IT is not easy to characterize Sitting Bull, of all Sioux chiefs
most generally known to the American people. There are few to whom
his name is not familiar, and still fewer who have learned to
connect it with anything more than the conventional notion of a
bloodthirsty savage. The man was an enigma at best. He was not
impulsive, nor was he phlegmatic. He was most serious when he
seemed to be jocose. He was gifted with the power of sarcasm, and
few have used it more artfully than he.

His father was one of the best-known members of the Unkpapa
band of Sioux. The manner of this man's death was characteristic.
One day, when the Unkpapas were attacked by a large war party of
Crows, he fell upon the enemy's war leader with his knife. In a
hand-to-hand combat of this sort, we count the victor as entitled
to a war bonnet of trailing plumes. It means certain death to one
or both. In this case, both men dealt a mortal stroke, and Jumping
Buffalo, the father of Sitting Bull, fell from his saddle and died
in a few minutes. The other died later from the effects of the
wound.

Sitting Bull's boyhood must have been a happy one. It was
long after the day of the dog-travaux, and his father owned many
ponies of variegated colors. It was said of him in a joking way
that his legs were bowed like the ribs of the ponies that he rode
constantly from childhood. He had also a common nickname that was
much to the point. It was "Hunkeshnee", which means "Slow",
referring to his inability to run fast, or more probably to the
fact that he seldom appeared on foot. In their boyish games he was
wont to take the part of the "old man", but this does not mean that
he was not active and brave. It is told that after a buffalo hunt