Sitting Bull was born around 1831 into the Hunkpapa people, a Lakota Sioux tribe that roamed the Great Plains in what is now the Dakotas.

He was named "Jumping Badger" at birth, but earned the boyhood nickname "Slow" for his quiet and deliberate demeanor. When he was fourteen years old he accompanied a group of Lakota warriors in a raiding party to take horses from a camp of Crow warriors. He displayed bravery by riding forward and counting coup on one of the surprised Crow. Upon returning to camp his father gave a celebratory feast at which he conferred his own name upon his son: "Sitting Bull". At this ceremony before the entire band, Sitting Bull's father presented his son with an eagle feather to wear in his hair, a warrior's horse, and a hardened buffalo hide shield to mark his son's passage into manhood as a Lakota warrior. Thereafter, Sitting Bull's father was known as "Jumping Bull".

He had five wivesduring his lifetime. For the Plains Indians, having more then one wife was quite normal. His first two wives died. His last two wives, "Four Robes" and "Seen-by-the-Nation", gave him many children.

His first skirmish with white soldiers occurred in June 1863 when the U.S. Army retaliated against the Sioux for the "Minnesota Massacre," in which Sitting Bull's people had no part. For the next five years, he was in frequent hostile contact with the army, which was invading the Sioux hunting grounds and bringing ruin to the Indian economy.

When in 1871 the Northern Pacific Railway conducted a survey for a route across the northern plains directly through Hunkpapa lands, it encountered stiff Lakota resistance. The same railway people returned the following year accompanied by federal troops. Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa attacked the survey party, which was forced to turn back. In 1873, the military accompaniment for the surveyors was increased again, but Sitting Bull's forces resisted the survey "most vigorously." The Panic of 1873 forced many of the Northern Pacific Railway's backers into bankruptcy and temporarily halted construction of the railroad through Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota territory.

The Sioux believed the Black Hills were the axis mundi, or sacred center of the world. But after prospectors found gold in the area, thousands of gold-seekers began encroaching on Sioux territory. The United States government tried to buy or rent the Black Hills from the Lakota people, but led by Sitting Bull, they refused to sell their lands. In response, the U.S. Army stopped evicting trespassers and ordered all Sioux to return to the reservation. When the Lakota did not immediately comply, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Q. Smith, wrote that "without the receipt of any news of Sitting Bull's submission, I see no reason why, in the discretion of the Hon. Secretary of War, military operations against him should not commence at once."

Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw many soldiers, "as thick as grasshoppers," falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people took as a foreshadowing of a major victory in which many soldiers would be killed. About three weeks later, the confederated Lakota tribes with the Northern Cheyenne defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876, annihilating Custer's battalion and seeming to bear out Sitting Bull's prophetic vision.

Refusing to surrender, Sitting Bull led a large contingent of Sioux across the border into Canada. He remained in exile for four years near Wood Mountain, refusing a pardon. Not until the buffalo were seriously depleted, and troubles began to surface with other native tribes in Canada, did he finally return.

While in Canada, Sitting Bull met with Crowfoot, who was a leader of the Blackfeet, long-time powerful enemies of the Lakota. Sitting Bull wished to make peace with the Blackfeet Nation and Crowfoot. As an advocate for peace himself, Crowfoot eagerly accepted the tobacco peace offering. Sitting Bull was so impressed by Crowfoot that he named one of his sons after him.

With food and resources scarce, Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army on July 20, 1881 in exchange for amnesty for his people. He was a prisoner of war in South Dakota's Fort Randall for two years before being moved to Standing Rock Reservation.