Sacred Buffalo Skull

A Warrior's Private Magic A Sioux warrior's most precious possessions was his personal, dream-inspired "medicine bundle" - an array of religious talismans and herbs that was brought out on the eve of battle and used in intricate ceremonies designed to ward off harm. Sitting Bull reportedly prepared himself for combat with the articles above. They include (clock-wise from left) a wooden bowl, with a stone pestle surrounded by a woven ring of herbs; a turtle-shell cup cradling a bowl which, in turn, holds birch bark and a wild radish; a rattle; a pouch of sacred paint; an eagle-bone whistle; and the skin of a mink stuffed with 10 different herbal remedies.

Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa leader, with William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), c.1885. He thought highly of Cody, calling him Pahaska (Long Hair) and describing the scout as sincere and genuine.

Sacred armor (Ghost Shirt). The Sioux believed that it had the magical power to render the wearer invulnerable to the white man's bullets.

An autobiographical sketch made by Sitting Bull and copied by his uncle recalls the day he won his first war honors at age 14 by riding down and counting coup on a Crow. The image of a bull is his signature.

Sioux Headress

Ceremonial Sioux pipe. The rising smoke from such a pipe is thought of as a path leading to the Great Spirit

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For decades, the Lakota Sioux of South Dakota had fiercely resisted white encroachment on their ancestral homelands, but by the harsh winter of 1890 they were becoming increasingly beleaguered. Three years earlier, the US President had granted wide-ranging powers to "detribalize" Native Americans, and in 1889 the break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation began. The proud nation that had crushed Custer's Seventh Calvary at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 was faced with disaster.           In the midst of such depredation, just one desperate hope of salvation remained: in 1889 a Paiute holy man named Wovoka had prophesied the deliverance of the Indians from white domination. The people's dead ancestors would bring this about, so to ensure their resurrection Wovoka had instituted a ceremony known as the Ghost Dance. A revivalist movement based on it found fertile ground among the demoralized Sioux and other nations of the Plains. So zealous were its followers that they even donned special shirts, believing them to be impervious to bullets. The Sioux chief Sitting Bull had been sceptical at first, but later lent his support. Feared by the whites, the veteran leader had thus become the figurehead of a ritual that he never personally took part in.           On December 15, 1890, a devastating blow fell on the Sioux. As policemen recruited from among the very people who had once fought alongside Sitting Bull tried to arrest him at Standing Rock Reservation, fighting broke out. At the end of a brief but bloody skirmish, the legendary warrior lay dead. He was buried without ceremony two days later.           With their leader gone, Sitting Bull's followers fled south, joining up with the Ghost Dancers on the Cheyenne River Reservation. But their leader, Big Foot, himself was a wanted man, so the combined group of over 300 people kept heading south through the Badlands. They were intercepted by cavalrymen on December 28 and diverted to Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning, the troops moved in to disarm the Sioux. Suddenly, a shot rang out; a warrir had accidentally fired his weapon. The result was carnage; nervous soldiers shooting point-blank with rifles and cannon slaughtered 250 Lakota.           Not only were the lives of men, women and children extinguished by the terrible massacre. In the words of Black Elk, one of the few survivors: "Something else died in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples dream died there." For a more detailed story of Wounded Knee, Click on Wounded Knee Slaughter below (Next).

This page was last updated on: October 24, 2005

This Page Is Dedicated To Sitting Bull,        A Great Leader Of His People.

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