Short History Of... - Sitting Bull

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

The story of Sitting Bull is inextricably linked to that of his immense, untamed homeland, which he fought to protect and preserve. Sitting Bull was feared as a villain to white settlers, but regarded as a warrior, a shaman, and a hero to his own people. Determined to protect his people’s culture, heritage, and dignity, he was the greatest chief the Lakota people had ever known. But why did his way of life become so threatened? How did he rise from a young warrior, to leader of the Lakota tribe? And how did his life - and his death - come to define the struggles of Native Americans? This is a Short History Of…Sitting Bull. A Noiser Production, written by Sean Coleman. With thanks to Mark Gardner, historian and author of ‘The Earth is all that Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation’. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's around 1845 in the rolling hills of the Powder River country in today's southeastern Montana. Horses' hooves pound the dry ground as a hundred-strong raiding party from the Lakota Sioux tribe rides across the prairie. Among them, a young warrior rides low on his pale gray horse. Because he's yet to accomplish any warrior deeds, he rides almost completely naked, except for moccasins and a loincloth. And his entire body is painted yellow. His name is Jumping Badger, but that is seldom used. Everyone in his tribe knows him as Slow. It's a nickname he earned as a toddler, but now in his adolescence, Slow is in fact far from Slow.

He's already shown himself to be a great horseman and a skilled hunter. But despite shooting and killing his first buffalo four years ago, aged just ten, he's still inexperienced as a warrior. Today he and his band are on a raid in Crow territory. The two tribes are old enemies and delight in stealing one another's horses whenever they can. But Slow has another task, too. For Lakota warriors, touching an enemy without causing them harm, known as counting ku, is

the ultimate sign of bravery, skill, and fearlessness. And with the ku stick in his hand, a traditional decorated rod with a feather at the end, that's exactly what Slow is here to achieve. But being counted against is such a disgrace that rival warriors will do their best to kill anyone attempting it on them. Despite the danger, it's an essential right for a Lakota youth in his passage to becoming a true warrior. right for a Lakota youth in his passage to becoming a true warrior. Cresting a ridge, Slow and a few of his companions pull their horses to a halt. In the basin below is a small group of crow warriors, resting in the shade of a tall tree.

They're off their horses and haven't noticed the Lakotas on the ridge. This is Slow's chance. Kicking their mounts into action, the young warriors sweep down into the valley. Their enemy has no time to react. Some manage to get onto their horses and take flight, but others draw their bows, ready to fight. Slow singles one out and bears down on him, riding hard. The crow stands firm,

drawing the bowstring and leveling his weapon at the yellow-painted boy. But before there's a chance to loose the arrow, Slow extends his decorated stick, strikes the crow's shooting arm to knock the weapon clear, and counts his first coup and with that he enters a new phase of manhood at the celebratory feast that evening his proud father bestows on his son the ultimate honor, his own name.

Jumping Badger, slow, now becomes Hachunka Iyotake, Sitting Bull. And his father, the Elder Sitting Bull, renames himself Jumping Bull, marking his progression onto the next stage of his own path. During the feast, Jumping Bull places a white eagle feather in his son's hair, which Sitting Bull will take on as a symbol for the rest of his life. That brave, yellow-painted young man will go on to become a great leader, a fierce warrior, and an indelible icon of the frontier. Little does he know on the day he counts his first coup, that soon the Lakotas and the countless other indigenous people of this vast land will face a threat so great that within a generation, their way of life will have changed forever.

Their way of life will have changed forever. The story of Sitting Bull is inextricably linked to the story of his immense, untamed homeland. Because not long after his transition to adulthood, white settlers ramp up their unstoppable conquest of the Great Plains, resulting in years of violence and displacement. Sitting Bull's history was dominated by the fight to preserve his land, his people's culture, heritage and dignity. Known as a warrior, a shaman and a leader, in his own time he was perceived as a villain by many white Americans,

while simultaneously becoming a hero to Native American Indians. Above all, he was the greatest chief the Lakota people had ever known. But why did his way of life become so threatened? How did he rise from young warrior to lead the Lakota people through a time of unprecedented upheaval? And how did his life and his death come to define the struggle to protect his people and secure their continued existence? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of Sitting Bull. sitting bull. In the 1830s, the endless wilderness that is the Great Plains of Northern America is home to hundreds of thousands of buffalo.

