Sitting bull what was he famous for

He had no use for peace with the white man — Sitting Bull once taunted rival Indians with the boast that "The whites may get me at last Although a treaty had given these lands to the Sioux, white settlers now poured in, and clashes between the two sides grew. In early all Indian people were ordered onto reservations, and soldiers were sent after those who refused.

One of the soldiers was General Custer, who led his immediate command of men into battle against approximately Sioux, including Sitting Bull, and had his entire command wiped out.

Returning to the United States in , he was held prisoner at the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakota territory. His duties were limited — Sitting Bull rode in the show's opening procession — and he was well compensated, earning 50 dollars a week plus the money he made from selling autographs. He was treated kindly by Oakley, who said the Sioux warrior "made a great pet of me. But life on the road was sometimes unpleasant.

Crowds hissed, newspapers termed him "as mild mannered a man as ever cut a throat or scalped a helpless woman," and in Pittsburgh the brother of a soldier killed at Little Big Horn attacked him.

He was shocked by the poverty, he witnessed in his travels, especially among children. When the season ended in October, the year-old Sioux warrior decided to go home. As white prospectors rushed into the Sioux lands, the American government tabled the treaty and declared war on any native tribes that prevented it from taking over the land.

When Sitting Bull refused to abide by these new conditions, the stage was set for confrontation. Sitting Bull's defense of his land was rooted both in the history of his culture and in the fate he believed awaited his people. At a Sun Dance ceremony on the Little Bighorn River, where a large community of Native Americans had established a village, Sitting Bull danced for 36 consecutive hours, slashed his arms as a sign of sacrifice and deprived himself of drinking water.

At the end of this spiritual ceremony, he informed villagers that he had received a vision in which the American army was defeated. In June , just a few days later, the chief led a successful battle against American forces in the Battle of the Rosebud. There, Sitting Bull led thousands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors against Custer's undermanned force, wiping out the American general and his plus men. For the U. To escape its wrath, Sitting Bull led his people into Canada, where they remained for four years.

In , Sitting Bull returned to the Dakota territory, where he was held prisoner until He was shocked by the poverty he saw in the cities, and coupled with the hatred that was directed toward him by some of the show's audience members, Sitting Bull decided to return to his people. Back home, in a cabin on the Grand River not far from where he'd been born, Sitting Bull lived his life without compromise.

He rejected Christianity and continued to honor his people's way of life. In , Native Americans began to take up the Ghost Dance, a ceremony aimed at ridding the land of white people and restore the Native American way of life. Sitting Bull soon joined it. Fearing the powerful chief's influence on the movement, authorities directed a group of Lakota police officers to arrest Sitting Bull.

On December 15, , they entered his home. After they dragged Sitting Bull out of his cabin, a gunfight followed and the chief was shot in the head and killed. Walsh and his men spent the night in the Sioux camp. The next morning, May 8, they were preparing to leave when three Assiniboines from below the border rode into camp herding five horses. Walsh stepped over to White Dog, leader of the three Assiniboines, and arrested him for theft.

But Walsh was undeterred. The law had been broken. Silence fell over the camp. All eyes were on the redcoat and White Dog. Some were ready to fight for their Assiniboine brother, some stood confused, others waited to see if the redcoat would carry out his threat.

Seeing the hesitation on the surrounding Sioux faces, White Dog mumbled that when traveling across the prairie east of the Cypress Hills, he saw the horses wandering loose and took them. The law was explicit, but in instances where ignorance of the law was a factor, the Mounties exercised leniency. Stealing horses was, as R. The police only gradually introduced the idea that it was a crime, preferring to return them [the horses] with a warning to the thieves rather than make arrests. Sitting Bull and the Sioux, or Lakotas, had witnessed an example of the enforcement of Canadian law.

It was the sort of example Walsh wanted to set. He had not backed down. That was the way the Mounties enforced the law among their own Indians—two or three scarlet-coated men riding calmly into large camps of armed Indians and making arrests or letting offenders off with stern warnings.

