Essay prompt:
Who was Sitting Bull and should he be admired or hated?
Title of essay answer: “What Would Sitting Bull Do?”
The question, as asked, is intended as a parallel to “What would George Washington do?”
This was a way of furthering the moral education of boys and girls in the early 1800’s: to ask them to judge the propriety of any of their own contemplated actions by invoking the life story of George Washington, General of the Continental Army and first president of these United States of America.
If an American citizen or soldier ever fought with the tenacity, courage, and ferocity of Sitting Bull, he would be lauded forever. Honors and accolades would shower down upon him in his lifetime and beyond. Honors would be heaped upon him and awards without number. The most precious medals would be his.
To show the depth of popular admiration and respect, statues would be erected; schools, parks, and libraries would bear his name. Indeed, George Washington achieved a spot in the hall of fame of great Americans where permanent reverence will always be due to him and his descendants. He is the “Father of His Country.”
Where are the expressions of the respect and honor due Sitting Bull?
HIS REPUTATION
Sitting Bull at one time was reviled as a violent savage who lustfully killed whites, the leader who decimated Custer and his men. The restoration of his reputation began in his own lifetime as he traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and ordinary Americans finally got to see him as a human being.
His reputation has improved even more among those thoughtful Americans who have taken the time to read about his life. He was a powerful leader among his own people, noted for his many strong qualities of courage and wisdom . . . but thus always the twisting of history writ by the conquerors. Despite occasional victories, the Native American tribes could not withstand for long the onslaught of European-Americans invading their lands.
WHO GETS TO WRITE THE HISTORY?
The side with superior weaponry and numbers gets to write the history of events. They wrote this history to favor themselves while the losers became sacrificial scapegoats, the evil enemy. The Indians fell prey to every kind of derogatory racist utterance imaginable, some too vile to bear repeating.
To hear Americans tell the story, it was always them who were in danger; always them who were victims; always them who were forced to fight to defend themselves against uncivilized packs of marauding Indians no better than sub-human brutes. They needed their horses, knives, swords, ammunition, pistols, rifles, wagons, forts, cannon, and other forms of artillery to defend against attack!
THE HISTORY OF A LIE
This lie began way back in the early 1600’s and had grown to stupendous proportions by 250 years later. As the Americans were on the verge of completing their conquest of the entire continent after having decimated one tribe after tribe, they were still the “endangered” ones. The Apaches, the Modoc, and the Nez Perce (Arizona, California, and Washington) were now the dangerous ones. You would think that after a conquest that has moved more than 2,500 miles westward, the Americans might have gained some inkling by then that they were wiping out the Native Americans and not the other way around!
When the conquest of the especially stubborn Sioux did not proceed rapidly enough to suit them, Americans slaughtered literally millions of buffalo to help speed the starvation-induced surrender of the Sioux and Plains tribes that had depended on the buffalo for their way of life.
No wonder the settlers and soldiers hated Sitting Bull with such intensity, because here—at the end of their century-long rampaging continental conquest—emerged an uncompromising Indian patriot as honest and brave as any man could be.
HOAX AND RUSE: THE DOUBLE STANDARD
The Whites had to practice the most horrific double standard of morality ever conceived to try and justify their rapacious appetite for land. Many of these aggressors were self-proclaimed god-fearing men who knew the Bible, or so they said. Both the Bible and the laws of the land seemed to indicate it was wrong for one man to rob, beat, or kill another—but somehow that became inverted and twisted during the Great Continental Conquest to read it was wrong for an Indian but all right for a White man.
Thou shalt not kill” was still true…unless it was a white man killing an Indian. The poor Indians not only had to deal with murderous evil on a scale not imaginable within their own moral code of conduct, but they had to endure all the lies born of this monstrous hypocrisy and deadly duplicity.
GENOCIDE
This near-genocidal maniacal behavior was defended by white conquerors as ordained by their god. The robbery, assaults, beatings, rapes, and murders of Native Americans were thus somehow “justified”. Yes, that was a taste of the much heralded religion the “superior” races of Europe were bringing to the poor savages! No wonder the Indians had so much confusion and fear when it came to trying to understand both the white man and his “Christianity.” They were witnessing the worst of the worst!
