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The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull

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Robert Utley writes in his introduction to "The Lance and the Shield" that it was Stanley Vestal who wrote the definitive biography of Lakota statesman, medicine man, and warrior chief Sitting Bull. Vestal conducted field research in the 1930's, talking to Lakotas who actually knew and lived along side Sitting Bull before his death in 1890. Utley argues that his biography, which borrows heavily on Vestal's research, is necessary because Vestal failed to take into account Lakota culture and lifestyles when crafting his biography. Utley aims to remedy this deficiency with this readable account of Sitting Bull's life and times.

The first chapters introduce Sitting Bull in the context of Lakota culture and lifestyle. According to Utley, there are four main virtues that every Lakota must embody in some form if they are to become productive members of their tribe. These virtues are generosity, fortitude, bravery, and wisdom. Sitting Bull showed unusually high competence in all of these traits at an exceptionally young age. Even more important, Utley shows the reader how Sitting Bull often exhibited these traits not to advance himself and his own interests, but to help others in his family and tribe. By the time Sitting Bull was a young man his reputation as an archetype Lakota led some to invoke his name as a battle cry in order to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy.

After Utley lays down the cultural context of Sitting Bull and Lakota society, he embarks on a detailed history of Sitting Bull's activities during the chaotic years of the 1860s and 1870s, when the Lakotas faced increasing competition for land resources from whites and other Indian tribes. This is where Utley's theme of the "lance" and the "shield" come into play. At various times, Utley argues, Sitting Bull adopted a warlike stance towards his enemies (the lance); at other times he took a defensive position (the shield). What does become clear in Utley's book is that as time goes by, even conservatives like Sitting Bull recognized the lance was useless against the whites. Whites had guns and endless ammunition, cannons, and overwhelming numbers. This made it extremely difficult for the Lakotas to successfully withstand the encroachment of their lands. Even following the bison further west made no long-term difference in the problems the Lakotas faced because whites moved west with them.

After the Battle of the Little Bighorn came the deluge, when a decision made at the highest levels of the American government led to an unrelenting war against the Lakota until they surrendered and moved onto reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska. Sitting Bull refused to move to a reservation. For him, the life of a sedentary reservation Indian spelled death for Lakota spiritual, cultural, and lifestyle ways. The government didn't share Sitting Bull's views; they hunted him and his bands relentlessly, eventually forcing Sitting Bull into Canada in order to escape the wrath of his old enemies in the United States Army. Sitting Bull's Canadian exile is discussed in great depth, with an emphasis on how Sitting Bull's presence in Canada strained relations between the United States and Canadian governments.

The last part of the book concerns the warrior's eventual surrender to the American military, his stay in a military prison, and his life on the reservation. It was during his stay on the reservation that Sitting Bull met up with his nemesis, Indian agent James McLaughlin. A heated debate rages over McLaughlin's role in Sitting Bull's death, but what isn't debatable is the agent's dislike for Sitting Bull. In letters, notes, and memos McLaughlin tirelessly assails Sitting Bull as a stubborn, troublemaking, and recalcitrant Indian. Utley argues that the reverse is true, that Sitting Bull actually followed the ways of a reservation Indian. Sitting Bull lived in a house, planted crops, and supported sending Lakota children to local schools run by non-Lakotas. Sitting Bull did reject Christianity, preferring to remain loyal to Lakota spiritual ways, but overall Sitting Bull caused little trouble for the reservation authorities.

This all changed when the ghost dance began. The increasing problems of reservation Indians lent itself to this eschatological movement. The ghost dance promised paradise and a return to the old ways, providing a much-needed reassurance to displaced Indians stuck on bleak reservations. Sitting Bull found himself caught up in this movement when the ghost dance arrived on his reservation. Utley argues Sitting Bull's actions towards the ghost dance reflected his role as a Lakota chief, in that he tried to find out more about the dancing and what it meant so he could advise his people about what actions they should take towards the phenomenon. The reservation agency headed by McLaughlin panicked about the ghost dance and worried about possible violence resulting from the activity. In an effort to stop the dancing, McLaughlin issued an order for the arrest of Sitting Bull, sending the reservation police to make the arrest. Unfortunately, this police force consisted of Indians, some of whom had beefs with Sitting Bull. In the midst of carrying out McLaughlin's order, Sitting Bull and several others died in a shootout.