Wherever the great beasts go, large nomadic populations of Native American Indians follow. They hunt what they need and use the whole animal for food, clothing, weapons, tools, and shelter. It's far from a natural paradise, though. tools, and shelter. It's far from a natural paradise, though. This is hard, unforgiving territory, and life is fraught with wars and battles as various rival tribes vie for superiority over the land and its resources. This is the world that Sitting Bull is born into. In Lakota Sioux tradition, years are counted not in months, but from the first snow one year to the first snow the next. Each of these periods is named after the most memorable event that happened in it. This naming convention allows us to pinpoint certain years in our own calendar.

allows us to pinpoint certain years in our own calendar. In 1833, for example, the Leonid meteor shower lights up the skies over North America, an event we can assume correlates to the period the Lakotas call the Winter the Stars Fell. Two years before that, in the winter when yellow eyes danced in the snow, around 1831, the boy who will become Sitting Bull is born near the Grand River in what is now South Dakota. He becomes the newest member of the Hunkpapa, a sub-tribe of the Lakota Sioux.

The Sioux Nation is made up of three divisions based on linguistic and cultural differences. The Dakota, or Eastern Sioux, the Nakota, or Middle Sioux, and the Lakota, who are the Western Sioux. Sitting Bull is from one of the dominant warrior tribes on the plain. They fill their days hunting buffalo, warring with enemies from the Crow tribe, and occasionally trading furs and hides with the early white settlers. Mark Gardner is a historian and author of The Earth is All That Lasts, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and The Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation. The world of Sitting Bull

in the 1830s on the northern plains was almost in a way this idyllic way of life for his people, the Lakotas. They had access to trade goods, firearms, black powder, lead. They had access to all the types of manufactured goods that you could imagine from copper or brass, kettles, decorative items, glass beads that are made in Italy. So in a way, they had the best of both worlds because they had access to some of these modern things, manufactured goods. But at the same time, they lived in a country that was rich with buffalo, which was their primary food source. It's common for Lakota boys to be given a series of names throughout their lives. The birth name is thought to imbue the newborn with the sacred power of their namesake animals.

But it's believed, if the name is spoken too often, its powers are diminished. So nicknames are a common feature of adolescent life, which is how young Jumping Badger becomes known as Slow. As with most Lakota boys, Slow spends much of his youth in training for his future as a warrior. Games like wrestling, swimming, or hoop and arrow, where participants roll a hoop along the ground and try to shoot an arrow through it, all hone his battle skills. Alongside his physical training, his spiritual growth is also carefully shaped. Teenage Lakota boys are sent on vision quests, where they must travel alone to a sacred site.

There, after fasting for four days, they draw a circle no wider in diameter than their own height, in which they then try to communicate with the tribe's spirit animals. Slow soon proves his talent as a hunter, a fighter, and equally importantly, as a shaman. Around the age of 13, while out searching for wild horses with his band, he hears the low, mournful sound of a man singing. He follows the deep voice to the top of a hill, where he finds a golden eagle perched. To Slow's amazement, he realizes that it is the bird singing, and that only he can hear its song.

The eagle speaks to him of the burden of looking after the land, and Slow feels its pain. It's the first of many mystical encounters he will record throughout his life. By the time he counts his first coup and becomes Sitting Bull at the age of 14, he has already demonstrated the fairness, wisdom, skill, and bravery which will define his character. Now a fully-fledged warrior, he can begin putting his talents to use for the benefit of his people. He notches up a series of victories in skirmishes with rival tribes, most usually the Crow, with whom the Lakota have the fiercest enmity. White men, or Washichu as the Lakotas know them, are beginning to be seen on the plains more frequently, but these encounters are largely peaceable. For now, the Washichu are mostly interested in trading buffalo hide, not claiming land or waging war.

