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Sitting Bull's War
The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fight for Buffalo and Freedom on the Plains
Published by Pegasus Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Table of Contents
About the Book
The dramatic story of America’s greatest Indian war told from perspective of the Lakotas and the Northern Cheyennes, as they fight for their way of life on the buffalo prairie.
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
In this deeply affecting account of America’s greatest Indian war, readers are quickly immersed in the world of Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes and their struggle in the 1870s to retain their lives on the buffalo prairie. Those impassioned Northern Indians faced a succession of white invaders—railroaders, borderland surveyors, prospectors, and ultimately the United States Army.
In the best of days they turned back George Crook at the Rosebud and wiped out George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn. But a dozen other clashes followed, and in the end these tradition-minded people could not endure the army’s endless hounding. Some fled to Canada to a luring if momentary exile, but in the end one and all faced starvation, submission, and, for some, death.
Rallying the defense of this lifeway of old was Sitting Bull, legendary Hunkpapa Lakota spiritualist. He was supported throughout by Crazy Horse, Spotted Eagle, Big Road, Little Wolf, and a host of other kindred traditional chiefs and headmen who, in turn, rallied thousands of like-minded men, women, and children. And yet, but for momentary glory against Crook and Custer, this was a war that could not be won.
Award-winning author Paul L. Hedren was ten years in crafting this great American epic. Utilizing an array of Lakota and Cheyenne accounts, pictographic renderings, and original interviews, this is the story of a people intent only on adhering to a traditional life on the buffalo prairie. The narrative is broad and inclusive and a welcome addition to the canon of American Indian wars history.
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
In this deeply affecting account of America’s greatest Indian war, readers are quickly immersed in the world of Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes and their struggle in the 1870s to retain their lives on the buffalo prairie. Those impassioned Northern Indians faced a succession of white invaders—railroaders, borderland surveyors, prospectors, and ultimately the United States Army.
In the best of days they turned back George Crook at the Rosebud and wiped out George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn. But a dozen other clashes followed, and in the end these tradition-minded people could not endure the army’s endless hounding. Some fled to Canada to a luring if momentary exile, but in the end one and all faced starvation, submission, and, for some, death.
Rallying the defense of this lifeway of old was Sitting Bull, legendary Hunkpapa Lakota spiritualist. He was supported throughout by Crazy Horse, Spotted Eagle, Big Road, Little Wolf, and a host of other kindred traditional chiefs and headmen who, in turn, rallied thousands of like-minded men, women, and children. And yet, but for momentary glory against Crook and Custer, this was a war that could not be won.
Award-winning author Paul L. Hedren was ten years in crafting this great American epic. Utilizing an array of Lakota and Cheyenne accounts, pictographic renderings, and original interviews, this is the story of a people intent only on adhering to a traditional life on the buffalo prairie. The narrative is broad and inclusive and a welcome addition to the canon of American Indian wars history.
Product Details
- Publisher: Pegasus Books (November 4, 2025)
- Length: 576 pages
- ISBN13: 9781639369843
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Raves and Reviews
"Hedren's literary style reveals a love for his subject matter and his passion for detail and recasting the well-trod story from a new and invigorating perspective. He has written what should be considered his finest work, and will rest the historiography of the Great Plains wars going forward."
– Stuart Rosebrook, True West
Praise for Paul L. Hedren:
"This epic battle has finally found the great writer it needed in Paul Hedren, one of our finest chroniclers of the American West. With new sources, fresh insights, and a marvelous sense of story, this is the definitive work on the Battle of the Rosebud and the compelling cast of characters involved in it.”
– James Donovan on Rosebud, June 17, 1876: Prelude to the Little Big Horn
"Paul Hedren's previous works on the Sioux wars established his reputation as one of the finest historians working in this field. Rosebud elevates that reputation to new highs. This is truly the definitive history of the Rosebud.”
– Robert M. Utley on Rosebud, June 17, 1876: Prelude to the Little Big Horn
“Beautifully precise accounts of the confusion of battle, the onset of fear and panic, small errors with big consequences. From the battle's first shot, things went wrong, and Hedren, a historian at the top of his game, explains why. This is a model of military narrative at its most compelling.”
– Thomas Powers on Powder River: Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War
"Hedren's chronicle of the transformation of the northern plains in the wake of the Great Sioux War makes for essential reading. After Custer is at once compelling, moving, and richly rewarding.”
– Jerome A. Greene on After Custer: Loss and Transformation in Sioux County
"Fort Laramie's role in the Great Sioux War has been underestimated far too long. All of the major battles and many of the minor skirmishes fall into place because of Hedren's systematic approach and his thorough use of official records.”
– Montana: The Magazine of Western History on Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle o
"With a fine sense of location, atmosphere, and historical perspective, Paul Hedren has chronicled the marches and countermarches of the "Dandy" Fifth Cavalry against the Cheyennes that led up to the skirmish on Warbonnet Creek, and then he has evaluated the significance of the campaign.”
– James T. king on First Scalp for Custer: The Skirmish at Warbonnet Creek, July 17, 1876
“No other historian has mined American Indian accounts of a war with the U.S. government more thoroughly than Mr. Hedren has here. As an encyclopedic recounting of the battles, skirmishes and other encounters of the Great Sioux War and of its antecedents, however, “Sitting Bull’s War” succeeds admirably, and is a worthwhile addition to the literature on the Indian Wars of the West that students of that era will welcome."
– The Wall Street Journal
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