"Wornout Fences" Sitting Bull and his comrades called the place where they went to trade with the Wasichus - the white men. Fort Pierre Chouteau had stood on the west bank of the Missouri River three miles above the mouth of the Bad River since 1832, and its rotting palisade and rundown log buildings did indeed resemble wornout fences.
The fort could defend itself if necessary. A protective stockade surrounded the interior, and corner bastions mounted cannon. The treeless river bottom extended westward for a mile or more before broken by bluffs gently rising to the plains, so no Indians could approach without detection. Usually, however, clusters of tipis carpeted the valley floor, sheltering Sioux who had come to trade rather than fight.
Fort Pierre afforded the Hunkpapas and their Lakota and Yanktonai neighbors their principal window on the white world. Originally an outpost of the American Fur Company, it now operated under the rubric of Pierre Chouteau and Company, a loose partnership that had brought out the Astor empire's Western Department in 1834. From the first, the fort had served as the company's chief trading outlet for the Missouri River Lakotas.
There the Indians went to exchange buffalo robes for the trade goods that had become essential parts of the material aspect of their culture. - from The Lance and The Shield - The Life and Times of Sitting Bull by Robert M. Utley
If the Great Spirit has desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires.
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.
Sitting Bull - Teton Sioux