Utley casts a wide net with his sources, utilizing government documents, books, testimonials, and letters. This gives Utley's book greater balance, even if he does tend to stray into moral judgments that have no place in a history book. His inclusion of numerous maps also helps the reader navigate the endless references to rivers, forts, plains, and agencies referenced in the book.

"The Lance and the Shield" is a book for both historians and the general reader. Even those with zero knowledge of Sitting Bull will learn many fascinating things about this Lakota war chief who dedicated his entire life in service to his people.

This book brings Sitting Bull alive and takes into account many of the considerations that went into the life of Sitting Bull and the Nation Building ambitions of the emerging United States. The beginning seems slow as Sitting Bull's early life is largely intertribal warfare with Crows, but once the railroad starts intruding on Indian lands it becomes much more interesting as the complexity of diplomacy and war is examined from all angles.

The best part is the end where the tension between modernity and Plains Indians creates a conflict between Sitting Bull and the Indian agent assigned to him. The by-no-means inevitable death of Sitting Bull at the hands of tribal police chiefs echoes in eery ways the handling of Pine Ridge by Dicky Wilson in the 70s when assassination was commonplace.

I have a test for any biography. If the biography is over and you feel like you know the subject then it's well written. I rank Robert Utley up with Alison Weir as one of the best historians of our time.

One of the best written biographies I have ever read, and certainly one of the best ever written about any of the central figures of the Indian wars of the late 19th century. I plan on picking up a copy of Mr. Utley's biography of Custer, as well.

This book is a moving, and sympathetic portrait of a man who fought an impossible war against the forces of manifest destiny that were set against his people. I felt I really got to know Sitting Bull as a man, and as a leader. His spirit of resistance is unquestionably admirable. This is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand just how much was lost by the Lakota, and the Indian people, in the rush of white's towards the "frontier". The spirit of the Lakota leader is on par with any of the great "white" heroes of western european history. Sitting Bull is perhaps, along with Crazy Horse and Chief Joseph, one of the greatest leaders, and Americans, that this country ever produced. Mr. Utley's portrait of him paints his life's picture with pretty vivid colors, and textures. The tragic circumstances of his last years, and his death, are heartbreaking.

Definitely worth the read if you love the American West, and the American Indian people.

I've read this book several times, and am amazed each time. Utley is a terrific writer and historian, as he provides the reader with a complex and vivid "picture" of Sitting Bull and his times. Drawing on a variety of sources, both Indian and white, we come to understand Sitting Bull's struggle for his people through witnessing his childhood, relationships with his fellow Lakota (both Hunkpappa and other tribes), conflict with the whites, travels with Buffalo Bill (his sympathy for poor whites he encountered in the eastern cities is esp. telling), and his murder at the hands of Indian police and a paranoid Indian agent. One of the best biographies I've read.

Robert Utley, a noted historian, has written an excellent biography on this famous Lakota titled The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. Utley's monograph depicts Sitting Bull as an influential Lakota, true to his people and his culture. Before The Lance and the Shield, Stanley Vestal's book, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux, was the premiere work. However, as Utley expresses, Vestal's work is often more literary than historical. Given today's trends in historiography, students needed a new text, one with thorough documentation and a more clear writing style. Utley has created an exceptional text that equals his previous writing successes.

Utley uses two metaphorical approaches to chronicle Sitting Bull's life--the Lance and the Shield and the Four Cardinal Virtues. Utley suggests that Sitting Bull's life can be easily viewed in two different roles, a defensive one (shield) and an offensive one (lance); careful and concise description shows how Sitting Bull continually sought to defend and protect his people, militarily and politically. The Lakotas value Four Cardinal Virtues above all others: bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. Sitting Bull personified these ideals through his dealings with family, friends, and even enemies. Because Sitting Bull lived such a virtuous life, he achieved great influential power among his people and even among other Plains nations.