As young warriors, Sitting Bull and his peers spend a great deal of time perfecting their horsemanship and skills with the bow and arrow. They also learn to use the firearms they've acquired from those white traders. And Sitting Bull really shines as a warrior. His bravery quickly sees him invited to join a fraternity of the Lakota's best and most fearless warriors, the Strong Heart Society. Strong hearts swear an oath never to leave a fight. So committed are they that, in battle, they often drive a ceremonial stake or warrior staff into the ground and lash themselves to it to make it clear they're not going anywhere. As a strong heart when riding into battle, Sitting Bull now wears a headdress with two buffalo horns. Soon he rises to the top rank of sash wearer, adding a band of red cloth

decorated with feathers to his regalia. Not long after joining the Stronghearts in 1856, Sitting Bull is out with a hunting and raiding party of about 100 warriors when they come across a large crow encampment. Under cover of darkness, they attack the camp and steal a huge herd of horses. But they don't get far before the angry crow catch up with them. At daybreak, three crow warriors charge forward to count coup on the horse rustlers. The first succeeds, hitting a Lakota warrior fair and square. The second isn't as lucky.

His target turns on him, ripping off the crow's headdress. Accordingly the year becomes known as the winter when the war bonnet was torn. Sitting Bull intercepts the third, who wears the formidable red shirt of a Crow war chief. Unusually for the time, both warriors are carrying a single-shot firearm. The Crow fires first. But the bullet deflects off Sitting Bull's shield, traveling down to his foot and tearing a line along his sole from toe to heel. Sitting Bull's shot is more effective, killing his enemy outright. Though he has to sit out the victory dance that night, Sitting Bull now becomes a war chief in his own right.

A powerful leader of men, albeit one with a limp that will stay with him for the rest of his life. But leadership in the Lakota tribe is fluid, sometimes inherited but usually earned through strength, wisdom, and spirituality. There is no hierarchy as such, no overall chief of chiefs. For now, leaders earn their place by keeping their people on side, and they retain the role until their tribe loses faith in them. Luckily, winning hearts comes naturally to Sitting Bull.

The most important thing for him is that his people carry on with their traditional ways, following the buffalo and living off the land. But that seemingly simple task is about to face significant disruption. When gold is discovered in California, it begins a trend of westward movement of white Americans. Though this first gold rush is focused on the West Coast, it helps to spawn the idea of a divine right to expand across the whole continent, a notion that will become known as Manifest Destiny. Beginning in the 1840s, this world changes dramatically

because we have Euro-Americans who are traveling the Overland Trail, the Great Platte River Road, they're going to the West Coast. It's the very beginnings of what some whites would call manifest destiny, that the United States would stretch from coast to coast, and that would change everything. What begins as a small trickle within the space of a decade becomes a constant caravan. To Sitting Bull, these travelers are not welcome. And when the white settlers begin killing the buffalo for sport, as well as food, and erecting forts along wagon trails driven through sacred land, fighting naturally follows.

It's around this time that Sitting Bull reports a dream foretelling a great victory over his enemies. He's developed a strong reputation as someone whose predictions come true. After all, it was he who told his nephew, White Bull, that his lost horse would be found in a snowdrift and returned by another Lakota. Sure enough, later that day, it came to pass. So both he and his people view this latest dream as a good omen. In 1851, after countless punitive skirmishes with the Plains Indians, the U.S. government steps in to negotiate safe passage for the settlers. They propose creating territorial boundaries for each tribe, to reduce inter-tribal conflicts

and keep tribes contained. The tribes must allow safe passage and the building of forts and roads on the specified land, which totals 150 million acres, the equivalent of the entire United Kingdom two and a half times over. In compensation, the government offers annual fees of £50,000 per year, to be divided among all the tribes for 50 years. A gathering is held at Fort Laramie. A gathering is held at Fort Laramie. Representatives of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara

tribes are called on to sign a treaty agreeing to the government's proposals. The problem is, these negotiations are riddled with erroneous assumptions, especially about the structure of tribal life. The Americans believe those in attendance are the leaders of the various tribes. They don't understand that there is no such thing as a chief among chiefs, no one spokesman for a nation of people. So any signatures they get are not representative of all of the people, nor all of the lands under negotiation. Another major barrier is that few people present can speak each other's languages. A clutch of interpreters are brought in, but don't appear to have the necessary skills to make communication clear.

Despite being a respected leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota, Sitting Bull does not attend. In fact, of the Lakota Sioux who are there, not a single Hunkpapa is present. When he hears what's been agreed, Sitting Bull feels they've been cheated. He wants his people to go on as they always have, following the buffalo without borders. He wants his people to go on as they always have, following the buffalo without borders. But as far as the US government is concerned, the treaty is signed, and they can now travel the lands and build their forts, roads, and railways without fear of attack. Except, it soon becomes apparent that very little that was agreed was actually understood.

