A medicine man of the Hunkpapa Sioux, Sitting Bull was the elder chief of the Indian resistance that was victorious at the Little Bighorn. After that battle, he fled to Canada, but returned in the 1880s to tour the country with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Suspected as a leader of the Ghost Dance revival, he was arrested in 1890 and killed by police.

After graduating last in his West Point class, Custer became the youngest general in Army history for his daring (some said recklessness) during the Civil War. It was Custer who scouted the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874 to confirm rumors that gold had been discovered there. Custer was sent against the Sioux in 1876 to return renegade warriors to the reservation. On June 25 of that year, he lost his entire command in an Indian ambush at the Little Bighorn.