At the centre of a dramatic and absorbing story is the flesh-and-blood Sitting Bull - a leader of his people and a man of rare complexity. Yet to the US Governement he was merely an obstacle: one of the last troublesome remnants of resistance to the white man's inexorable westward expansion. The world of the Lakota Sioux centred on the buffalo: migration of the herds governed the movements of its people and fixed the yearly circle of life. Where the range overlapped with land claimed by others, enemies such as the Crows or Assiniboines, Sitting Bull's people fought for control of the hunting grounds. War and the hunt shaped the tribe's social organization and political institutions, preparing the warriors for the soldier's invasion of the Lakota territory. After the Battle of Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull believed victory had earned his people the peace to pursue their usual activities, but he failed to understand that by routing Custer and the 7th Cavalry, he had hastened the downfall of this own people.