Sitting Bull's War: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fight for Buffalo and Freedom on the Plains

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.

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.

Personifying this traditional way of life 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 has spent ten years writing 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.

Author: Paul L. Hedren
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 11/04/2025
Pages: 576
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.58lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.90d
ISBN: 9781639369836


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/22/2025 pg. 1

About the Author
Paul L. Hedren is a retired National Park Service historian and superintendent whose thirty-seven-year career led him from Minnesota to Wyoming, Montana, Utah, North Dakota, and Nebraska. His many books have received numerous honors, including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and multiple Best Book awards from the Little Big Horn Associates. He is a lifelong student of the Great Sioux War, and he is often found exploring the trails, battlefields, back corners, and sacred sites of that intriguing 1870s Indian war. When not in the field, Paul resides in Omaha, Nebraska.