The use of Indian Police to arrest Sitting Bull placed Lakota men in the position of carrying out a federal agency’s order against one of the most significant figures in their own community — a position that was, by any measure, difficult and morally complicated.

The confrontation at Sitting Bull’s camp involved his supporters and his family as well as the Indian Police.

When shots were fired, the violence was between people who had complex relationships with each other — not a clean confrontation between opposing sides but a chaotic, close-range exchange in which people on both sides died.

Sitting Bull was shot by Indian Police officers.

The specific sequence of events that led to the shots being fired has been described differently in different accounts, and the disputed nature of the sequence reflects the chaos of the confrontation and the different perspectives of those who survived it.