The Vision at Sun Dance

Holy Man and Chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota

You are Tatanka Iyotanka, Sitting Bull, holy man and chief of the Hunkpapa band of the Lakota Sioux. You have never signed a treaty. You have never lived on a reservation. When the wasichu took the Black Hills, the sacred Paha Sapa, you called for the people to gather, and they came. More came than anyone expected. The camp along the Greasy Grass is the largest you have ever seen, perhaps the largest any living person has seen. And then, at the sun dance, you offered one hundred pieces of your flesh and danced until the vision came. You saw soldiers falling upside down into the camp, their hats falling off, and you heard a voice saying they had no ears. You told the people, and hope spread like fire through dry grass. But you are worried. Some warriors, especially the young ones, want to ride out and attack. Others want to wait. Crazy Horse says little but prepares much. Gall mourns his murdered family and wants blood. And old Red Cloud, far away on the reservation, sends word that fighting is suicide. You must hold this alliance together with wisdom, because if the people scatter, they will be hunted down one band at a time.

The largest gathering of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people in living memory has assembled along the Little Bighorn River. Thousands of lodges stretch for miles along the valley floor. The people have come because the Black Hills have been stolen, because the reservation agents starve them, because something must be done. Sitting Bull's sun dance vision of soldiers falling upside down into camp has electrified the gathering. But visions must be interpreted, and the wrong interpretation could scatter the alliance before the soldiers arrive.