Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, May 9th, 1877, nearly a year after the Battle of Little Big Horn, Lakota leader

Sitting Bowl leads a band of followers, about 5,000 people or so, into Canada, hoping to find safe haven from the US Army.

Canadian authorities had promised Sitting Bull peace and protection from the US Army.

That lasted for a while, but eventually the group that had moved to

Canada started to break apart and Sitting Bull himself returned to the United States

after four years soon thereafter he would surrender to the US Army and not long after that he would

eventually be killed by the US Army, but here to discuss that Canadian decampment and a little

bit on the life of Sitting Bull in general are as always

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hey Jody. Hey there. So I think we do need to start this with Little big horn and remind people kind of what happens there because that really does seem to presage this

Decampment. I'm gonna I don't know why I'm using that word decampment so much but that that move to Canada

So Nicky kind of what's the what's the context with with the battle of little bighorn? So I think it's important to

know that there had been kind of a low-key war going on between various indigenous tribes and the US Army for well over a decade by the time we get to Little Big Horn.

And after the Civil War ends in 1865, a lot of that

military power is redirected toward indigenous people. And in 1876, all of that military power

notwithstanding, there is a battle between Sitting Bull's

warriors and other indigenous people and an army group led by George

Custer and quite famously that is Custer's last stand when he loses, the U.S. military is defeated by these indigenous tribes.

And it's a big loss.

I mean, I think that all throughout history, this is noted as one of the most monumental defeats in which Native Americans bested, you know, America's best.

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