Historical Events of Note During Chief Iron Nation’s Lifetime

Sitting Bull was born into the Hunkpapa Sioux Tribe in 1831 near modern-day Yankton, South Dakota.

Indians were forced to relocate from their homelands. The main tribes affected by this were the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw. The path these tribes were forced to travel led to widespread disease, starvation, and exhaustion. Thousands died on this travel.

Crazy Horse was born around 1842 into the Oglala Lakota tribe near modern-day Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, signed by Millard Fillmore, moved western tribes onto reservations. These were the first Indian reservations to be made in the U.S.

Tensions between settlers and Indians were running extremely high when this treaty was signed which was meant to establish peace. White travelers continuously passed through defined Indian territories and ignored the treaty, and Indian raids continued.

Signed at Fort Sully, this treaty established the first Lower Brule Reservation around the mouth of the White River.

This treaty created the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation, which included the Black Hills.

Commonly referred to as “Custer’s Last Stand”, this is one of the most famous battles between Americans and Indians. The battle, which occurred June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s army was outsmarted by a coalition of Indian Tribes.

Crazy Horse is killed by a U.S. soldier while resisting arrest at the age of 37.

Indian police arrest Sitting Bull at 6:00 in the morning, hoping to spirit him away before his guards and neighbors knew what happened. The 59-year-old chief refuses to go quietly, and a crowd forms. Someone fires a shot that hits one of the Indian police; they retaliate by shooting Sitting Bull in the chest and head, killing him instantly. Before the ensuing gunfight ended, twelve more Indians died and three were wounded.

In the final chapter of America’s Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills over 150 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in 1890.