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Famous Native People
Tatanka-Iyotanka
Sitting Bull LAKOTA - HUNKPAPA
Hunkpapa;
(pronounced Hoonk-pa-pa or oonk-pa-pa
meaning Camps At The Entrance.)
Sitting Bull was a Wichasha Wakan, this was later translated to mean simply Holy Man, or men. Wichasha meant 'man,' but in association with Wakan had connotations of wisdom, leadership and spirituality, and specifically applied to a man who had performed certain sacred ceremonies that lay at the heart of Lakota ritual. Sitting Bull himself declared that he was born on the Missouri River. The year is unknown but the likelihood is that he was born somewhere between 1831 and 1837. The actual place of his birth is also unknown, although some have said that he may have been born at Many Caches, a collection of Native storage pits on the south side of Grand River, in present day Dakota. If his birth place was indeed Many Caches, then his life did in fact reach full circle, because it was almost directly opposite the site of his birth when he met his death in 1890. The Hunkpapa, 'Campers at the Opening of the Circle,' did not occupy a large homeland. Its heart lay in the grassy plains rolling west from the Missouri River below the mouth of the Yellowstone. At his birth the family was headed by Tatanka-Iyotanka his father, who also had the name Sitting Bull. The older Sitting Bull named his son Jumping Badger, but this name, as was the custom, would be changed later. Nobody called him Jumping Badger, instead they called him 'Hunkesni,' which meant 'Slow', not of mind, but because of his willful manner and deliberate ways. In his childhood Sitting Bull was taught and then practiced the four virtues, which he did throughout his life, bravery, fortitude, generosity and wisdom.
As a young man, Sitting Bull became a leader of the Strong
Heart warrior society and, later, a distinguished member of the Silent Eaters, a
group concerned with tribal welfare. He first went to battle at age 14, in a
raid on the Absaroka (Crow) and saw his first encounter with American soldiers in June
1863, when the army mounted a broad campaign in retaliation for the Santee
Rebellion in Minnesota, in which Sitting Bull's people had played no part. The next
year Sitting Bull fought U.S. troops again, at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain,
and in 1865 he led a siege against the newly established Fort Rice in
present-day North Dakota. Widely respected for his bravery and insight, he
became head chief of the Lakota nation about 1868.
Sitting Bull as prisoner of war, Fort Randall 1882 with Seen By The Nation, the elder of his two wives.
The photograph on the left was taken around 1885 when Sitting Bull was about fifty-four
Sitting Bull with his mother, Her-Holy-Door, and his eldest daughter, Many Horses in about 1883. His mother died in 1884.
The stage was set for war between Sitting Bull and the U.S. Army in 1874, when an expedition led by General George Armstrong Custer confirmed that gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, an area sacred to many tribes and placed off-limits to white settlement by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Despite this ban, prospectors began a rush to the Black Hills, provoking the Lakota to defend their land. 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. In March, as three columns of federal troops under General George Crook, General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon moved into the area, 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, Great Spirit, and slashing his arms one hundred times as a sign of sacrifice. During this ceremony, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw soldiers falling into the Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. Inspired by this vision, the Oglala Lakota war chief, Crazy Horse, set out for battle with a band of 500 warriors, and on June 17 he surprised Crook's troops and forced them to retreat at the Battle of the Rosebud. To celebrate this victory, the Lakota moved their camp to the valley of the Little Bighorn River, where they were joined by 3,000 more Natives 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 fulfilment of Sitting Bull's vision, and in total disarray they were destroyed. The myth of Custer's Last Stand was perpetuated by first the newspapers then later by Hollywood and the film industry. Public outrage at this military catastrophe brought thousands more cavalrymen to the area, and over the next year they relentlessly pursued the Lakota, who had split up after the Custer fight, forcing chief after chief to surrender. But Sitting Bull remained defiant. In May 1877 he led his band across the border into Canada, beyond the reach of the U.S. Army, and when General Terry travelled north to offer him a pardon in exchange for settling on a reservation, Sitting Bull angrily sent him away.
Middle Sitting Ball sat for this likeness in1883, when the steamer carrying him from Fort Randall to Standing Rock Agency stopped at the town of Pierre
One of Sitting Bull's favourite children was Standing Holy, she was born in Canada in 1878, she later married and lived at Pine Ridge. The other favourite was a son, Crow Foot, who died with his father in the Grand River shootout in 1890 aged just fourteen. In the fall of 1890, a Miniconjou Lakota named Kicking Bear came to Sitting Bull with news of the Ghost Dance, a ceremony that promised 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, and Indian agents there had already called for troops to bring the growing movement under control. At Standing Rock, the authorities feared that Sitting Bull, still revered as a spiritual leader, would join the Ghost Dancers as well, and they sent 43 Lakota policemen to bring him in. Before dawn on December 15, 1890, the policemen burst into Sitting Bull's cabin and dragged him outside, where his followers were gathering to protect him. In the gunfight that followed, one of the Lakota policemen put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head.
Red Tomahawk one of the slayers of Sitting Bull, as a policeman (on the left,) and in old age, the other killer was Bull Head. Sitting Bull is remembered among the Lakota 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.
Widows and daughters stand near the doorway where Sitting Bull
was killed. Those who died that day were
Sitting Bull
The Native policemen killed in the attempt to arrest Sitting
Bull were buried
Those who died later of their wounds
Sergeant Shave Head The man who had known Sitting Bull during his years in Canada wrote this upon hearing of his death.
I am glad to learn that Bull is relieved of his miseries even if
it took a bullet to do it. A man who wields such power as Bull once did, that of
a King, over a wild and spirited people cannot endure abject poverty slavery and
beggery without suffering great mental pain and death is a relief.... Bull's
confidence and belief in the Great Spirit was stronger than I ever saw in any
other man. He trusted to him implicitly.... History does not tell us that a
great Indian than Bull ever lived, he was the Mohommat of his people the law and
king maker of the Sioux.
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