Not backing down and never showing fear was perhaps the reason they—a mere handful of resolute men—were so successful in their dealings with the Indians. The Indians admired courage, perhaps above all else. Walsh had given Sitting Bull something to think about.

Sitting Bull and his 1, or so followers were not the only Sioux to have crossed into Canada. The Sioux all promised to obey Canadian law, but no one knew whether they really meant it. Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, commander of the military force that had marched on the Sioux at the Little Bighorn the previous year, headed the commission. The meeting took place October 17, with predictable results.

Sitting Bull did not trust Terry, the man who had sent Custer, and the Sioux refused to go back. Even before the U. The Montreal Witness of August 16, , reported that Sitting Bull had asked his hereditary enemies the Canadian Blackfeet "to join him in the conflict with the hated American Government, after which he would help them with any conflict they might have with the Canadian Government.

The stories persisted, especially after the failure of the peace commission meeting in October. He appeared with 30 of his best warriors dressed in the clothing of soldiers killed in the Custer Massacre, and called upon assembled Indians to witness how he had treated the soldiers and how easy [it would be] to clean out all the whites and have the country among ourselves….

Two weeks later, on April 19, the Fort Benton Record reported that residents of the Canadian settlement of Battleford, on the North Saskatchewan River, were "greatly excited" over an account that Sitting Bull had formed an alliance of Sioux, Blackfoot and Stoney tribes and had made overtures to the Cree. The Mounties investigated these stories but found they had little real substance. Crow Foot said that in the spring of , before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had asked him to join the Sioux in a mighty war against the Americans, but he had refused.

Sitting Bull had been in contact with him again in the summer of , when they met during a buffalo hunt, but the subject of an alliance had not been mentioned.

In his opinion, traders often passed on such stories to Army scouts hungry for news to report to their superiors. When, in May , Walsh was asked by a journalist of the Chicago Times about the possibility of a confederation of all the tribes north of the border, he answered, "It is not natural to suppose that the Sioux and the Blackfoot could become allies. Riel, living in Montana, tried throughout to form an alliance of all the "Indian blood…between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri" to rise up against the whites and reclaim the prairies, which he maintained rightly belonged to them.

His actual objectives were vaguely stated. The Assiniboines of northern Montana were the first to join Riel. The agents, in turn, informed the Department of the Interior in Washington, D. Army was ordered to take action. Before winter snows swept across the northern Plains in , soldiers, U. In the fall of , Sitting Bull warned Walsh of the impending arrival of a group of Cheyennes in Canada.

He had similarly warned Walsh of the coming of the Nez Perce the previous year. But this time he was wrong; the U. Army stopped the Cheyennes from getting that far north.

Although Sitting Bull might well have dreamed of welding the Cheyennes and other northern tribes into a mighty confederation and striking back at the Americans, he constantly expressed hope that the White Mother would give him a reservation in Canada, as she had given the Sioux who fled north following the Minnesota Uprising in In , the Canadian government had estimated that there were enough buffalo to feed its western Indians for at least another five years.

But since the arrival of the Sioux, the government had had to drastically revise that estimate. The Canadian tribes realized the buffalo were becoming fewer, and they blamed the Sioux. The danger of inter-tribal conflicts grew, calling for greater vigilance by the North-West Mounted Police. The government did not want to burden itself with the cost of feeding the Sioux.

The Sioux would have to eventually go back to their own country. If no food or reserve were forthcoming, they would simply take what they wanted. It caused them no end of additional police work, patrolling and hours in the saddle. The Sioux laughed at him. He was perhaps fortunate they did nothing more than laugh. Sitting Bull bristled, but the bluff worked. He felt the stakes were too high to allow defiance by his young men.

The horses were turned over. Sliding down from their ponies, they stepped into the cabin and shook hands solemnly with the Mountie officer. After talking with them, Morin turned to Walsh: "They want provisions, Major, especially tea and tobacco.

This was too much for Walsh, who was well known for his blunt language.