Sitting Bull's Cabin Site

Indian Country

The road to Sitting Bull's cabin site is well off the beaten path. You might say it's as far from Indian Agent James McLaughlin as was possible when Sitting Bull picked it for his final home. A good forty miles from the agency headquarters of Standing Rock, it is probably no coincidence Sitting Bull built his cabin here with the assured solitude that the Grand River offered.

But Sitting Bull wasn't alone at Grand River. He had two wives and was raising young children and many other Hunkpapa Lakotas joined him in establishing the Sitting Bull village. When Kicking Bear and Short Bull introduced the Ghost Dance to the tribe, Sitting Bull watched with reserved and detached indifference when it came to his village. Alarmed and frustrated at failed efforts to contain the dancing, James McLauglin took desperate measures to stop it by plotting to have Sitting Bull arrested, which of course ended in Sitting Bull's tragic death.

The white stone marker on the site of the cabin pays tribute to Sitting Bull and the seven ghost dancers who died trying to defend him. Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates, ND which at that time was a U.S. Army Post and is currently the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Reservation. The cabin itself was dismantled and reassembled as an exhibit at the Worlds Fair (Columbian Exposition) held in Chicago in 1893. In April 1953 descendants of Sitting Bull had his remains disinterred and moved to its present location on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.