- [Narrator] President Grant has set a deadline.
After January 1st, 1876,
the US Army will treat any Plains Indians
not living on reservations as enemy combatants.
It's a decision long in the making.
Two years ago, an expedition led by George Armstrong Custer
discovered gold in the Black Hills.
But per the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty,
those hills belonged exclusively to the Lakota.
Regardless, American miners are flooding into the mountains
and the government doesn't have
the political will to evict them.
For years, Grant tried to buy the Black Hills
from the Lakota, but they're not interested in selling.
The entire concept to them is absurd.
Not only are they sacred, they're also the best hope
of feeding themselves independent of government annuities.
But a financial crisis in 1873 has made the government broke
and the country needs that gold to restart its economy.
So Custer and the US Cavalry are coming back once more,
but this time Sitting Bull will be there
to meet him at the legendary Battle of the Little Bighorn.
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There are a few periods of Sitting Bull's life
that get a little obscure,
documented only through oral histories
and contemporary US government reports.
And the years between 1866 and 1874
are definitely one of those periods.
But what we do know is that while Sitting Bull
was a peripheral figure in Red Cloud's war,
these were also the years that his reputation grew
as both a leader of great spiritual power
and a rallying point for resistance.
Sitting Bull's policies of no treaties,
no accommodation, and no agreement to live on reservations
drew a stark contrast between him and Red Cloud,
who as part of the 1868 treaty
was trying to adjust to reservation life.
But as we've mentioned before, living on a reservation
and accepting goods from the agencies
wasn't always a binary choice.
Some groups actually took an in between route,
deciding they would live on the reservation in winter
when they'd be stationary anyway,
and then slip out to follow the buffalo in summer.
Others had tried depending on the agencies
until the federal government
missed the promised food deliveries,
driving their starving people to hunt out of desperation.
Some even found that Sitting Bull had been right
when he warned that relying on the government
put the Plains tribes at their mercy.
When Indian agents didn't like certain behavior
or cultural practices, they withheld rations
as a form of control, and the young men especially
found the reservations constrictive.
Plains tribes were often warrior societies
where men achieved rank, status, and masculine pride
through feats in hunting or war.
But sedentary reservation life meant giving up
intertribal combat and buffalo hunts,
which was distasteful to young men
eager to prove their bravery.
Then of course, there was the government's
increasing pressure to sell the Black Hills,
or its offer to displace the Sioux Confederation
and move them to Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma.
So all of those people, whether disaffected,
starving, or disillusioned, flowed into Sitting Bull's camp,
seeking both strength in numbers
and his reputation as a holy man.
Not only the Lakotas either,
but the Cheyennes as well, all in a massive unity camp.
One account claims he was the leader of all of the Sioux,
but this is plainly false.
However, what is true is that Sitting Bull drew
an unprecedented following
by offering a clearly stated alternative
to accepting the reservation system,
namely that he would refuse to comply with Grant's deadline,
continue hunting, and stay as far away
from white people as possible.
Should the army attack his group,
he would fight, and any war would be defensive.
But that winter, Sitting Bull's camp swelled even further,
this time with refugees.
When Grant's deadline passed,
the US army invaded the Powder River
and Little Bighorn regions in a three-pronged assault,
hoping to sweep up any non-compliant tribes
and instigating what would come to be known
as the Great Sioux War of 1876.
These federal troops were aided by the Crow and Shoshone,
hoping to gain back their traditional territories
that the Lakota and Cheyenne had captured in the 1850s,
then been granted to them in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
The Federals changed tactics as well,
attacking several non-compliant villages in winter.
The survivors poured into Sitting Bull's unity camp
and he ordered his warriors to meet them
with gifts of buffalo meat and ropes.
By this time, the camp had swelled to 10,000 people
and 2,500 warriors, possibly the largest gathering
of Plains people in history.
Still, he needed more.
He sent ambassadors out to the reservations,
recruiting warriors, and called for a Sundance,
a ritual of self-sacrifice
to gain a vision from the Great Spirit.
