Sitting Bull - the name

Indian legends often tell the story of the high regard which native peoples held animals. Sitting Bull is a great example. Sioux oral history states that his father, after hearing a nearby buffalo bull bellowing took this as a sign. He chose this sign to made four names from, Sitting Bull, Lone Bull, Jumping Bull and Standing Bull.

Wyoming Buffalo

He then used the first and what he considered the most powerful name, Sitting Bull as his own name. But when his 14 year old son showed exceptional bravery counting his first coup, his father gave away that name to his son, who would become the great Sitting Bull of history books and the Wild West Show. Sitting Bull’s father lived out the rest of his life as another of his four names, Lone Bull.

Sitting Bull

Fort Laramie Council of 1866

After the famous Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and before the second Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868 came an important but less know event, The Council of 1866.

Parade Grounds at Fort Laramie

During this meeting between soldiers and nearly 2,000 Sioux Col. Henry B. Carrington showed up, with his men, on their way to establish a series of forts on the Bozeman Trail. The forts, soon to become, Reno, Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith in Montana ruined any chance at peace the meeting had. The Indian delegation wanted the whites out of the Bozeman trail area, not more forts, and more soldiers.

 Housing at the Fort

Modern Day Camp on the Laramie River, near the site of Sioux Camp in 1866

Red Cloud accused the whites of treachery and left the meeting. The treaty of 1868 did little to appease the feelings of the tribes, and within a decade the Indian wars were at their height in Wyoming and the west.