Sitting Bull Fleeing West: Lakota Seek Safety in Canada

Sitting Bull crossed the international boundary into Saskatchewan with roughly 5,000 Lakota people in May 1877, and the greatest military leader the Plains nations had produced became a refugee. The man whose coalition had destroyed Custer's command at Little Bighorn less than a year earlier chose exile over surrender, leading his followers north into the land they called "Grandmother's Country" after Queen Victoria. The flight followed months of relentless pursuit by Colonel Nelson Miles and the U.S. Army's winter campaign across Montana Territory. After Little Bighorn, the army adopted a strategy of attrition, attacking Lakota and Cheyenne camps in freezing weather, destroying food stores and horse herds, and forcing band after band to surrender. Crazy Horse gave up in May 1877. Sitting Bull, unwilling to accept reservation life, gathered those who refused to submit and moved north. The Canadian government, through the North-West Mounted Police, assigned Major James Moresby Walsh to manage the situation. Walsh developed an unlikely respect for Sitting Bull and advocated for the Lakota's right to remain. The Canadian position was legally precarious: Britain's territory had no obligation to shelter American fugitives, but the Lakota had committed no crime under Canadian law and had historical ties to the northern plains. Life in exile was brutal. The buffalo herds that the Lakota depended on were rapidly disappearing on both sides of the border. Canadian authorities refused to provide rations or grant reservation land, viewing the American refugees as a temporary problem. Starvation became chronic. Smaller groups peeled away and returned south to surrender throughout 1878 and 1879. Sitting Bull held out longer than anyone. He finally crossed back into the United States and surrendered at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, on July 19, 1881, with 186 followers, the last significant band of free Lakota. He told the commanding officer he wished to be remembered as "the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle." The government sent him to the Standing Rock Reservation, where he was killed by Indian police in December 1890.