril from death or capture from the savages, and liable to be killed by my own friends to prevent my capture.” As it happened, the warriors let them pass safely. Her husband would not be so lucky when he met Sitting Bull’s warriors.

The Government talked to Warrior Red Cloud of the Oglala tribe. Although not a chief, Red Cloud had inspired other warriors, due to his extreme bravery, to follow him. At first, although dismayed at the thought of the “hairy white men” invading his precious hunting grounds, he thought they could be easily wiped out. He soon realized that they were too many, and had far superior weapons. When the Government offered to take Red Cloud to Washington where he could talk to the “Big Chief”, he agreed to go. There he saw many, many white people – more in one city then in the whole of the Lakota tribes. He also saw the many, many guns they had, and even a cannon whose barrel was big enough to swallow half a man. He realized the Indians could not win. He was offered a large stretch of land for the Lakotas wherein the Indians would be taught farming and other skills, would be supplied with food, seed and weapons, and would be left alone. He made his mark to sign the treaty, and urged other Lakotas to do the same.

In the meantime Sitting Bull’s band of warriors had been attacking the forts the Government had set up to protect the settler’s paths that went through areas of the Indians. He had often been successful, but still it was but a pin prick to the forces of the Government. Sitting Bull wanted no part of the treaty that Red Cloud had accepted. In fact he led his people clear to Canada rather then be a part of the Indian Reservation.

The newspapers “back home’ in the States were horrified that the Indians still continued the warfare, and that white settlers were being attacked. However gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and prospectors and others swarmed into the territory searching for nuggets..

Red Cloud decided to fight. He sent his best warrior, a young twenty-four year old named Crazy Horse to take out a detachment of cavalry soldiers led by Captain Fetterman. Crazy Horse was a fearless fighter, and always led his men to war, and never just sent them in. In this case, he lured the regiment into following him. He led them into a trap between two hillsides, and in twenty minutes the entire regiment lay dead on the hillside. It is said that, knowing they were defeated, the soldiers killed themselves by placing their guns against each others heads, and pulling the triggers at a count of three. They preferred a quick death to torture. The whites called the event a cowardly massacre, but the Indians called it the battle of the One Hundred Slain. The Government felt that Red Cloud and the Indians had broken the treaty.

After suffering this defeat, the idea of genocide was formented. Colonel Trobriand wrote that “the only way to settle the Indian question is to exterminate all of this vermin” Many officers agreed, including William T Sherman, the army’s general in chief. Sherman had been one of the top officers for the Union during the Civil War, and was the one who instigated the dreadful “march to the sea” wherein the soldiers destroyed or confiscated every plantation in the way, and often shot the inhabitants, or left them with nothing.

Sherman believed in “total” war, bringing the fight to civilians as well as soldiers. If the families were left with nothing, he believed, the men would no longer be willing to fight. He believed that the cruelty was a sort of kindness, in that it shortened the war.

Now the generals meant to give all Indians, not just the ones who participated in the Fetterman massacre, but,all Indians a lesson in total war, They outfitted an army clad in fur lined clothing with extra horses well fed from wagons carrying loads of grain. Because in the dead cold winter months the Lyotas seldom ventured far from their lodges, they thought winter would be the best time to attack. At night in the wintertime,
the tribes would be given an even better lesson in “total war”. Sherman and his partner, Gen. Sheridan had learned the lesson of killing well during the Civil War,the book’s author states.

Sheridan gave the command of the mission to a young soldier he felt had distinguished himself in the Civil war, and a man who had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was George Armstrong Custer..

Custer was a vain and pompous individual, who adored being in the spot light. He outfitted himself in an outrageous “uniform” which included a hand made blue velvet jacket, with gold embroidery. His blue army uniform was accented with a scarlet neck scarf. He relished his assignment, and let it be knows that Custer was Coming – so the redskins better be wary. Shortly after the posing and big talk, he and his cavalry unit came upon a sleeping Cheyenne village along the Wash*ta River in Indian territory.

