As is true with so much of the history of Native American dealings with the U.S. government, Sitting Bull met a sad and tragic end. Banished to the Standing Rock Agency reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, he took part in a movement called the Ghost Dance, a ceremony that attempted to rid the land of White people to restore the native culture and traditions. Authorities, fearful of an uprising, sent Lakota police officers and soldiers to arrest Sitting Bull. As his warriors tried to save him in the scuffle that followed, gunfire rang out. He was shot and killed (via Biography). He was buried without ceremony two days later at Fort Yates, but his story doesn’t end there. 

His final resting place is actually somewhat of a mystery. The great chief’s remains were covertly exhumed and moved to Mobridge, South Dakota, in 1953 by his descendant, Clarence Grey Eagle, and a granite monument was placed on his grave (via Britannica). But rumors continue to this day that Eagle Grey and his cohorts may have dug up the wrong grave at Yates. In fact, North Dakota officials placed a plaque at Sitting Bull’s original gravesite that reads, “He was buried here but his grave has been vandalized many times.” Still others insist that the final resting of the famed Lakota chief is actually Turtle Mountain in the Canadian province of Manitoba — that his remains were moved before 1953 and secretly reinterred in Canada (via History).