Supposed borders are ignored, white progress continues to be stymied, and the battles with the Plains tribes become increasingly violent. Sitting Bull, meanwhile, is establishing himself as a trusted leader of his people, fearless in the face of invasion, but also fair and equitable. He has all the qualities of a great chief,

but if he is to lead his people in resistance to this new scourge, he needs their full backing. There's four attributes of Lakota men. Bravery's first, generosity, endurance, and wisdom. And those are the four attributes that all Lakota men strive to exhibit. So Sitting Bull really had his work cut out for him. And he was the living embodiment of those four things. Sitting Bull was always looking after his people. It wasn't really about himself.

Certainly, he had ambition. He wanted to be a leader. He wanted to be a holy man but the whole point of all of this was to protect his people and his land Sitting Bull may be proving himself as a trusted chief but he's finding things in his personal life a little trickier to negotiate. In the same year that the Fort Laramie Treaty is signed, Sitting Bull, aged around 20, takes his first wife. He lives happily with a woman descriptively named Light Hair for a

few years, but in 1856, much to Lighthair's annoyance, Sitting Bull finds his second wife, Snow-on-Her. Usually a second wife should play a subordinate role to the first, but Snow-on-Her won't settle for that. She and Lighthair constantly vie for position. As the tensions escalate, Sitting Bull finds himself having to sleep on his back, with a wife on each side, since neither of them will allow him to turn to the other. Things come to a head when Snow on Her claims that Lighthair has been sleeping with another man in the tribe. When the women investigate, the allegation is found to be false,

and Snow on her is banished from camp. Her exile doesn't last long, though. Shortly afterwards, Lighthair dies in childbirth with her third child, which also cannot be saved. Before long, Snow on her returns to her husband's side. The deaths of Lighthair and their child hit Sitting Bull hard. And his losses don't stop there. In 1858, in the moon of changing leaves, or autumn, while moving camp, the Hunkpappas are set upon by a crow hunting party. In the fighting, Sitting Bull's father, now in his sixties, is killed. Determined to avenge his death, Sitting Bull pursues the crow and kills at least five of the warriors he catches.

Later that evening though, while he's grieving his loss, he learns that his men have captured some crow women and children. It's suggested to him that they too should be killed. In a display typical of his fairness and generosity, Sitting Bull intervenes. The deaths of the warriors, he says, is vengeance enough. After all, his father died in his rightful place, in battle. He orders that the women and children are spared. These tribal battles are a constant in Lakota life.

But as the 1860s wear on, Sitting Bull is increasingly being called into conflict with the ever-growing stream of American settlers. with the ever-growing stream of American settlers. The clashes escalate in 1866 when the U.S. government tries to build the Bozeman Trail from Fort Laramie to the goldfields in Montana. They plan to carve a path right through the Powder River country, a key part of Lakota territory. Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala Lakota,

leads the resistance in the form of an all-out war with the U.S. Army Bluecoats. When he asks the other Lakota leaders to support him, Sitting Bull takes his Hunkpapa band to help. Sitting Bull's most significant role in Red Cloud's war is to help unify the various Lakotas under one common cause, fighting the Americans. He actively promotes the idea that defending Sioux land against the U.S. Army is every Lakota's duty. His leadership in the many skirmishes that follow build him a reputation among the U.S. military too as a fierce fighter and a determined opposer of American ideals. With Sitting Bull's help, Red Cloud's war is a success. The Americans are pushed back, for now, and, realizing that they're unlikely to overcome

these roaming tribes in battle, they try another round of diplomacy. A second Fort Laramie Treaty is signed in 1868. It recognizes that Powder River Country remains unceded, but it also establishes a protected area to be known as the Great Sioux Reservation, an area of 25 million acres covering the western half of present-day South Dakota. It's a far cry from the traditional 134 million acres the Sioux once roamed, but it does come with a promise that the land will remain free of white settlement. But Sitting Bull and fellow warrior leader Crazy Horse of the Oglala Lakota see this treaty as just another attempt to grab traditional Sioux land. They both refuse to sign. Now, though, having fought so hard to resist the U.S. invasion in the first place,

