This book focuses on two personalities, on Tatanka Iyotake (1831-1890), known as Sitting Bull, a political and spiritual leader of the Sioux people of the Great Plains, and on the immigrant Martin Marty (1834-1896), a Swiss abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Meinrad, Ind. Their life goals were opposite: Martin Marty not only intended to convert the Sioux to Christianity, but also to eradicate their culture and replace it with Euro-American patterns. Tatanka Iyotake in contrast, imbued with the millennia old traditions of his people, strove to oppose the territorial, political, and spiritual Euro-American conquest. (458pp. illus. index. Swiss American Hist. Soc., 2017.)
Winner of the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Nonfiction The little-known but uniquely American story of the unlikely friendship of two famous figures of the American West—Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull—told through the prism of their collaboration in Cody's Wild West show in 1885. “Splendid… Blood Brothers eloquently explores the clash of cultures on the Great Plains that initially united the two legends and how this shared experience contributed to the creation of their ironic political alliance.” —Bobby Bridger, Austin Chronicle It was in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883 that William F. Cody—known across the land as Buffalo Bill—conceived of his Wild West show, an “equestrian extravaganza” featuring cowboys and Indians. It was a great success, and for four months in 1885 the Lakota chief Sitting Bull appeared in the show. Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration, in “a compelling narrative that reads like a novel” (Orange County Register). “Thoroughly researched, Deanne Stillman’s account of this period in American history is elucidating as well as entertaining” (Booklist), complete with little-told details about the two men whose alliance was eased by none other than Annie Oakley. When Sitting Bull joined the Wild West, the event spawned one of the earliest advertising slogans: “Foes in ’76, Friends in ’85.” Cody paid his performers well, and he treated the Indians no differently from white performers. During this time, the Native American rights movement began to flourish. But with their way of life in tatters, the Lakota and others availed themselves of the chance to perform in the Wild West show. When Cody died in 1917, a large contingent of Native Americans attended his public funeral. An iconic friendship tale like no other, Blood Brothers is a timeless story of people from different cultures who crossed barriers to engage each other as human beings. Here, Stillman provides “an account of the tragic murder of Sitting Bull that’s as good as any in the literature…Thoughtful and thoroughly well-told—just the right treatment for a subject about which many books have been written before, few so successfully” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America's history Named One of the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2019 - Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine - Winner of the MPIBA Reading the West Book Award for narrative nonfiction "Turned many of the stories I thought I knew about our nation inside out."--Cornelia Channing, Paris Review, Favorite Books of 2019 "My favorite non-fiction book of this year."--Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opinion "A briliant, bold, gripping history."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019 "All nations deserve to have their stories told with this degree of attentiveness"--Parul Sehgal, New York Times This first complete account of the Lakota Indians traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty-first century. Pekka Hämäläinen explores the Lakotas' roots as marginal hunter-gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America's great commercial artery, and then--in what was America's first sweeping westward expansion--as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains. The Lakotas are imprinted in American historical memory. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. Hämäläinen's deeply researched and engagingly written history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.
"If that is Long Hair, I am the one who killed him," White Bull, the young nephew of Sitting Bull, said when Bad Juice pointed out Custer's body immediately after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Yet it was Sitting Bull who acquired the notoriety and was paraded in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as "the warrior who killed Custer." But this new edition of Stanley Vestal's classic biography of the famous chief emphasizes that "Sitting Bull's fame does not rest upon the death of Custer’s five troops. Had he been twenty miles away shooting antelope that morning, he would still remain the greatest of the Sioux." The stirring account of the death throes of a mighty nation and its leader is the story of the "greatest of the Sioux" and his struggle to keep his people free and united. The Sioux were formidable warriors, as attested to by men who fought against them, like General Anson Mills, who said, "They were the best cavalry in the world; their like will never be seen again," but they were up against an overwhelming tide of soldiers, homesteaders, and bureaucrats. Sitting Bull fought long and hard and "He was ... a statesman, one of the most farsighted we have had," but statesmanship could not prevail against such odds. This powerful biography of Sitting Bull is brought to a new generation of readers in h a new and expanded edition, for much new material had been added to the original edition (published in 1932) that could not be disclosed while the informants were still living. Sitting Bull is a moving account of the epic courage of one man in the face of his inevitable defeat as the last defender of his people's rights.
"Both fearless and compassionate, Father Francis Craft ministered to the Sioux for two decades during the turbulent years after Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford in 1881. After recovering from a severe injury at Wounded Kneed in 1890, he struggled to found and Indian order of nuns, and railed against government policies that, he contended, encouraged the corruption and degradation of Indians."-- Cover.
This study examines the development of ministry at the St. Francis and Holy Rosary missions in South Dakota. Using primary sources, this study seeks to understand the points of views of the Lakota Sioux Catholics during the 1920s and 1930s, and the Jesuit missionaries who reached them. It takes into particular account the patterns which develop in missiology.
The definitive, award-winning biography of the legendary chief and his dramatic role in the history of westward expansion Reviled by the United States government as a troublemaker and a coward, revered by his people as a great warrior chief, Sitting Bull has long been one of the most fascinating and misunderstood figures in American history. Distinguished historian Robert M. Utley has forged a compelling portrait of Sitting Bull, presenting the Lakota perspective for the first time and rendering the most unbiased, historically accurate, and vivid portrait of the man to date. The Sitting Bull who emerges in this fast-paced narrative is a complex, towering figure: a great warrior whose skill and bravery in battle were unparalleled; the spiritual leader of his people; a dignified but ultimately tragically stubborn defender of the traditional ways against the steadfast and unwelcome encroachment of the white man.
One week after the infamous June 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn, when news of the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry troops reached the American public, Sitting Bull became the most wanted hostile Indian in America. He had resisted the United States’ intrusions into Lakota prairie land for years, refused to sign treaties, and called for a gathering of tribes at Little Big Horn. He epitomized resistance. Sitting Bull’s role at Little Big Horn has been the subject of hundreds of historical works, but while Sitting Bull was in fact present, he did not engage in the battle. The conflict with Custer was a benchmark to the subsequent events. There are other battles than those of war, and the conflict between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James McLaughlin was one of those battles. Theirs was a fight over the hearts and minds of the Lakota. U.S. Government policy toward Native Americans after Little Big Horn was to give them a makeover as Americans after finally and firmly displacing them from their lands. They were to be reconstituted as Christian, civilized and made farmers. Sitting Bull, when forced to accept reservation life, understood who was in control, but his view of reservation life was very different from that of the Indian Bureau and its agents. His people’s birth right was their native heritage and culture. Although redrawn by the Government, he believed that the prairie land still held a special meaning of place for the Lakota. Those in power dictated a contrary view – with the closing of the frontier, the Indian was challenged to accept the white road or vanish, in the case of the Lakota, that position was given personification in the form of Agent James McLaughlin. This book explores the story within their conflict and offers new perspectives and insights.
**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Silver Winner for Western Biographies and Memoirs** Two Native American leaders who left a lasting legacy, Geronimo and Sitting Bull. Most Americans and many people worldwide have heard these two famous names. Today, however, the general public knows little about the lives of these great leaders. During the second half of the nineteenth century when they opposed white intrusion and expansion into their territories, just the mention of their names could spark fear or anger. After they surrendered to the army and lived in captivity, they evoked curiosity and sympathy for the plight of the American Indian. Author Bill Markley offers a thoughtful and entertaining examination of these legendary lives in this new joint biography of these two great leaders. .
