Nearly a year after his warriors helped annihilate Custer's Seventh Cavalry, Sitting Bull led hundreds of Lakota Sioux across the medicine line into Canadian territory, hoping to escape relentless U.S. military pursuit. He would remain in Canada for four years before hunger and diminishing bison herds forced his eventual return and surrender.
The victory at the Little Bighorn in June 1876 bought Sitting Bull's people only a brief reprieve. The U.S. Army, humiliated by Custer's defeat, poured overwhelming resources into hunting down the Lakota and their allies, and by the following spring many bands had already surrendered or been forced onto reservations.
Sitting Bull refused to submit. Rather than surrender his people's independence, he led them northward across the 49th parallel into Canada, territory the Lakota called the 'Medicine Line' because U.S. soldiers could not legally follow them across it. Canadian officials, wary but not hostile, allowed the Lakota to camp near Wood Mountain in present-day Saskatchewan.
Life in exile proved harder than expected. The bison herds that had sustained Plains life for generations were vanishing rapidly, hunted nearly to extinction, and Canadian authorities offered no rations, unlike the reservations south of the border. Over four years, hunger and isolation wore down Sitting Bull's resolve. In July 1881, he finally crossed back south and surrendered at Fort Buford, ending his life as a free man on the open plains, though his legend as a symbol of Native resistance only grew afterward.
Key people: Sitting Bull