Red Cloud does the unthinkable. He touches the pen, as the Lakotas call it, and signs the treaty. Touching the pen was, in the eyes of leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, was the worst thing you could do. You touched the pin. You gave away our lands. Sitting Bull believed that other leaders like Red Cloud and the Spotted Tail should be with him. They needed all of them together in order to fight this force that was coming down upon

them. Needless to say, Sitting that was coming down upon them. Needless to say, Sitting Bull is right to be suspicious. Predictably, the promise to keep the land free of white settlement is short lived. In 1874, an expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is out searching for a suitable location for a military fort in the Black Hills when they discover gold. This area, supposedly protected by the Fort Laramie Treaty, is sacred to the Lakotas. But Custer's discovery leads to a gold rush. In contravention of the agreement, settlers flood in to begin mining, resulting in a series of violent conflicts.

It's the first time Custer's name is linked with Sitting Bulls in the history books, but it certainly won't be the last. To ease the fighting, the U.S. tries to buy the Black Hills from the Lakota people, but Sitting Bull refuses. The land will never be for sale. At the same time, all of the Lakota chiefs are under pressure to move their people onto the reservation, to stop them from attacking the new miners. But great chiefs like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse never agreed to the reservation deal. They never signed any treaties. As far as they're concerned, the land is theirs, always has been, always should be.

They simply refuse to move. Instead, they prepare their warriors for battle. What brings about the war of 1876 is to finally subdue and force onto the reservations the people of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse with the idea that once they're subdued, they can then force them to sign away the lands, the Black Hills. As both sides build to an all-out war, Sitting Bull's prowess as a shaman and seer gives him a portentous glimpse of hope for his people. It's June 1876 at Deer Medicine Rocks, near Rosebud Creek, in the heart of Lakota territory. A site of spiritual significance for the Lakota people. For the past few days, it has hosted their annual Sundance ceremony, giving thanks to the Great Spirit for life and its blessings.

Sitting Bull waits among a group of warriors gathered in the middle of a large clearing around a tall central medicine pole decorated with feathers and painted symbols. These men, his sun dancers, have all been fasting for days now in preparation for this ceremony. Sitting Bull's arms are red with his blood, seeping slowly from the fifty small cuts where he has already sacrificed his flesh for the spirit. Around the dance lodge, hundreds of Lakota men, women and children watch in reverent silence as a holy man makes his way among the group of participants. Pausing in front of each, he pierces their chests just above their nipples,

inserting small wooden skewers beneath the skin of each breast. When the holy man reaches him, Sitting Bull braces himself for the pain. This is not his first Sundance. His chest and back are already covered in scars from performing this ritual in the years before. The skewers in place, the holy man now attaches thin leather thongs to the ends and then ties these to a large rawhide rope fixed to the medicine post. With Sitting Bull and his fellow Sundancers thus fastened, the Holy Man steps back. The dance ritual that is the culmination of this six-day event can begin.

Several musicians gathered around the huge drum begin a slow, rhythmic beat. Their voices rise in a chant, lifting and falling repetitively above the hypnotic thumps. Feeling the song carrying him into the ritual, Sitting Bull and the other men start moving. Jerking backwards violently against the rope, they try to rip the skewers from their chests. The pain is excruciating, but Sitting Bull doesn't scream. He knows that with each lurch, he will be closer to entering a transcendent state

where he will communicate with the great spirit, Wakantanaka. Pulling against his tethers, he sets his strong jaw. His face is the picture of focus and determination. He stares, unblinking, at a point just below the sun, throwing his body backwards again and again, straining against the ropes that bind him. It might take several hours to break free from the skewers, but Sitting Bull is ready for it. It is his duty as a Lakota, as a shaman, as a Sundancer.

As the ritual wears on, Sitting Bull feels the familiar haze of a vision descend over him. This is what he is dancing for, to hear Wakantanaka's message. When the vision comes, he sees hundreds of American soldiers, blue coats, falling out of the sky. Their bodies rain down into his camp, landing on their backs like grasshoppers. And they keep falling, till the ground is thick with them. For Sitting Bull the message is clear. They will battle the soldiers and they will win.

And the Bluecoats will cover the Earth on their backs, staring at the sun with dead, unseeing eyes. Just a few weeks later, his prophecy will be fulfilled. In response to the increasing encroachments of the US military, Sitting Bull's anti-treaty resistance movement culminates in what will become known as the Great Sioux War. Possibly the most famous engagement of this war is the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which Sitting Bull will once again come up against Lieutenant Colonel Custer. Custer was a fabled commander on the Union side of the Civil War. He is well known for his aggressive and sometimes reckless tactics in battle.

