Three prominent leaders among the Lakota and Dakota Sioux who called this region home and resisted encroachment by white Americans were Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull), Pizi (Gall), and Inkpaduta (Red Point).Sitting Bull, born in 1831, became an international figure when his coalition of native tribes defeated Lt. Col. George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876. Sitting Bull retreated to Canada in 1877. Facing starvation in 1991, Sitting Bull and the last of his followers returned and surrendered.Sitting Bull toured with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in 1885 and was killed in 1890 on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota during an arrest attempt.Gall was born in 1840. He followed Sitting Bull to Canada but returned in 1880 to surrender. He settled on the Standing Rock Reservation, where he became a tribal judge. Gall died in 1894.Red Point was a Dakota from Iowa and Minnesota. Born about 1810, he fled that area in 1857 after leading his small band in an uprising against white settlers near Spirit Lake. Red Point moved west of the Missouri River and allied himself with Sitting Bull and Gall. Red Point retreated to Canada, where he died about 1879.These men and other equally influential leaders are recognized today for their courage and leadership in the tragic collision of cultures.
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