Ordering a snappy marching tune to be played, Custer ordered his men to charge the sleeping village.

Awakened by the horses and gun shots, the villagers ran from their lodges. Custer’s men shot them down. Soon 103 Cheyenne lay dead in the snow. 93 of these were women and children. Chief Black Kettle and his wife and 21 troopers lost their lives. Then Custer ordered his men to burn the lot – lodges, tools, clothing, riding gear, lariats, buffalo robes, and to shoot 875 captured horses. The hungry exhausted survivors fled Northward and were taken in by Crazy Horse, who fed them and clothed them until they could get back to their land.

The legion of western Indians (the Hunkpapas) were shocked. Coming so soon after the Fort Laramie treaty convinced them that the hunting bands must come together under a single chief to resist the invading whites. They knew they needed a strong chief who would be capable of organizing and bringing together all of the tribes.

The Lakotas wanted Sitting Bull. He was thirty eight years old, and had every qualification. They said “he was a man who knew himself, he was fearless, he treated his family kindly, he showed religious devotion to the Indian God, and he had an uncanny ability to foretell the future, as well as an uncanny ability to make others see things his way.” In the spring of 1869, the Blackfeet, Miniconpau , Sana Arc, Oglala and Cheyenne met to elect their supreme leader. After the chiefs voted, a very old chief named Four Horns rose, and said “Because of your bravery we have elected you Head War Chief.. When you say “fight”, we shall fight. When you say ‘make peace’,we shall make peace”.

Sitting Bull accepted the honor with a song. He would need all the courage and wisdom he could muster to meet the challenges ahead. “Ye chiefs, behold me,” he sang. “ The chiefs of old are gone. Myself, I shall take their courage”.

So began the organization of the plains Indians who depended on the buffalo for their livelihood.

Before long Custer heard of the Indian alliance and was eager to demolish them. “I will soon show the savages what Custer thinks of their war fare,” he bragged. When a rumor came that Indians were seen amassing at the Little Big Horn river passage, Custer was sure he had a way to defeat them.

In the meantime Sitting Bull had taken camp near the Little Bighorn River. He knew that the attack was coming. The Plain Indians knew it too, and began arriving at Sitting Bulls Camp to be part of what was to happen. Sitting Bull was proud to see that his camp was becoming so large, yet something wasn’t right. As usual at such times Sitting Bull prayed to Wakantanka (Indian Great Spirit)/ He climbed a knoll, sat upon a buffalo robe, and raising his eyes to the sky he prayed long and hard. Eventually he fell asleep, and dreamed. He saw a fluffy white cloud drifting across the sky from the east. Another cloud came from the west. The two clouds met directly over his head. Lightning flashed and thunder roared and wind driven rain fell. The storm passed, and all the clouds were gone except for the white cloud..

After a night of no sleep or sustenance, Sitting Bull entered the sun dance. He sat on the ground with his back to the pole. His adopted brother, Jumping Bull took a sharp bone instrument that resembled an awl, and starting at Sitting Bulls wrist he cut a small portion of his flesh. He repeated this action all the way up one arm and across the back and down the other arm.. Blood flowed, and Sitting Bull sat there showing not one sign of pain.

When the cutting was over and he had given his pain and sacrificed his blood, Sitting Bull joined the dancers. He danced on and on, long after the sun set. Ssuddenly he stopped, stared at the sky, and fell in a faint. They sprinkled cold water on his face and Sitting Bull motioned to Black Moon, the Medicine Man. He whispered in his ear, and then Black Moon assisted him to the dancing pole. There he told his people about his vision. A voice had come from the sky. “I give you this, because they have no ears.They cannot hear what we say. So behold. Then Sitting Bull saw many soldiers without ears riding upside down. Their feet were toward the sky, and their heads toward the ground. Their hats were falling off, and their hair was streaming.. Then Sitting Bull saw them falling into the Indian camps. Wakantanka promised to be with his Indian children.