He is a man of contrasts, a proud soldier and fighter of Indians. He is also renowned for his flamboyant uniforms, his thirst for glory, and his flowing golden locks. The Lakotas call him Yellow Hair. To them, he is the epitome of the white soldiers who must be resisted. In the summer of 1876, Custer, along with a number of other U.S. Army leaders, is sent to the area around the Bighorn and Little Bighorn Rivers to search for any of these anti-treaty, reservation-denying Lakota Indians. When George Custer's in the field, General Crook, Gibbon, Terry, all these different columns, they aren't sent into the field to negotiate a treaty.

They are sent into the field to attack, to kill, and force surrender, and to force them back on the reservation. Early one June morning, scouts from Custer's 7th Cavalry find a large Native American camp along the Little Bighorn River. In a gross underestimation of the strength of his enemy, Custer guesses there to be a few hundred warriors in the camp. Already known for his brash overconfidence, he makes what will prove to be a fateful decision. He divides his force into three battalions, in the hope of encircling the camp and swallowing up the Lakota inside.

What he doesn't realize is that there are between two to three thousand warriors camped along the river, a number which dwarfs Custer's. His cavalry is no match for the superior horsemanship and battle tactics of the Lakota. The US Army fight fiercely, but are completely annihilated. Custer's death on the field at the hands of the Lakota will become the stuff of legend, known hereafter as Custer's Last Stand. His downfall in this ill-advised battle will link his name with sitting bulls for the rest of the Lakota chief's life. The biggest irony is that Sitting Bull didn't even lead his people into the fray.

In his mid-forties, with eight children and four wives, these days he's seen as one of the elders. By this time, Sitting Bull is what's considered an old man chief. He's not expected to go lead the men into battle. In fact, his mother had told him, let the young men fight, you know. We need your leadership. We need your wisdom. Don't risk your life. They're young men. They're warriors. Let them do this.

Actually, what Sitting Bull was doing at the Little Bighorn was he was looking after the women and children and getting them to safety, which, what Sitting Bull was doing at the Little Bighorn was he was looking after the women and children and getting them to safety, which is what he should have been doing, and directing them away from the fighting. Of course, to the outside world, and especially the American press, Sitting Bull is believed to be chief of all the Lakotas. After all, it is he who has unified the various Lakota tribes in their resistance. As a result, when news filters in that Custer's cavalry has been wiped out by the Lakotas, it's automatically assumed that they were led by Sitting Bull. The press even goes so far as

to paint the picture of Sitting Bull himself delivering the fatal blow to Old Yellowhair. delivering the fatal blow to old yellow hair. They couldn't comprehend that Lakota warriors could defeat American soldiers in battle. And so they had to come up with some way, some advantage that Sitting Bull had over this Civil War hero. Some news reports claimed that Sitting Bull had this French history of Napoleon, and he studied this book, he learned to read French, and he learned these Napoleonic tactics, and that's how he defeated the great George Armstrong Custer.

As ridiculous as the theories are, Sitting Bull is thrust into a limelight he never asked for. And the victory at the Little Bighorn leads to increased pressure from the U.S. government. They want him to get the Lakota to agree to taking small parcels of land to farm. But Sitting Bull is having none of it. He doesn't want to be a farmer. The Americans, though, are determined, and it's becoming harder for Sitting Bull's people to evade the pressure to surrender and move to the reservation. Since their arrival on the plains, the settlers have plundered the landscape. The buffalo have been decimated by reckless overhunting, and their grasslands have been

taken over by towns and forts, roads and railways. Where once endless herds grazed the fields, by 1877 there are too few to feed the Lakota hunters. With little food and constant conflict, Sitting Bull and his followers are forced further and further north, far above their own territory. Sitting Bull just could not bear the thought of surrendering to the white man and to being confined in a reservation. And his only other option at that time was to go across the Holy Line,

as they called it, into Canada. Sitting Bull spends four years in Canada, where he and the nearly 6,000 Sioux he's brought with him are granted asylum. But the situation there is not much better. The Canadians have their own tribes, their own treaties, and their own dwindling supply of buffalo. So while Sittin' Bull and his people are allowed to stay, the Canadians are not really sure what to do with them.

