The buffalo herds that had sustained the Plains economy were gone within a decade.

The territory that the Lakota had traveled across for generations was carved into reservations within two decades.

The children who had grown up in tipis on the open plains were, within a generation, being sent to boarding schools to have their language and culture systematically removed from them.

Sitting Bull navigated this transformation with a consistency of purpose and identity that was, given the circumstances, remarkable.

He was not opposed to all change or all adaptation — his participation in the Wild West show was itself a form of adaptation to circumstances that had no precedent in his own experience or in the experience of his community.