ArizonaRealCountry.com 43 June 2019 By Alan Rockman Since June 25th will be the 143rd anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, this writer thought it might be appropriate to write a thing or two about the Chief of the Sioux, “Tatanka-Iyotanka” or better known to history as Sitting Bull, the noble, at times haughty but almost always dignified chief of the Sioux nation, who, as will be noted here, never really thought of himself as being the chief, but more modestly as a “medicine man.” Sitting Bull In fact, Sitting Bull was even more modest to an American reporter who journeyed up to Canada in the wake of the failed 1877 negotiations between General Alfred Terry, the Canadians through Colonel James MacLeod, the Commissioner of the Royal North West Mounted Police, and Sitting Bull, describing himself merely first as a "man," then, when pressed by the American reporter to clarify his status with the tribe, responded: "I am nothing - neither a chief nor a soldier" (An Autobiography of General Custer, edited by Stephen Brennan, 2012, pp. 263-264). But he indeed was something, this dignified chief, born in the rough Indian country by the banks of the Missouri River in (what is commonly believed to be) 1831 in the Hunkpapa sub-tribe of the Sioux Nation (the Hunkpapa were a sub-tribe of the seven Western Autonomous Lakota Sioux tribes - the others were the Oglala, the Brule, the San Arcs, the Minconjou, Two Kettles, and the Sihasapa (Blackfeet Sioux). As he would later tell that same reporter who first interviewed him at the Terry- McLeod-Sitting Bull council, Jerome Stillson of The New York Herald: "I was born on the banks of Missouri River. At least I recollect that somebody told me so - I don't know who told me or where I was told of it" (Utley, Robert M., The Lance and the Shield, p.3, 1993). Now before I write much more about this great chief, just a few words of warning to you, gentle reader, or should I say, some clarification in advance. I am an unabashed admirer of Custer, but I am also an unabashed admirer of Sitting Bull too. History isn't all black and white, both men had their great moments and both of them had their faults. One of them served his country, the other one served his people. They were human beings just like the rest of us, and it would be ridiculous, if not downright wrong to smear one of them while honoring and admiring the other. Now, on with the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say. The great Sioux chief spent his formative years growing up in the Dakota borderlands along the Missouri, facing Minnesota to the east and Montana to the west, land which at the time was Sioux homelands. He wasn't even known as Sitting Bull at the time, his prominent chieftain father possessed that name, and the young boy was first named Jumping Badger, but because he was a thoughtful child who took time to make decisions, he was more commonly referred to as "Slow" (Utley, The Lance and the Shield, pp.5-6.). Jumping Badger or Slow came of age hunting buffalo, marrying the first of his five wives, who would sadly die some years later in childbirth. He also became aware of the Sioux's traditional enemies, the Crows, and on his first raiding party, at age 14, Jumping Badger tore into the startled Crows, smashing and mortally wounding one of the Crow warriors, who was shortly thereafter finished off by other Hunkpapa warriors. In honor of his first coup, his father gave him three gifts, two of them a valued lance and shield, the latter said to have possessed magical powers. But it was probably his father's third gift that was most important, or at least it became a lasting legacy to the young warrior. For Sitting Bull, the elder gave his name - Sitting Bull - to his son, and took the name Jumping Bull as his own (Utley, The Lance and the Shield, pp. 14-15). Sitting Bull, by virtue of skill and courage, not to mention physical ability would rise to become a war chief of the Sioux by 1858. By this time Sitting Bull had been scarred in battle at least once, fighting the Crows. He had also began to make friends with other young Sioux who would figure quite prominent in Sitting Bull's life in the years to come. One of them was a young man by the name of Gall. Another young man, about 8 or 9 years younger than Sitting Bull, was the Oglala Sioux warrior, Crazy Horse. While Crazy Horse had already experienced war with the encroaching Anglos, having participated in the Grattan Massacre of 1854, Sitting Bull had been spared conflict with the soldiers until the bloody Minnesota Uprising of 1862 spilled across the Missouri into western Lakota territory. General Alfred Sully, having suppressed the Eastern Sioux tribes who had initiated the Uprising, was now determined to punish all of the Lakota tribes. On July 28, 1864, Sully's Army of 2,200 men from Minnesota and Iowa regiments descended on Sitting Bull's camp at Killdeer Mountain on the edge of the Badlands in what is today eastern North Dakota. The Sioux, estimated to be between 1,500 and 3,000 warriors had greatly underestimated Sully's army. Expecting them to run, they were surprised when Sully had his artillery shell the Sioux camp, then his infantry advanced, not only driving the Sioux west but totally destroying the encampment. After the Killdeer Mountain debacle, Sitting Bull studiously avoided direct conflict with the U.S. Army for almost a decade, content with the buffalo hunt, occasional raids on the whites, and the never-ending war against the Crow - and also against other hostile Canadian tribes such as the Slota (Metis) and Blackfoot. Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail openly sought accommodation with the whites because as Red Cloud knew from first-hand experience, you could defeat them but more and more would keep on coming, and the tribes were no match for the U.S. Army even though Red Cloud had, in a masterful campaign, not only defeated them but forced them out of Fort Phil Kearney in the Sioux War of 1867-1868. Sitting Bull, on the other hand, was quite stubborn, or if you will, intransigent in his opposition to seeking any kind of truce, especially one that would find the Sioux removed from their lands. And if anything, Sitting Bull was prescient. He somehow knew that the Red Cloud Treaty of 1868 would not last, that there would be a day of reckoning. For the time being, Sitting Bull would not seek war, but he would not back down either, and soon he would be tested by the authorities in Washington and their instrument of power - the U.S. Cavalry and it would not be long in coming. In the early summer of 1873, a surveying party for the Northern Pacific Railroad entered the Yellowstone territory seeking and securing routes. Accompanying them were 1,600 men of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, led by their veteran commander George Armstrong Custer. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall wanted no part of this incursion and on August 4, 1873, leading about 1,000 Hunkpapa and Oglala, they charged across the Yellowstone, attacking Custer's camp. Initially surprised, Custer rallied his men and easily fought off the Sioux, who were forced to retreat. The defeat of Crazy Horse on the Yellowstone territory was bad enough, but more serious was Custer's next incursion into Sioux Territory. The increasing rumor of gold in the Black Hills spurred the authorities in Washington, D.C. to order another expedition, led once more by the officer commonly known to the Indians as "Yellow Hair" or "Son of the Morning Star" to enter the sacred ground of the Black Hills. With great fanfare "Custer's Gold" expedition of nearly 1000 men, soldiers, scientists, and reporters entered the Black Hills on July 2, 1874. Included in the expedition were President Grant's son Fred, the famed naturalist George Bird Grinnell and an old West Point classmate and friend of Custer's, Colonel William Ludlow, chief engineer of the Army's Department of the Dakotas. By month's end "gold at the grassroots" (just a few specks) would be discovered by the mining engineers accompanying Custer. continued on page 44 PART 1