Over the next few years, the Lakotas find themselves facing starvation and harsh conditions. At one point, they are forced to sell most of their horses to trade for food. They are slowly dying, away from their sacred lands, away from the great spirit, and away from the buffalo that have sustained them for generations. In 1881, Sitting Bull finally runs out of options. He was forced to make the hardest decision of his life, to return to the United States and to surrender.

But again, it shows his leadership. He is always looking out for his people. Can he stay in Canada and see them starve to death, die of malnutrition? Or can he take his chances, go into the United States and see his people fed? And he made the choice for survival. He returns to the U.S., but has his eldest son, the 18-year-old Crowfoot, turn over his weapons instead of doing it himself. Nonetheless, he is held as a prisoner of war for two years before being assigned to the Standing Rock Reservation

in present-day North Dakota. There he continues to resist the process the whites have in mind for him. So-called Indian agents are men from native backgrounds appointed at the reservation to oversee its management. And Sitting Bull butts heads constantly with the Indian agent at Standing Rock, James McLaughlin. Sitting Bull was known derogatorily as a non-progressive. So those Indian leaders who went along with McLaughlin and who got their rations and who obeyed him were progressives.

You know, they were going the white man's road. They were becoming civilized. And the Indian department wanted to see their wards become like white men, to learn to become farmers, to give up their old ways. In fact, they even banned the traditional sun dance and other practices. They were considered pagan practices. But Sitting Bull tried to straddle both worlds a little bit. In 1885, he finds a new way to advocate for his people. Former U.S. soldier William Buffalo Bill Cody has a traveling performance act that depicts the full

frontier experience, complete with staged battles, rodeo, and displays of marksmanship. Who better to have in the lineup than the great Lakota chief, now known all over the world as the man who killed Custer? When the two meet, Buffalo Bill offers Sitting Bull the substantial salary of $50 a week to travel with the show. Sitting Bull has already realized that wherever he goes, whenever he meets white people, he is greeted with either fear or fascination.

They want to know more about him, but they want to tell their own stories about him too. He sees the show as a great way to campaign for his people on white man's terms, in white men's towns. So he signs up. His job is to lead the ride in the opening procession and occasionally speak to the audience. It's here that he meets the gunslinger Annie Oakley. Impressed by her skills with firearms, he renames her Little Sure Shot. His fame grows through the performances, but fame won't feed his people.

The main reason that he agreed to go with the Wild West was so he could meet the President of the United States and advocate for his people. He wanted a place set aside for his own people where the white men wouldn't bother him. And he was promised that he would get this meeting with the president of the United States. And he did get the meeting, but all he got out of that meeting was a handshake. And he was so upset. And the interpreter tried to tell him, Sitting Bull, white men come here all the time trying to meet the president. And they are here for weeks and they never get to meet him. You got to meet the president of the United States,

the great father. Sitting Bull was disgusted and he just, he told the interpreter, white men are fools. Having had no luck getting the president to give him his own land, Sitting Bull leaves the Wild West show. He returns to the reservation, where he manages the difficult job of balancing his two opposing responsibilities. On the one hand, he must try to follow McLaughlin's rules, while at the same time, he wants to honor the Hunkpapa's tradition.

He and his people even live slightly apart in the reservation, up on Grand River, close to where Sitting Bull was born back in 1831. And though he tries to keep their culture alive, McLaughlin is a tough administrator. If he feels that the people are disobeying him, he cuts their rations. Since there is barely enough to eat anyway, this is highly problematic for the proud warrior Lakota people. It leads to a new movement, which offers a glimmer of hope that things may return to the old ways. The ghost dance movement is something of a spiritual revival, promising the return of the buffalo and the removal of white settlers.

A Paiute Indian named Wavoka had a vision where if you danced a certain dance or danced a certain way and wore these blessed robes, which came to be called ghost shirts, that the buffalo would come back, the antelope would come back, even their dead relatives would come back, and the white men would go away. They would be forced away across the ocean so they wouldn't have to deal with the white men. And it was important in this vision. I think what a lot of people don't realize with the ghost dance is that part of the instruction was that you were not to make war against the white man. You were simply to dance. And if you dance this dance the right way, and if you dance long enough,

this vision would come to fruition. While Sitting Bull does not necessarily agree with the vision, he sees that it gives his people hope. And so he helps them, painting their bodies, making their shirts, and preparing for the dance. But this new ghost dance movement is seen as a direct and aggressive threat to the white Americans. The whites, any time the Indians were dancing or there was any kind of trouble that was supposedly brewing, they thought they were going to break out from the reservation. They thought they were going to go kill white people. All they were doing was dancing.