So his adopted brother,
who'd taken his father's name Jumping Bear,
helped him carry out the offering.
A hundred pieces of flesh from his arms,
each the size of a pinhead,
then bleeding with a leather tether
pierced through his chest,
securing him to the center pole of the lodge,
he danced while staring at the sun
and breathing through a bone whistle.
He continued doing so without food or water
for nearly two days.
That's when he saw the vision of the blue coats
falling upside down like grasshoppers into the camp
and a voice saying,
- [Deep Voice] "They have no ears."
- [Narrator] Yes, there would be a great victory
over the blue coats, he said upon waking,
but in a way, there would actually be two.
On June 17th, the Oglala Lakota leader, His Horse is Crazy,
better known as Crazy Horse,
ambushed one of the three columns near the Rosebud Creek.
But the Army's Crow and Shoshone allies spotted the attack
and delayed Crazy Horse's advance long enough
that he lost the element of surprise.
So what might have been a total victory
turned into a grinding six hour battle
as Crazy Horse led 1000 warriors in assault
after determined assault against US forces,
which fired up to 25,000 rounds of ammunition.
This Battle of the Rosebud,
or as the Lakota Cheyenne call it,
the battle where the girl saved her brother,
after a dramatic rescue
effectively stopped the US column's advance.
As a result, these troops were not present eight days later,
when Custer's detachment from the seventh cavalry
came upon the unity camp
at the river the Lakota called Greasy Grass
and the Americans knew as the Little Bighorn.
June 25th, 1876, the unity camp at Greasy Grass.
When he first hears the sound of gunshots,
Sitting Bull runs to his tent.
As an old man chief,
he will not be expected to fight directly,
but the camp is full of women and children
and he will need to help evacuate them.
While doing so, he sees his nephew White Bull,
preparing his war medicine.
So Sitting Bull picks up his own shield,
the one that his father had gave him,
and puts it into his nephew's hand.
He will need it more.
And seeing the young man has an old trade musket,
he tells him to drop it and hands him a stone club.
This fighting will be close.
Crazy Horse is already readying warriors
to take on the 700 men that long hair George Custer
has foolishly brought in scattered groups,
for the Plains nations have over 2000 warriors here.
Sitting Bull does not take part in the battle.
His part was completed during the Sundance
and gathering of warriors.
Instead, he rallies the women and children
and takes them to safety, as on a distant hill,
Crazy Horse surrounds, overruns,
and crushes Custer's lead contingent.
It is an overwhelming victory like nothing any Indian tribe
has achieved in the history of the United States.
Five of the seventh cavalry's 12 companies are wiped out,
286 men, including Custer himself.
But Sitting Bull does not feel victory,
for the vision had stipulated that they not mutilate,
scalp, or steal from the dead,
and in the elation, all have happened.
The news reaches Washington on July 3rd,
just as festivities are spinning up
for the hundredth anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence.
The victory at Little Bighorn shocks the American government
and sours the public on celebration,
for while disliked within the Army,
Custer was a figure of national prominence,
a hero of the Civil War, and to have him not only killed,
but his command destroyed, stirs a desire for vengeance.
Meanwhile, for a month,
the Hunkpapa Lakota feasted and celebrated,
but gradually warriors dropped away,
filtering back to the reservations.
There they found Army troops ready to disarm all men
and withhold food at any hint of rebellion.
Cavalry flooded the Powder River country
and Congress forced through an amendment
essentially forcing the Lakota to sell the Black Hills
or starve without government assistance.
Even Crazy Horse, that most determined warrior,
eventually surrendered, only to be bayonetted to death
in a struggle following an escape attempt.
Yet Sitting Bull still refused to give up.
Rather than surrender, he went into exile,
crossing the border to Canada
where he would reside for three years.
But his story was not over, for when he returned,
he would don a war bonnet and take his story east,
this time, not leading an army,
but as the star celebrity in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
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