Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader. He was born into a prominent Hunkpapa Lakota family between the years of 1831-1837, near the confluence of the Grand and Missouri Rivers in present-day South Dakota. His father and two of his uncles were chiefs within the tribe. Sitting Bull became an accomplished hunter and warrior, and by the time he killed his first buffalo at the age of ten, he was already demonstrating the four cardinal Lakota virtues of bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. He was a member of several societies like the Kit Fox Warrior Society and the Midnight Strong Heart Society.

Sitting Bull was a vocal member of the camp that insisted on avoiding relationships of commerce and diplomacy with the encroaching white world. He avoided white settlements and forts nearly altogether until the 1880s. He was heavily involved in the Lakotas struggle for identity during the 1850s.

Sitting Bull was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.