Sitting Bull's War

The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fight for Buffalo and Freedom on the Plains

Paul L. Hedren

The dramatic story of America’s greatest Indian war told from perspective of the Lakotas and the Northern Cheyennes, as they fight for their way of life on the buffalo prairie.

In this deeply affecting account of America’s greatest Indian war, readers are quickly immersed in the world of Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes and their struggle in the 1870s to retain their lives on the buffalo prairie. Those impassioned Northern Indians faced a succession of white invaders—railroaders, borderland surveyors, prospectors, and ultimately the United States Army.

In the best of days they turned back George Crook at the Rosebud and wiped out George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn. But a dozen other clashes followed, and in the end these tradition-minded people could not endure the army’s endless hounding. Some fled to Canada to a luring if momentary exile, but in the end one and all faced starvation, submission, and, for some, death.

Personifying this traditional way of life was Sitting Bull, legendary Hunkpapa Lakota spiritualist. He was supported throughout by Crazy Horse, Spotted Eagle, Big Road, Little Wolf, and a host of other kindred traditional chiefs and headmen who, in turn, rallied thousands of like-minded men, women, and children. And yet, but for momentary glory against Crook and Custer, this was a war that could not be won.

Award-winning author Paul L. Hedren has spent ten years writing this great American epic. Utilizing an array of Lakota and Cheyenne accounts, pictographic renderings, and original interviews, this is the story of a people intent only on adhering to a traditional life on the buffalo prairie. The narrative is broad and inclusive and a welcome addition to the canon of American Indian wars history.

Paul L. Hedren is a retired National Park Service historian and superintendent whose thirty-seven-year career led him from Minnesota to Wyoming, Montana, Utah, North Dakota, and Nebraska.  His many books have received numerous honors, including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and multiple Best Book awards from the Little Big Horn Associates.  He is a lifelong student of the Great Sioux War, and he is often found exploring the trails, battlefields, back corners, and sacred sites of that intriguing 1870s Indian war. When not in the field, Paul resides in Omaha, Nebraska.  

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Sitting Bull's War:

"Paul Hedren's Sitting Bull’s War is a captivating read that’s both stirring and heartbreaking. In chronicling Sitting Bull's fierce resistance to white encroachment on the northern plains, Hedren masterfully draws upon a multitude of Lakota and Cheyenne accounts, providing fresh and welcome insights on the struggles and heroics of these freedom-loving peoples, as well as the ultimate tragedy of losing not just a war, but a deeply sacred way of life.” Mark Lee Gardner, author of the award-winning The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation

"Sitting Bull’s War is the kind of unique work that subsequent writers will depend upon for its encyclopedic grasp of people and geography within a large historical stage. I wish it had been around when I wrote about Black Elk. But it goes far beyond that. It flips the traditional point-of-view of events, so that you better understand—and even feel—the isolation and starvation that ultimately defeated the tribes in what historians often call the Great Sioux War. A book like this has been long needed.” Joe Jackson, author of Black Elk and THe Thief at the End of the World

Praise for Paul L. Hedren:

"This epic battle has finally found the great writer it needed in Paul Hedren, one of our finest chroniclers of the American West. With new sources, fresh insights, and a marvelous sense of story, this is the definitive work on the Battle of the Rosebud and the compelling cast of characters involved in it.” James Donovan on Rosebud, June 17, 1876: Prelude to the Little Big Horn

"Paul Hedren's previous works on the Sioux wars established his reputation as one of the finest historians working in this field. Rosebud elevates that reputation to new highs. This is truly the definitive history of the Rosebud.” Robert M. Utley on Rosebud, June 17, 1876: Prelude to the Little Big Horn

“Beautifully precise accounts of the confusion of battle, the onset of fear and panic, small errors with big consequences. From the battle's first shot, things went wrong, and Hedren, a historian at the top of his game, explains why. This is a model of military narrative at its most compelling.” Thomas Powers on Powder River: Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War

"Hedren's chronicle of the transformation of the northern plains in the wake of the Great Sioux War makes for essential reading. After Custer is at once compelling, moving, and richly rewarding.” Jerome A. Greene on After Custer: Loss and Transformation in Sioux County

"Fort Laramie's role in the Great Sioux War has been underestimated far too long. All of the major battles and many of the minor skirmishes fall into place because of Hedren's systematic approach and his thorough use of official records.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History on Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War

"With a fine sense of location, atmosphere, and historical perspective, Paul Hedren has chronicled the marches and countermarches of the "Dandy" Fifth Cavalry against the Cheyennes that led up to the skirmish on Warbonnet Creek, and then he has evaluated the significance of the campaign.” James T. king on First Scalp for Custer: The Skirmish at Warbonnet Creek, July 17, 1876