Every day in history is like a snowflake from heaven’s snowflake garden. It’s unique and it is fragile. Put it in your brain before it melts. This is what happened on July 20, 1881…  

Thanks to Sitting Bull’s exploits, the Lakota tribe will never need a word for “badass.” They can just say Sitting Bull, like when Patrick Swayze rips that guy’s larynx out with his bare hands in Roadhouse, totally Sitting Bull. Or if you see someone finishing a bowl soup with their hands, so Sitting Bull. Born Tatanka Iyotanka (which translates to describe a bull on its hind legs) in 1831, Sitting Bull spent most of his life in battle. He first fought against fellow Native American tribes then against the U.S. Army Calvary.

Warrior, holy man and hat model... Sitting Bull did it all...

After gold was discovered in the Black Hills, on Indian Reservations in the then Dakota Territory, the United States government reneged on contracts for the tribes to live there (the legal precedent used by the United States was “our bad.” The U.S. Government originally thought the land was godforsaken and not worth a buffalo nickel). Sitting Bull gathered his troops, let bygones be bygones, formed alliances with neighboring tribes and went down swinging. He is most famous for annihilating Colonel George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn.

After the victory, the United States government sent pretty much everyone in uniform to the Dakota Territory. The other tribes surrendered one-by-one and moved to reservations far from the Black Hills. Sitting Bull moved his tribe into Canada and refused to give up. He finally capitulated at Fort Buford in Montana on July 20, 1881 (at this point he didn’t have more than few hundred warriors and there were no more buffalo to eat thanks to white settlers). He had his son hand over his rifle after the commanding officer acknowledged he was the last man of his people to surrender.