Sitting Bull was already dead by the time of Wounded Knee.

His death and the massacre were connected by the political and military response to the Ghost Dance, but Sitting Bull did not live to see the final outcome of the movement that had been the immediate pretext for his arrest.

Understanding this history is part of understanding why his belongings mattered — why the hair and the leggings were not merely objects of curiosity but objects freighted with the specific history of how his life ended and what the circumstances of that ending meant.

The Wild West Show Years and the American Image of Sitting Bull