Sitting Bull's Last Stand

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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Tomorrow is the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, certainly one of the most dramatic events to take place on American soil. My book Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull was published recently to coincide with that anniversary. As the title indicates, the battle was much more than “Custer’s Last Stand.” It led directly to the demise or imprisonment of Native leaders and the end of the Indian Wars in the American West. This excerpt from Vengeance details the death of Sitting Bull, who had led the Sioux-Cheyenne coalition against the 7^th Cavalry on June 25, 1876.

In 1889, Sitting Bull had an unexpected addition to his lodge. Caroline Weldon, a member of the National Indian Defense Association, reached out to him from Brooklyn, offering to be his secretary, interpreter, and advocate. Sitting Bull accepted. Weldon arrived with her young son, Christie, and moved into the family home.

She would stay only a little more than a year. The split with Sitting Bull was prompted by her opposition to the growing Ghost Dance movement. Weldon warned that it would give the government a pretext to harm him and to summon the military for intervention which would destroy what remained of the Sioux Nation. Frustrated, Weldon and her son left Sitting Bull and the Standing Rock Agency in November 1890.

Weldon would prove prescient. “By 1889 the Lakotas had fallen into despair,” writes Robert Utley. “Land agreements had cost them half of the Great Sioux Reservation, sixty million acres. Scorching dry winds had killed their crops, and Congress had delayed appropriations for so long that their rations had to be severely cut. Sickness swept the reservations.”

The following year, word spread among the reservations of a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, whose expanding fame was due to the founding of the “Ghost Dance.” Wovoka claimed to have had a vision that the Christian messiah, Jesus Christ, had returned to Earth in the form of a Native American. Though a rather confusing concept, it proved alluring to an impoverished and despairing people.

Furthermore, according to Wovoka, the white invaders would disappear from Indian lands, ancestors would lead them to good hunting grounds, the buffalo herds and all the other animals would return in abundance, and the ghosts of their ancestors would appear to them on Earth. They would then live in peace. All this would be brought about by the performance of the slow and solemn Ghost Dance, performed as a shuffle in silence to a single drumbeat.

After learning the dance from Wovoka, two Lakota leaders, Kicking Bear and his brother-in-law Short Bull, taught others in the tribe. They also wore specially made Ghost Dance shirts. Kicking Bear misunderstood the meaning of the shirts and contended that they had the power to repel bullets. Another claim by Ghost Dance proponents – which had to be particularly appealing – was that the power of the Ghost Dance would produce a great earthquake and flood which would drown all the white people.

Surrounding settlers were alarmed by the sight of the Northern Plains tribes performing the Ghost Dance, and they worried that such brazen defiance might be a prelude to armed resistance. Among them was the U.S. Indian agent James McLaughlin. He and other officials decided to take some of the chiefs into custody to quell what they called the “Messiah craze.” At the top of the list was Sitting Bull.

“Sitting Bull had gone with zest into the business of promoting the new religion,” McLaughlin alleged. “Knowing his people, and utilizing the mysticism with which he habitually preyed on their superstitions, he established himself as the high priest of the cult.”

On December 14, 1890, McLaughlin ordered the arrest of Sitting Bull in a letter to Lieutenant Bull Head of the Indian police. “P.S.,” McLaughlin added, “you must not let him escape under any circumstances.”

The next morning, Sitting Bull was awoken by as many as 40 Indian police officers arriving at his cabin on the Grand River. He let in Bull Head and several others. Bull Head told Sitting Bull that he was under arrest. Sitting Bull acquiesced, dressing and coming quietly out of his cabin. But one of his wives began to shout and his son Crow Foot berated him for simply going along. Dogs in the village, woken by the dawn raid, barked, waking dozens of people who began to coalesce into a crowd at their headman’s home.

Sitting Bull changed his mind about complying. The police were ordered to force him out of the cabin. Like Crazy Horse, his last stand was in a doorway. Sitting Bull resisted until forced outside.

The Lakota in the village were enraged. One of them, Catch-the-Bear, raised a rifle and shot Lieutenant Bull Head, who reacted by firing his revolver into the chest of Sitting Bull. Another police officer, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull in the back of the head. He and Bull Head fell to the ground. Inside the cabin, Crow Foot was shot to death.

Shortly after noon that day, Sitting Bull died. He was 59 years old. Bull Head would also die from his wound.

After Sitting Bull’s death and the subsequent skirmish, 200 members of his Hunkpapa band, fearful of reprisals, fled Standing Rock to join Spotted Elk and his Miniconjou band at the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. And not feeling safe enough there, on December 23, Spotted Elk and his band, along with 38 Hunkpapa, left that reservation and fled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to seek shelter with Red Cloud.

They were allowed to camp at a place called Wounded Knee.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books. The latest one, Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull, was published last month by St. Martin’s Press. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.