Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota leader, visited Saint Paul on September 4, 1884. An U.S. Indian agent hoped to impress him while Sitting Bull just wanted to learn about whites and make a case for aid. He visited businesses, toured Pioneer Press, the State Capitol and went to the burial mounds, a cigar factory, Franklin School and tried out a telephone.
He saw a play at the Grand Opera House when there was an attempted assassination- when the visitors “were leaving the theater in single file, and while the great Sioux leader was still in the foyer, an attempt was made to take his life.” According to a witness, a man shouted “Damn him, I’ll shoot him” and aimed a revolver at Sitting Bull. His companion grabbed the gun and told the person not to be a fool.“The white people are wicked and I don’t want my women to become as the white women I have seen,” Sitting Bull told a reporter. “I want you to teach my people to read and write, but they must not become white people in their ways; it is too bad a life...I would rather die an Indian than live a white man.”Thank you to Steve Trimble for this post. Sitting Bull in 1884, photographed by Palmquist & Jurgens. Wikimedia Commons, US Library of Congress.
Original source can be found here.
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