I recently re-read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, historian Dee Brown’s history of nineteenth century Native Americans in the American West. Brown’s dispassionate tone contrasts sharply with the appalling and monstrous treatment of First Americans by white pioneers and settlers and, subsequently, the United States government.

Brown’s depictions of Chief Sitting Bull are particularly poignant, illustrating why the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man and war chief was revered by Native Americans, respected by many whites, and feared by legislators. His was an unambiguous, steely-eyed appraisal of white people as apt today as it was in 1877:

“The love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not. They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not. They even take the tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbor away […] If America had been twice the size it is, there still would not have been enough.”

Robert Blaisdell, Ed. Great Speeches by Native Americans

Sitting Bull’s popularity caused so much fear in the U.S. Senate and Congress that leaders realized the need to marginalize him. They persuaded “Wild Bill” Cody to get Sitting Bull to accompany him on a tour of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which they thought would distract Sitting Bull and silence his criticisms. Of course, their ploy didn’t work. Sitting Bull gave away all the money he earned during the show tour, focusing on relieving the suffering of the poor white children, women, and men who hovered outside the shows, begging for leftover food or anything charity might bestow. ¹

When asked why he gave all his money away to poor whites when white people had treated the Indians so abominably, Sitting Bull replied, “The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.” ² He saw the terrible chasm between the rich and poor as an unparalleled evil and demonstrated how to end poverty.

Shortly after leaving the Wild West show, Sitting Bull was murdered during a struggle between his supporters and the government police who sought to arrest him. His life, wisdom, and death continue to be rebukes to the “American Way of Life.”

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endnotes

1. Sitting Bull was paid $50 weekly for his performances, the 2024 equivalent of $1,614 weekly during an era when the average working person earned about $650 annually. ↩︎
2. Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. Holt, 2007. ↩︎

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references & resources

Blaisdell. Robert (Ed.) Great Speeches by Native Americans. NY: Dover, 2000.

Cools, Amy. “The Love of Possessions is a Disease with Them.” Ordinary Philosophy, 2017.

Did Buffalo Bill Visit Your Town? A comprehensive country/state listing of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s tour destinations. Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, 2010.

Liang, Z.S. Sitting Bull’s Kindness, 2016.

^{Sitting Bull, by D. F. Barry, ca. 1883}

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art by Z. S. Liang, Sitting Bull’s Kindness, 2016.
used by permission of the artist
^{Ⓒ 2016 z. s. Liang
liangstudio.com}

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