Native American Icon: Lakota Leader Sitting Bull Pedestal Sign

Native American Icon: Lakota Leader Sitting Bull: The iron horse screeched to a halt, spewing steam into the unfamiliar D.C. air. Sitting Bull, his weathered face etched with the wisdom of a hundred battles, stepped off, his beaded buckskins a stark contrast to the starched suits bustling around him. Though years of confinement at Fort Randall had dimmed his fire, his eyes, like chips of obsidian, still held the glint of a warrior, a leader who had united the Lakota tribes against encroaching white settlers. -- He was Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota chief, a holy man who communed with the Great Spirit, and a warrior whose name sent shivers down the spines of Custer's men at Little Bighorn. His victory there, a defiant roar against forced assimilation, had shaken the very foundation of American westward expansion. Now, a reluctant guest in the halls of power, he was here to fight a different kind of battle; a battle of words and treaties, a desperate attempt to secure a future for his people on their ancestral lands. -- The photographer, a young man with nervous sweat clinging to his brow, bustled about, setting up his contraption; a strange, black box with a single, accusing eye. A painted backdrop with ostentatious columns filled the studio, a poor substitute for the endless expanse of the Dakota sky Sitting Bull yearned for. He endured the clicks and flashes, the indignity of the moment a small price to pay for the sake of his people. This portrait, a token of an uneasy truce, would forever link the Lakota leader to the very halls he'd defied. It would serve as a reminder – a reminder of his fight, of the promises whispered in these echoing halls, promises that could bring hope or spell a hollow victory for the Lakota nation. -- Thathaŋka Iyotake "Sitting Bull" 1831 to December 15, 1890. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published