1881
Sitting Bull Surrenders
Five years after General George A. Custer’s
infamous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader
Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and
his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising
that resulted in the death of Custer and 264 of his men at Little Bighorn. Pursued
by the U.S. Army after the Indian victory, he escaped to Canada with his
followers.
Born in the Grand River Valley in what is now
South Dakota, Sitting Bull gained early recognition in his Sioux tribe as a
capable warrior and a man of vision. In 1864, he fought against the U.S. Army
under General Alfred Sully at Killdeer Mountain and thereafter dedicated
himself to leading Sioux resistance against white encroachment. He soon gained
a following in not only his own tribe but in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Native
American groups as well. In 1867, he was made principal chief of the entire
Sioux nation.
In 1873, in what would serve as a preview of
the Battle of Little Bighorn three years later, an Indian military coalition
featuring the leadership of Sitting Bull skirmished briefly with Lieutenant
Colonel George Armstrong Custer. In 1876, Sitting Bull was not a strategic
leader in the U.S. defeat at Little Bighorn, but his spiritual influence
inspired Crazy Horse and the other victorious Indian military leaders. He
subsequently fled to Canada, but in 1881, with his people starving, he returned
to the United States and surrendered.
He was held as a prisoner of war at Fort
Randall in South Dakota territory for two years and then was permitted to live
on Standing Rock Reservation straddling North and South Dakota territory. In
1885, he traveled for a season with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show and then
returned to Standing Rock. In 1889, the spiritual proclamations of Sitting Bull
influenced the rise of the “Ghost Dance,” an Indian religious movement that
proclaimed that the whites would disappear and the dead Indians and buffalo
would return.
His support of the Ghost Dance movement had
brought him into disfavor with government officials, and on December 15, 1890,
Indian police burst into Sitting Bull’s house in the Grand River area of South
Dakota and attempted to arrest him. There is confusion as to what happened
next. By some accounts, Sitting Bull’s warriors shot the leader of the police,
who immediately turned and gunned down Sitting Bull. In another account, the
police were instructed by Major James McLaughlin, director of the Standing Rock
Sioux Agency, to kill the chief at any sign of resistance. Whatever the case,
Sitting Bull was fatally shot and died within hours. The Indian police hastily
buried his body at Fort Yates within the Standing Rock Reservation. In 1953,
his remains were moved into Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks
his resting place.