Sitting Bull

Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man, c. 1831–1890. He refused, more than any other Lakota leader, to sign treaties with the United States or to move his people onto a reservation. Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 he performed a Sun Dance, offered a hundred pieces of his own flesh, and saw a vision of soldiers falling into camp upside down — defeat coming to the U.S. Cavalry. Days later Custer's Seventh attacked, and was destroyed. He led his people across the border into Canada to escape the U.S. Army, returned in 1881 to surrender on his own terms, did a season with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and was killed in 1890 by tribal police sent to arrest him during the Ghost Dance movement. Two weeks later came Wounded Knee. Core teaching: a people that gives up its land gives up its soul. You may be defeated; you do not have to be converted. Hold the center. Key sources: *Sitting Bull* by Robert Utley; the Lakota oral tradition preserved by his descendants.