Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull
How the famous Sioux Chief Sitting Bull was killed is not a mystery, where he is buried might be in dispute forever. Both North and South Dakota claim to have his remains.
Sitting Bull was born in 1837 and became chief of the Dakota Sioux who were driven out of the Black Hills by miners in 1876. The Sioux took up arms, fought part of General George Armstrong Custer advance party on Little Big Horn River and then escaped into what we now call Canada. Later Sitting Bull surrendered and died in 1890 in a gunfight when his followers tried to rescue him from the reservation police. His Sioux name was Tatanka Iyotaka.
The home of the most famous Indian Chief in the world is North Dakota. A flat land sometimes called the “badlands” or the Great Plains, it has few hills and plenty of grazing land fit for buffalo.
Spread out over 70,762 sq mi (183,272 km2), this state boasts of being the home of many other famous people such as Louis L’Amour, actor Kellan Lutz and baseball’s Roger Maris.
In Rugby, North Dakota, visitors can see the “Geographic Center of the North American Continent.” Yet it is one of the northern most states with winter temperatures dropping as low as −60 °F (−51.1 °C). However, it can also get very hot in the summer so the best time to visit this state is spring or fall.
Today the relative low population is steadily decreasing due to a lack of jobs for young college grads. However, North Dakota is home to Air Force Bases, wind mill farms and grows the best sunflower seeds. So if you are looking for a wide open place to live with no close neighbors, North Dakota is for you. But if you occasionally want company, there is always the Fargo Theatre, North Dakota Museum of Art, the Plains Art Museum and the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra,
Enjoy the Geese in Flight (2001) sculpture, part of the Enchanted Highway, a stretch of 32 miles along Interstate 94. And don’t miss tasting Knoephla soup: a thick, stew-like chicken soup with dumplings. The North Dakota Pow-wow is held in Bismarck in late summer each year and outdoor activities include hunting and fishing with ice fishing and snowmobiling in winter.
The state is the largest producer in the U.S. of barley, sunflower seeds, spring and durum wheat for processing, and farm-raised turkeys.
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by Marti Talbott
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