Sitting Bull

THE SIOUX LEADER’S FINAL FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

- ROBERT M. UTLEY

Sunday, June 25, 1876, was a clear, hot, sunny day in the valley of Montana’s Greasy Grass River, which the white man’s maps labeled the Little Bighorn. Six tribal circles of Lakotas and one of Northern Cheyennes, the coalition of winter roamers, sprawled for nearly three miles down the narrow valley, rimmed on the east by the snow-fed river. The Hunkpapas occupied the extreme upper end of the village, the Cheyennes the lower. In between rose the lodges of Blackfeet, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Oglala and Brule. It was an unusually large village: 7,000 people, 2,000 warriors, housed in thousands of tipis and wickyups. In the past few days, Indians arriving from the agencies had swollen the village.

Sitting Bull’s lodge, on the southern edge of the Hunkpapa circle, sheltered 12 people besides the chief: two wives, his mother, two teenage daughters, three sons, two stepsons, his sister and the brother of his two wives. He treasured his family.

On this hot summer day, some of the men rode up to the bench-land west of the valley to tend their grazing pony herds. After a night of dancing and feasting, others dozed in their tipis or beneath the tall cottonwood trees shading the riverbank. Children played in the cool waters of the stream. Women dug for wild roots.