49 Fun Facts About Sitting Bull

What does the name of Sitting Bull's band, Hunkpapa, mean in Lakota?

Head of the Circle, also rendered "at the entrance": by tradition the Hunkpapa pitched their lodges at the opening of the camp circle whenever the Sioux met in council.

What was Sitting Bull named at birth?

Jumping Badger. The name soon gave way to a nickname, Slow, and the boy who carried it killed his first buffalo at the age of ten.

How did Sitting Bull, at 14, earn his father's name?

Counting coup on a Crow warrior. He rode ahead of a raiding party to strike an enemy at close range, and his father marked the deed with a feast, an eagle feather and his own name.

What does the Lakota name Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake roughly translate to?

Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down. To the Lakota it called up a stubborn bull planted on its haunches and refusing to budge; Americans simply shortened it to Sitting Bull.

Which leader's band surrendered in 1877 about 40 miles short of Canada, where they hoped to join Sitting Bull?

Chief Joseph. His Nez Perce had fought a 1,170-mile retreat from Idaho before the army trapped them in the Bear Paw Mountains; a few hundred slipped through the lines and did reach Sitting Bull.

At which 1864 battle in Dakota Territory did Sitting Bull face General Alfred Sully's howitzers?

Killdeer Mountain. Sully's 2,200 soldiers were sent to punish the Sioux for the 1862 Minnesota uprising, in which Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa had taken no part; shellfire drove them from their village.

Which Black Hills peak, on land Sitting Bull fought to keep, was named in the 1880s after a visiting New York lawyer?

Mount Rushmore. Charles Rushmore was checking mining claims when he asked what the granite peak was called; told it had no name, his companions named it after him on the spot.

Sitting Bull refused in 1868 to "sell any part of my country", rejecting which treaty?

The Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet carried the peace offer to his camp, and Gall went on to sign for the Hunkpapa, but Sitting Bull kept raiding the upper Missouri forts.

During Sitting Bull's exile, what did the Lakota call Canada, in honour of Queen Victoria?

Grandmother's Land. Victoria's red-coated police promised that American soldiers could not follow the Lakota there, so long as they kept the Queen's laws and never raided back across the border.

Which railway's survey parties did Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa attack in 1871-73?

The Northern Pacific. The surveys led nowhere for years: the Panic of 1873 bankrupted the railway's backer, Jay Cooke, and halted construction.

Who led the 1874 army expedition that announced gold in the Black Hills, triggering the rush that led to war?

George Armstrong Custer. Two years before the Little Bighorn he marched into hills that an 1868 treaty had reserved for the Sioux, and his reports of gold drew prospectors in their thousands.

Which president ordered every Sioux band onto the reservation by January 31, 1876, or be treated as hostile?

Ulysses S. Grant. The deadline fell in the dead of winter, when moving a village hundreds of miles across the plains was close to impossible, and the army was sent after the bands that stayed out.

In his vision before the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull saw soldiers falling into camp like what?

Grasshoppers. The soldiers were falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people took as the promise of a great victory, and the battle came within weeks.

What sacrifice did Sitting Bull make at the Sun Dance weeks before the Little Bighorn?

A hundred cuts to his arms: fifty small pieces of flesh from each. He then danced without water until he collapsed into the trance that brought his vision of victory.

Which nation camped and fought beside the Lakota at the Little Bighorn?

The Cheyenne. The nation's northern branch, with some Arapaho, shared a village that had swelled all spring as bands left the agencies and gathered around Sitting Bull for safety in numbers.

What do the Lakota call the river and battle Americans know as the Little Bighorn?

Greasy Grass. The Lakota remember a victory there, not a last stand, and in 1991 Congress renamed the battlefield and ordered an Indian Memorial built near Last Stand Hill.

Which Oglala war leader led warriors into the fight that destroyed five cavalry companies at the Little Bighorn?

Crazy Horse. A week earlier he had helped fight General Crook's column to a standstill on the Rosebud; the next year he surrendered and died of a bayonet wound in an army guardhouse.

Sitting Bull's camp on the Little Bighorn, attacked on June 25, 1876, stood in which present-day state?

Montana. The battlefield now lies inside the Crow Indian Reservation, home of the Lakota's old enemies, whose scouts rode with the cavalry that day.

What did Plains peoples call the Canadian border, where US soldiers chasing Sitting Bull's people had to stop?

The Medicine Line. The boundary seemed to hold a power of its own, since cavalry in pursuit pulled up at it as if stopped by magic, and Sitting Bull spent four years beyond it at Wood Mountain.

Which North-West Mounted Police officer rode into Sitting Bull's camp in 1877 and became his lifelong friend?

James Morrow Walsh. American newspapers called him "Sitting Bull's Boss", and in 1880 Ottawa, deciding the friendship was keeping the Sioux in Canada, transferred him away.

Sitting Bull named a son after a chief of which nation, old enemies he made peace with in Canada?

The Blackfoot. Their chief, Crowfoot, saw that the Lakota had come as refugees, and when Sitting Bull sought peace between the old enemies he gladly accepted the offered tobacco.

What finally drove Sitting Bull out of Canada and into surrender in 1881?

Hunger, as the buffalo vanished. Canada refused the Lakota both a reserve and rations, and he crossed back with fewer than 200 followers.

At which army post did Sitting Bull surrender in July 1881?

Fort Buford. Fifteen years earlier he had led the attacks on the newly built post; now he rode in with a hungry band to give himself up to its commander.

Who handed over Sitting Bull's Winchester rifle at the surrender ceremony?

His young son Crow Foot. Sitting Bull had the boy pass the rifle to the post commander, then asked to be remembered as the last man of his tribe to surrender his rifle.

How was Sitting Bull's band taken to Fort Randall as prisoners of war in 1881?