A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK
Sitting Bull came from a society with cultural practices that were far more stable, democratic, and egalitarian than that found in either Europe or America. He came from a society with moral and spiritual principles more refined than those of the invaders—and yet, like all other Indians, he had to swallow the bitter dregs of seeing his own people’s character constantly and viciously maligned.
Everything about the Indian way of life was endlessly ridiculed; everything about their belief systems was treacherously misrepresented. He had to endure seeing his people’s life-style, culture, and values trampled into the mud again and again by the spokesmen for “progress” and “civilization”: code words for the insatiable hunger for Indian lands through theft, threat, treachery, and bloody violence.
LOOKING BACK
What does the name Sitting Bull mean, or what should it mean to the next generation of Americans who may one day be able to learn of this man’s life in a more open-minded, enlightened fashion that we ourselves are capable of doing? Sitting Bull’s name should mean: “SHAME ON THE AMERICANS! SHAME ON THEIR LIES!!”
His name should mean understanding that point in history where the lie triumphed over truth–where everything normal, moral, and free transformed into its opposite. His name should mean an honest accounting of the hypocrisy, deceit, broken promises, destroyed lives and destroyed spirits that colored every aspect of the White Man’s treatment of the Indian from the earliest years until the present moment.
Sitting Bull should be a hero to all Americans for his courage, honesty, and dedication to fighting for his land and for the freedom of his people for as long as he could. Only the continuing legacy of vicious anti-Indian hatred prevents him from taking his proper place in history’s hall of fame where the greatest Americans are honored.
The presence of this hatred still casts a long shadow, to say nothing of the never-ending exploitation of Indian lives and lands where the powerful and greedy refuse to do what is morally right, even to this day. Americans can sympathize with Indians but they can never quite bring themselves to say simply: “We were wrong.”
RESTORING THE TRUTH
If any other American were credited with all that Sitting Bull did and said to defend his people, he would occupy a place equal to, if not higher than, George Washington himself. That may appear to some to be a shocking statement but for those of us who take the time to read and study truthful history, it does not appear to be an exaggerated claim in the end.
Sitting Bull is my role model, my hero, my ancestor from the past who foreshadows my future, guards my spirit, and places me on my path. His spirit lives!
Stanley Vestal: thank you for opening my eyes!
James Walsh’s last reflection on Sitting Bull:
“I am glad to hear that Bull is relieved of his miseries even if it took the bullet to do it. A man who wields such power as Bull once did, that of a king, and over a wild, spirited people, cannot endure abject poverty, slavery and beggary without suffering great mental pain . . . and death is a relief.
“Bull’s confidence and belief in the Great Spirit were stronger than I ever saw it in any other man. He trusted Him implicitly . . .
“History does not tell us that a greater leader than Bull ever lived. He was the Mohammed of his people; the law made him the king of the Sioux.
“I regret now that I had not gone to Standing Rock to see him. There were one or two things I would like to have spoken to him about before he died.
“Bull has been misrepresented. He was not the bloodthirsty man reports from the prairie made him out to be. He asked for nothing but justice. He did not want to be a beggar or a slave . . . .
“Bull, in council and war, was a king of his people. To his superior intelligence in council and his generalship in war every man in his nation bowed. It is a calumny to say he was a coward, or that he ever ran away from a fight . . . .
“This man, that so many look upon as a bloodthirsty villain, would make many members of the Christian faith ashamed of their doubts and weakness in their faith of their god. If they knew him in his true character—he was not a cruel man, he was kind of heart; he was not dishonest, he was truthful. He loved his people and was glad to give his hand in friendship to any man who believed he was not an enemy and was honest with him. But Bull experienced so much treachery, that he did not know who to trust . . . .
“The war between the U.S. and Bull was a strange one. A nation against one man. On the U.S. side there were numbers; on Bull’s side there was principle. The one man was murdered by the nation to destroy the principle he advocated—that no man against his will should be forced to be a beggar. Bull was the marked man of his people.”
–Tony Hollihan, Sitting Bull in Canada, “Epilogue”, pp. 287-88, letter from Major James Morrow Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police, Canada.