Utley's bias clearly lies with the Lakota people. However, his writing style is clear and factual, so usually the reader does not get the impression of overwhelming bias toward the Native Americans, after all, we hear of their faults and shortcomings too. Utley says that this more realistic image of Sitting Bull reveals his greatness because of what he represented, the spirit of the Lakota people. (Rebecca McMurrin)

Utley has written a fascinating account of the life of Sitting Bull, perhaps the best known and certainly one of the most influential chiefs of the Sioux Indians. Relying substantially on interviews of Sitting Bull's contemporaries conducted by Professor Walter Stanley Campbell in the 1920s and 1930s, Utley also draws upon other Indian and Anglo accounts and a wealth of military documentation.

Sitting Bull was born in the 1830s, probably 1831, and probably at Many Caches in what became Dakota Territory. His father Sitting Bull was chief of the Hunkpapa tribe of the Sioux nation. Notwithstanding his lineage, the activities and lessons of his youth were the same as those of other young Hunkpapas. He learned to pray, fight, and live according to Sioux principles. By the time he was a young man, he had surpassed nearly everyone, peers and elders alike, in those capacities. His faith in Lakota spirituality was unshakeable; his fighting capability, including the extent of his bravery, was the greatest of the Hunkpapas, and ultimately would become the greatest of the Sioux nation; and he lived with concern not for himself but for his people, generous to the point of poverty. In the mid-1850s, he became a Wichasha Wakan, or someone with the gift of periodical prophesy through dreams and visions. Among the best known of these would be his stunningly accurate prediction of Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn.

Sitting Bull's first interactions with white people came in trade. The Hunkpapas would exchange buffalo robes with French Canadians for firearms and metal tools. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 would mark the beginning of new, less friendly relations with whites. Terms of the treaty were much too difficult for either party to uphold, precipitating the conflict that would last until Wounded Knee nearly forty years later. In fairly short order, the Sioux would realize that the arrival of whites necessitated a war if they were to survive as a people. At this point, Sitting Bull became almost literally and certainly figuratively the lance of his people, employing his favorite weapon in leading his warriors in battle. By 1868, however, fractures were apparent in the never particularly cohesive Sioux nation, and many Sioux chiefs thought of accepting the whites' offer of a reservation. Sitting Bull and several others, most notably Crazy Horse, refused to consider abandoning the free life the Sioux had always led, choosing instead to live free or die trying. Gradually, however, those who felt as did Sitting Bull dwindled in number, unable to survive the war of attrition the whites fought and the decline of the buffalo. In the early 1870s Sitting Bull, now about forty by most accounts, completed Utley's metaphor by becoming the shield for his people. His exceptional prowess as a warrior had granted him the loyalty of and leadership over many Sioux peoples beyond even his own Hunkpapas. Growing older, however, he increasingly, although grudgingly, turned over the actual fighting to younger warriors and became a leader of his people in faith and life.

In 1877, following devastating winters and defeats, Sitting Bull led what remained of his followers into Canada. Having gained freedom from American persecution, he then tried to keep his people alive even as the buffalo continued to disappear. Notwithstanding good relations with some of the Canadian troops, and generally favorable arrangements, he created political difficulties for Canada. Besides pushing aside existing Canadian Indians, his presence also impaired Canada's relationship with the United States. Canada then pressured him to leave, and partly as a result of this pressure, but more because the buffalo had vanished and his people were starving, Sitting Bull returned to the United States in 1881 and surrendered.

His life thereafter was a mixture of the remarkable and the mundane. At various times he lived on a reservation, resided in jail, and toured the country as a kind of national sensation, the latter most famously with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Throughout he continued to push for the rights of his people and the return of their native lands, even though his followers grew fewer and fewer. Having once been among the greatest warriors in the history of the Sioux, then having ascended further into the unprecedented position of leadership over the Sioux nation, he struggled with subordination to white peoples he considered well beneath him. For nine years he accumulated enemies--both white and Indian--and lost followers as a result of his vanity and pride. Furthermore, even if he would not realize it, life had changed for the Sioux people, and he was no longer a respected spokesperson. In December of 1890 he was murdered by his own people during a botched arrest, which itself was to have been an artificial means of removing him from the scene. Largely considered a disgrace to the Sioux, he was buried with no honor whatsoever, and his actual gravesite remains unknown even today.

