When Sitting Bull was only twelve years old, he rode a buffalo calf, and so earned his name.  He was feasted, and it was predicted that he would be a leader of the Sioux, for an owl had hooted the night he was born, and the moon had sailed out from under a cloud.

During the boyhood of Sitting Bull, warfare was looked on as a sport to develop young warriors, and the greatest sport of all was hunting buffalo, which furnished the Indians with food, shelter and clothing.

But when the white man came, war became real and grim, and Sitting Bull tried to save his people from the threat of extinction. Sitting Bull headed the fight in defense of his people. His efforts reached their climax in June, 1876, when General Custer and his entire command were wiped out in the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Then the Sioux tribes scattered, until they were forced, by hunger or firearms, to go to the hated white man's reservations. Last of the Sioux chiefs to give in was Sitting Bull; he fled to Canada, and only surrendered because of the destitution of his people. Then he was thrown into prison, where he was rescued by his friend, Buffalo Bill.

Sitting Bull kept careful records of his people in a blank roll-book which had once belonged to a Regiment of Artillery. He was a great warrior in time of war, a peaceful medicine man in time of peace. His death is a grim story of a false arrest in the days when there was no one to defend the Indian. With the death of their leader, the Sioux tribes ceased to struggle against the white man, and they lived in peace from then on.

Here is a swift-moving story of a real Indian, hunted, cornered, driven from his own land. And here is the story of an extraordinary man and his epic battle for the rights of his people.

From the dust jacket