A Lock Of Sitting Bull’s Hair Was Tested More Than A Century Later – And The DNA Confirmed A Family Claim

The history it carried was the history of a people’s relationship to a country that has not yet fully reckoned with what it did to them.

The science confirmed the family connection.

The reckoning continues to be theirs to claim.

— FINAL END —

The Ghost Dance, the Army, and the Convergence That Killed Him

To fully understand why the circumstances of Sitting Bull’s death mattered — and why the objects taken from his body carried the weight they did — it is necessary to understand more completely what was happening on the Plains reservations in the fall of 1890, and how a religious movement became the context for a political assassination.

The Ghost Dance had reached the Lakota reservations in the spring and summer of 1889, brought by emissaries who had traveled to Nevada to meet with Wovoka, the Paiute prophet whose visions had originated the movement.