By river steamboat. The army shipped them down the Missouri aboard the General Sherman, away from the newly surrendered bands it feared he would stir up, and held them for 20 months.

Which sharpshooter did Sitting Bull 'adopt' in 1884, naming her 'Little Sure Shot'?

Annie Oakley. He watched her shoot in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was so impressed that he symbolically adopted her as a daughter; she kept the name he gave her for the rest of her career.

How much a week was Sitting Bull paid to ride once around the arena with Buffalo Bill's show in 1885?

About $50 a week, handsome pay in 1885, and he made more on the side by selling his autograph and picture to the crowds.

What did Sitting Bull do with most of his Wild West pay?

Gave it away. In his four months with the show a fellow performer saw most of it go into the pockets of small, ragged boys; he could not understand how white men could ignore their own poor.

At a railway celebration, what is Sitting Bull said to have declared in Lakota, untranslated?

"I hate all White people." By the story he went on to call them thieves and liars, while the interpreter read out the friendly speech prepared for him and the crowd rose to applaud.

News of Sitting Bull's victory at the Little Bighorn reached the East as Americans were celebrating what?

The nation's 100th birthday. Word of the defeat arrived in the first days of July 1876, in the middle of the centennial celebrations, and the public shock sent thousands more soldiers to the plains.

Which actress played the Brooklyn activist who became Sitting Bull's secretary in the film Woman Walks Ahead?

Jessica Chastain. The real Caroline Weldon, an artist, moved into his Grand River camp with her young son, wrote his letters and painted his portrait.

The Ghost Dance movement was spread from Nevada by which Paiute prophet?

Wovoka. Known to ranchers as Jack Wilson, he told his followers to keep the peace and dance, and the dead and the buffalo would return; among the Sioux the message turned militant and frightened settlers.

What were Ghost Dance shirts said to do?

Stop bullets. No one is sure where the belief began, but it took hold among the Lakota in 1890, and talk of bulletproof dancers alarmed the settlers and soldiers around the reservations.

Which Indian agent at Standing Rock ordered Sitting Bull's arrest in December 1890?

James McLaughlin. The two had been at odds for years over the break-up and sale of Sioux land, and when the Ghost Dance reached Standing Rock the agent moved to have his old adversary removed.

Who was sent to arrest Sitting Bull at dawn on December 15, 1890?

Lakota policemen, about 40 of them, from the reservation's own force. By his own account a meadowlark had once warned Sitting Bull that Lakotas would kill him.

Red Tomahawk, who shot Sitting Bull in the head in 1890, was for decades the face on which state's highway signs?

North Dakota. A photograph of him in profile was copied onto the state's road markers and, in 1951, onto the doors of its Highway Patrol cars; a plain state outline began replacing him on the signs in 2016.

By legend, what did the horse Buffalo Bill gave Sitting Bull do when shooting broke out at his arrest?

Performed its show tricks. Trained for the arena, the old circus horse is said to have sat down and raised a hoof at the sound of the guns, to the terror of those who saw it.

Where was Sitting Bull first buried after his death?

Fort Yates. In 1953 relatives dug up what they believed were his remains and reburied them near Mobridge, South Dakota, where a second monument now stands.

The Wounded Knee Massacre took place how long after Sitting Bull's death?

Two weeks. Some of his Hunkpapa followers fled south after the killing and joined Spotted Elk's band, which the army intercepted at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890.

Which regiment fought at both the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee?

The 7th Cavalry. Its troopers were disarming Spotted Elk's band when the shooting began; at least 150 Lakota died, perhaps as many as 300, and some of the soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor.

After his death, Sitting Bull's cabin was hauled from the Grand River to be shown at which event?

Chicago's Columbian Exposition. In 1893 the cabin stood on the Midway as a paid attraction, with war dances staged at it, while Buffalo Bill's show played just outside the fairgrounds.

What at Standing Rock was renamed for Sitting Bull in 1996?

A college. The tribal council chartered it in 1973 as Standing Rock Community College so that people on the reservation would have one of their own, and voted in the new name in March 1996.

What did a 2021 DNA study of a lock of Sitting Bull's hair confirm?

A living great-grandson's claim. Ernie LaPointe, a Lakota writer, was matched to hair the Smithsonian had returned to the family in 2007, by a method built to work on mere scraps of old DNA.

A giant Lego sculpture of Sitting Bull stands in which theme park?

Legoland Billund, Denmark. The statue stands in Legoredo, the original park's Wild West town; sculptor Bjørn Richter spent two years on it and used 1.4 million bricks.

Which book by Barack Obama names Sitting Bull among 13 great Americans?

Of Thee I Sing. Framed as a letter to his daughters, the picture book matches each of its thirteen Americans to a quality he sees in the girls, setting Sitting Bull beside Washington, Lincoln and Einstein.

What did the Supreme Court decide about the Black Hills in 1980?

The Sioux were owed payment. They have refused the money ever since, because taking it would mean selling land they say was never for sale; with interest the fund had passed $1 billion by 2011.

In 2016 thousands gathered at Sitting Bull's Standing Rock Reservation to protest against what?

An oil pipeline, the Dakota Access line. It passes beneath the Missouri just north of the reservation, and the tribe's fear for its water drew people of more than 80 tribes into the protest camps.

August Schellenberg earned an Emmy nomination playing Sitting Bull in which 2007 HBO film?

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The title, which Dee Brown borrowed for the 1970 history the film is based on, comes from a Stephen Vincent Benét poem, "American Names".

Sitting Bull's home reservation, Standing Rock, straddles the border between which two states?

North and South Dakota. The reservation dates from 1889, when Congress broke the Great Sioux Reservation into six smaller ones, a division Sitting Bull had spent his last years resisting.