Utley's biography is an exceptional piece of history. His greatest challenge throughout was providing a scholarly biography of a man from a completely different culture, without letting his own culture seep in. In that, he succeeds admirably. His second greatest challenge was the lack of primary source material on the pre-white days of his subject; the Sioux did not keep written records, and later white interviewers were not interested in recording such relatively dull facts as comprised Sitting Bull's early life. Utley adroitly maneuvers around this substantial obstacle by telling the story of the Sioux nation as best it is known, thereby providing a foundation from which would spring the Sitting Bull of middle-aged life about whom much was recorded. A brilliant approach, and one not easily carried off. Utley does it as flawlessly as one possibly can. Furthermore, although his approach was to build his biography by historical methods as opposed to the methods of literature his predecessor Campbell employed, his book remains as readable as popular western fiction. The prose is so fluid and the story so gripping, one ought to be forgiven if one forgets he is reading nonfiction. From an academic perspective, this book is of value to scholars on Sitting Bull for obvious reasons, but also for those needing a factual foundation for Sioux culture and its interplay with white invaders. Therefore, I heartily recommend this book to all readers, regardless of background.

I highly recommend this history. Utley is an accomplished and prolific writer of the US Western experience. This may be his best work. He brings the Sioux holy man to life as a complete person that the readers can meet and understand. The fact that Utley has a thorough command of the historical events that surround Sitting Bull makes this complete work of history and biography. If you're looking for a biography of Sitting Bull this is the place to come. If you're looking for a good history of the West during this time period Utley's book will serve you well too.

I found this book to be utterly compelling, and had difficulty in putting it down once I started reading it. The author obviously has a great affection for Sitting Bull, but this in no way detracts from it. Along with 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' it gives you a graphic description of the treatment that was meted out to the indigeonous people of North America. For someone like myself who has an interest in North American history, but has never had the opportunity to visit the place, Uttley's book is invaluable reference, and I would definetely recommend it to anyone, especially on this side of the Atlantic.

Ever since my childhood, I have always been enamored of the Native Indians. It wasn't the Indian of the Cowboy tv shows where they were portrayed as idiots or savages ~~ but as the people who were close to nature and the spiritual world.

This book does not disappoint. This is a very concise portrayal of Sitting Bull from an author who took great pains to portray Sitting Bull as how the Indians viewed him and as how as the Whites viewed him. He didn't allow his emotions cloud the facts ~~ it was very obvious that he took time to research the facts and present them without boring the reader to tears. He showed Sitting Bull as the greatest Sioux leader of all time and how he worked to unite the Lakotas and the Hunkpapas as well as other Indian nations together to defeat the White invasion. He also presented the facts that allowed the readers to be aware of why the Indian battles were a losing cause ~~ simply because there were more of the Whites coming. There were not enough Indians to keep populating the land.

This is one of the most in-depth research I've read and enjoyed on any Indian leader. This one goes beyond Sitting Bull and talk about the problems the Indians faced ~~ and yes, it does have some moments in there where you just allow your emotions to override the story ~~ Sitting Bull may not have had it easy but he sure didn't make it easy for the US military or the Indian agents on the reservations. He gave back as good as he could ~~ and he never quit fighting for his people. He is admirable not only as a man, but as a leader. This is definitely a worth-while reading for anyone who is interested in history ~~ especially Native American Indian history.

6-26-04

I read this book after reading Dee Brown's _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_. If you've read the this book, you know that while it was certainly accurate, it was also written to be clearly sympathetic to the native Americans. There is no harm in this; Dee Brown was writing in response to decades of anti-native American popular culture that portrayed all Indians as bandits and murderers. The Indians deserved a fair shake.

_The Lance and the Shield_ is a very different book, written from a balanced point of view. Make no mistake, Sitting Bull was a hard man (I'm tempted to capitalize that as Hard Man). He was, by Western definition, an unrepentant soldier in the preservation of his tribe, who would not think twice about killing those who opposed his cause. What is astonishing about this book is that Mr. Utley is able to describe the rift between the native Americans and the settlers in such stark terms, without resorting to sympathy for either side. Sitting Bull's intensity is portrayed without apology or amelioration. At the same time, the failures of the US government in dealing with the Indian problem are presented as fact without trying to put them in a positive or negative light.

_The Lance and the Shield_ presents two dramatically opposed sides, without pandering to either one, and the final collision of the two points of view that resulted in Sitting Bull's murder. That's an impressive achievement.