[RERUN] EPISODE 54 Sitting Bull (Part 1)

·2 hr 3 min·5 clips

Sitting Bull limped through a bullet wound to win a deadly duel and scalp a Crow chief.

Episode 54 starts with a promise. The host says this once-paywalled chapter is now free, then eases into Lakota history with the tone of someone returning to material he has lived with for a while. It is the first of five parts, and he says the whole thing runs well over ten hours in his memory because Sitting Bull, the Ghost Dance, and the larger Lakota story need the space. The mood is warm, then quickly heavy. Before the bigger wars arrive, the excerpt sits with intertribal fighting and the public courage that helped make Sitting Bull's name. A Crow chief steps out. Sitting Bull answers as a Strong Heart Society sash-bearer, and the scene has a stark, almost old-world feel: two armed men in the open, both sides watching. The weapons make it stranger. Muskets were still uncommon on the Plains in the 1850s, but both men have them. The Crow chief fires first from one knee. Sitting Bull's shield turns the shot down into his foot. He stays with it and fires back, hitting the Crow warrior. Then the scene gets uglier. He limps forward, finishes the fight with a knife, and takes the scalp. The host does not soften the world he is describing. The wound never really leaves him. Sitting Bull limps for life, yet later stories still talk about his speed, even on a reservation and even as a middle-aged man. There is a flash of dry humor too: after beating a cowboy in a foot race, he is said to have joked that a white man should not challenge a deer. The wider tragedy keeps closing in. The host moves from bravery to U.S. policy, the loss of the animals the tribes depended on, and the cold patience inside the Fort Laramie treaty logic. Waiting could do the work of conquest. Give goods, offer favorable terms, keep the tribes quiet, and let the food base collapse until everything could be taken with little fighting. But patience breaks. The ending points toward Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the U.S. Army meeting again in open war.

As heard by us

A patient Sitting Bull portrait that moves from duel and raid into the wider pressures closing in on Plains life.

History on Fire treats Sitting Bull as a man shaped by war, tribal rivalry, and the pressure of U.S. expansion. Daniele Bolelli guides the story with a calm hand, and the episode lingers on the duel with the Crow chief and the later Assiniboine raid.

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Why you'd press play

You want a long, vivid Sitting Bull story that starts with warriors and lands in Lakota history, where the stakes keep widening episode by episode.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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