This was recorded about a week before the battle at Little Big Horn.

In the meantime Custer had assembled a large regiment of cavalry. He split the men into three divisions. 140 men were to ride along Ash Creek which flowed into Little Big Horn River near Sitting Bull’s encampment under Major Marcus Reno. Some or the regiment was to explore some bluffs farther back and protect the food wagons and supply wagons. Custer and his 225 men rode a little behind Reno, and he told Reno that he would be there to back him up when he crossed the river.

As Reno moved on to a spot where his men could cross the creek, Custer followed behind as he ordered the marching song to be played. Scouts had been reporting that there were many, many Indians in Sitting Bulls encampment, but Custer was determined to go ahead. “There aren’t enough Indians in the whole damn country to defeat my regiment” he told the scouts. Suddenly one of the scouts rode up saying he had seen four Indians “riding like the devil”. Custer thought this meant that the Indians knew they were coming and were trying to run away. “After them”, he yelled. “Charge”. (I was going to write here that they all pulled out their credit cards, but that isn’t in the book, and it is just a very poor joke on my part, so I won’t put it in,)

Anyway, Custer and his group rode away after the Indians, leaving Reno’s group alone as they started to cross the Upper Ash Creek. He had no idea that Custer was not behind him to back him up. The Indians, who had been watching, attacked Reno as his men were crossing the river. The first phase of the Battle of Little Big Horn had begun.

Meanwhile, Custer saw the camp ahead and his group of men galloped in, charging with bullets flying. The Indians were waiting. Just as the battle began, Crazy Horse came riding in with his men. Sitting Bull couldn’t hold a gun or a bow and arrow because his arms were too badly swollen from his offering to his Indian God. He rode through the camp, though, yelling encouragement. “Ho ka hey!! Ho ka hey!! (It’s a good day to fight. It’s a good day to die””

Even though the Scouts had warned him, Custer kept on coming. The battle lasted forty minutes before Custer and his soldiers were all dead. Some of the Indians who had lost wives and family members to Custer’s raids, refused to use the guns, but instead killed their enemies with a hatchet. When Sitting Bull arrived, he caught some of his braves taking the supplies and clothing from the dead troopers. He ordered them to be punished. “You do not steal from dead soldiers”. Later, after the Government caught up with Sitting Bull, he said “I did not kill Custer. That is a lie. He was a fool who rode to his death”.

What remained of Reno’s men dismounted and raced up to the top of a small hill.
They formed a defensive line , and prepared to fight and die for they were surrounded by Indians. Suddenly, almost a miracle, the Indians turned and left. What had happened was that Sitting Bull rode up and ordered the warriors to let the soldiers go. “There has been enough killing. Let them go and live to tell our story”.

I know this review is too long. The rest of the story tells of how the Indians were vanquished and were sent to Reservations. Sitting Bull actually appeared in Buffalo Bills Wild West Circus, for a while. When he returned he was about to be arrested and tried for his crimes.

Suddenly Sitting Bull looked like a young warrior again. He refused to be arrested, and shot the former Indian Scout, now made an officer in the US military,who came to arrest him. The man lived long enough to shoot back and kill Sitting Bull, and then they executed Sitting Bull’s son as well.

I found it hard to condense this story of Sitting Bull. Believe me, there is much to this extraordinary man in the book that I have omitted. I tried to give the essence of his culture and the reasons for the battles.

Ffteen years after Sitting Bull was killed, there was another uprising at Wounded Knee,and this time the Lskota Indians fared badly.

The Whites thought Custer to be a hero who had sacrificed himself to tame the west.

What I am, I am. Sitting Bull1872

By 1900 the buffalo herds were declared dead, the Indians were in reservations, and the West was declared to be “won”.

I realize that for those of you who rate in the curve this is much too long, and I regret that.

I especially want to thank Amy, (Pearanoyd) for adding this to her list of books waiting to be entered on the data base. She is always gracious and much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.



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Recommended: Yes