They just wanted the buffalo to come back. They wanted their old life to come back. doing was dancing. They just wanted the buffalo to come back. They wanted their old life to come back. As one holy man later said, who would have thought so much trouble would come from dancing? It's 5.30 in the morning on December the 15th, 1890. Indian agency policeman Henry Bullhead is on Standing Rock Reservation looking nervously at the house of the famous and fear-inducing Lakota chief, Sitting Bull. Bullhead himself is a Hunkpapa Lakota. Sitting Bull is supposed to be his chief.

But Bullhead works for the U.S. government now as a special police officer in the reservation. This morning, he is leading a party of 39 officers to arrest the great leader on the orders of James McLaughlin. It's suspected that Sitting Bull, along with other ghost dance leaders, are planning to flee the reservation. And that's not something McLaughlin's going to allow. Their horses scuff and whinny nervously. Bullhead feels their fear. He knows what this Lakota is capable of. But he is here under orders he can't afford to defy. He gives the command and his officers surround the house as Bullhead approaches on foot.

He knocks on the door, but then, without waiting for an answer, he pushes inside. There, he finds Sitting Bull and his wife waiting for them. Bullhead clears his throat and informs the chief that he's under arrest. He is to mount a horse and accompany him to McLaughlin's house, where the Indian agent is waiting to see him. Of course, Sitting Bull and his wife protest. The dispute rouses more of the tribe's people, and soon Bullhead and his officers find themselves surrounded by an increasingly hostile crowd.

But orders are orders. He is here to do a job. When Sitting Bull refuses to come with them, Bullhead has no choice but to try to force him. To the horror of those gathered in his support, the great chief is taken outside. One onlooker, a Lakota man called Catch the Bear, shoulders a rifle and shoots it at Bullhead. Without thinking, Bullhead fires his own weapon. The bullet flies straight into Sitting Bull's chest. Another of the officers also fires, hitting the Lakota chief in the head.

Sitting Bull drops to the ground. Bullhead stares at him in horror. This was not how the arrest was supposed to go. As the shock settles, a fight quickly erupts. The men on both sides launch into hand-to-hand combat with knives and guns. Brutal wounds inflicted at close quarters. Within minutes, several men are dead, including six of Bullhead's police officers. Just moments after the fight, Bullhead, too, breathes his last, succumbing to his wounds. In all, eight police officers and eight Lakota die on the site.

Sitting Bull is one of them. The great Sioux Lakota leader has finally fallen. But his legacy, his reputation, and his name will live on for generations. Even today, Sitting Bull remains a symbol of Native American resistance and dignity. His leadership, spirituality, and unwavering commitment to his people's autonomy have seen him remembered through numerous monuments and historical sites. He embodies the struggle for Native American rights and sovereignty. But his life was not just a chapter in the story of his own people, but a crucial part of the broader tapestry of American history. His greatest legacy is that his life continues to inspire us in many, many ways today.

It's that inspiration, and it's an inspiration that comes from resistance, but it's also the way he lived his life, the compassion that he had, the wisdom that he had, his devotion to a way of life or tradition to the very end that he died for that is his legacy that he can inspire us and he can even inspire us through the tragedy of his life that he died a senseless death that they just wanted to be left alone just leave us alone let us hunt the buffalo let us trade for what we need. That's his greatest legacy. Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Vietnam War. In the endless swamps and jungles of Vietnam, with the leeches and the snakes and the foot rot and the crotch rot and all the other stuff that made every American soldier in Vietnam pretty miserable.

Can you imagine what it was like trying to carve your way through the jungle, maybe moving a hundred, at best 200 paces in an hour in dense cover, hacking with machetes to try and make a path without making too much noise. For hours and days you plod through this almost impenetrable greenery, and then suddenly out of nowhere, there'd come a burst of fire, which would probably kill your first two or three men before you got a chance to respond. And then you called in artillery, you called in air power, everything else, but the enemy

had gone. That's next time. That's next time.