The Sioux (Lakota) Indians fought three wars against the U. S. Army. From 1866 to 1868 the Sioux, led by Red Cloud, opposed the building of the Bozeman Wagon Road and the army posts along it, since they encroached on Sioux hunting grounds. The Sioux resistance was successful, the army withdrew from its posts, and after protracted negotiations Red Cloud and some Sioux chiefs agreed to the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which created the Great Sioux Reservation in western South Dakota, including the Black Hills. Several bands, however, most notably the Oglala, Hunkpapa, and Miniconjou, would not relocate on a reservation no matter how large and refused to accept the treaty.
In the early 1870s nontreaty Sioux warriors mounted raids against white settlers who had moved into Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska, but the second Sioux war broke out as a result of the Black Hills gold rush. In
1874 miners accompanying an expedition led by General George A. Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills. The news spread quickly and thousands of whites poured into the Black Hills, trespassing on the Great Sioux Reservation, in search of the valuable metal. After the government tried unsuccessfully to purchase the Black Hills, which were sacred to the Sioux, federal officials in December
1875 ordered the uncooperative Sioux to relocate to reservations in six weeks (an impossibility in winter) or come under attack.
In March 1876 the army, previously hampered by severe winter weather, opened hostilities against the nontreaty Sioux, who turned out to be most formidable. The Oglala were headed by renowned warrior Crazy Horse, and the Hunkpapa, led by Sitting Bull, defeated General George Crook on June 17, 1876, at the Battle of the Rosebud and annihilated Custer and his troops eight days later at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The army eventually prevailed in the spring of 1877, and Crazy Horse surrendered and apparently was prepared to live quietly on the reservation. General George Crook, however, believing rumors that Crazy Horse was planning to escape and lead another uprising, ordered his arrest, and the warrior was bayonetted in that process. Sitting Bull fled to Canada with approximately 2,000 Hunkpapa, Oglala, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, and Blackfoot Sioux; he returned to the Dakota Territory to surrender in 1881 after several difficult Canadian winters. After two years in prison Sitting Bull was relocated to the Standing Rock Agency on the border between North and South Dakota. There, he tried farming and actually toured one season with William Frederick (Buffalo Bill) Cody’s Wild West Show, but he did not particularly wish to assimilate and did not get along with the federal agent in charge of the reservation.
Sitting Bull became interested in the Ghost Dance religious movement that had started in the West around 1870 and was being revived on the Sioux reservations in 1889. Ghost Dancing, which involved communing with ancestors via a trancelike dance, unnerved the agents in charge, and in 1890 the army under General Nelson A. Miles moved in to monitor the situation. When Sitting Bull joined in the Ghost Dancing movement, the federal Indian agent in charge demanded that he be removed from the reservation. As Sitting Bull was being arrested, a fight ensued, and he was shot and killed.
After Sitting Bull’s death, General Miles moved to stop what he saw as a potential uprising. On December 28, Miles confronted a group of Miniconjou Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek led by Chief Big Foot, whom he mistakenly thought were joining their Sioux brethren at the Pine Ridge Agency to revolt. As the military were disarming the Miniconjou, a gun discharged, which set off a fight. A total of 153 Miniconjou, including Chief Big Foot, were killed at Wounded Knee, and another 150 or 200 died later of wounds. In retaliation the Sioux ambushed the Seventh Cavalry on December 30, but Miles’s Ninth Cavalry joined the Seventh in support. Outnumbered, the Sioux surrendered on January 15, 1891, which marked the end of the Indian Wars.
Further reading: Edward Lazarus, Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
—Scott Sendrow
Sitting Bull (ca. 1831-1890) leader in the war for the Black Hills
Born in what is now South Dakota, Sitting Bull became a renowned Sioux warrior, Wichasha Wakan (holy man), and chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux tribe. His father, a Hunkpapa chief named Sitting Bull, first called him Jumping Badger, knowing that he would earn a more appropriate name at some point in his life. (Early on, he also was known as Hunkesni, or “Slow.”) He was reared by his father and uncles in the traditions of war and hunting buffalo and killed his first buffalo at age 10. When he became part of the Hunkpapa warrior society at 14, his father gave him his name and he became Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull was married for the first time in 1851 and became a Hunkpapa war chief in 1857. Following his father’s death in 1859, Sitting Bull’s standing within the tribe grew, and he soon became one of the leaders of the Hunkpapa band of the Teton branch of Sioux.
His first battles with U. S. forces occurred in 1863 when troops went after the Minnesota Sioux tribes and pushed into the Dakota Territory. Sitting Bull and his warriors fought against the army in the Battle of Killdeer Mountain on July
Sitting Bull (National Archives of Canada)
28, 1864, and continued to fight as the army built posts on the upper Missouri River. Sitting Bull did not sign the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which established the Great Sioux Reservation, and his standing among the nontreaty, resisting factions of the Sioux tribes (the hostiles) was such that in 1869 they designated him as their supreme war chief. In contrast, Red Cloud, who had led the Sioux resistance, signed the treaty, accepted reservation life, and advocated peace. As a consequence, Red Cloud has been called the Sioux “statesman” and Sitting Bull the Sioux “patriot.”
The Great Sioux Reservation encompassed the land west of the Missouri River in the Dakota Territory and included the Black Hills. Prospectors suspected that the Black Hills region held gold, and in July 1874 an expedition under General George A. Custer (supposedly exploring the route for a road) happened to have prospectors along who found that there was indeed gold in those hills. The Black Hills gold rush ensued, with thousands of miners pouring into that area and trespassing on Sioux lands. The federal government tried to purchase or lease the Black Hills, but the Sioux, buttressed by the nontreaty Sioux, refused. The U. S. government countered by ordering in December 1875 the nontreaty Sioux onto reservations in six weeks, which, even if they wished to comply, was in winter an impossibility. The army began the second of the Sioux wars in the spring of 1876. But in June 1876 Sitting Bull and the Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse defeated General George Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and annihilated Custer, making his “last stand,” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Shocked and aroused, the army relentlessly pursued the warring Sioux until in 1877 Crazy Horse surrendered; Sitting Bull fled to Canada with about 2,000 followers. As the number of buffalo dwindled, so too did his followers, and Sitting Bull in 1881 returned to the Dakota Territory to surrender to the army.
Sitting Bull was imprisoned until May 1883, when he moved to a reservation where he even attempted farming, although he resisted assimilation. Between 1885 and 1886 Sitting Bull toured with William Frederick (Buffalo Bill) Cody’s Wild West Show with sharpshooter Annie Oakley, a peculiar twist in American popular culture. In 1890 Sitting Bull, who was a holy man as well as a warrior, embraced the Ghost Dance religion and was its leader on his reservation. Since the Ghost Dance religion had led to unrest on other reservations, authorities feared the worst and ordered Sitting Bull’s arrest. When Indian policemen attempted to arrest him on December 15, 1890, his followers resisted, and in the melee Sitting Bull was shot and killed.
Further reading: Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Ti-mes of Sitting Bull (New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1993).
—Scott Sendrow
World History
