Daily Inspiration Quote by Sitting Bull

Authority, in Sitting Bull's line, doesn’t come from ballots or bloodline but from a cosmology that U.S. officials couldn’t easily subpoena. "By the will of the Great Spirit" is more than piety; it’s a political strategy that relocates legitimacy outside the colonial system trying to contain him. If the source of power is sacred and communal, then treaties signed under duress, agency appointments, and the whole bureaucratic theater of "recognition" look like category errors.

The sentence is built like a doubled lock. He repeats "by his will" twice, tightening the claim until it reads less like self-promotion and more like testimony. The simplicity is the point: no elaborate genealogy, no legal brief, just a declaration that turns leadership into obligation rather than privilege. In that framing, being chief isn’t an office you win; it’s a burden you carry because something larger than you demands it. That subtext matters in moments when the U.S. narrative cast Indigenous leaders as either "hostile" obstacles or manageable intermediaries. Sitting Bull refuses both roles.

Context sharpens the edge. In the late 19th century, federal policy increasingly sought to fracture tribal sovereignty through reservations, appointed "chiefs", and pressure to assimilate. Sitting Bull’s spiritual claim functions as a refusal to let his people’s political life be redefined in the conqueror’s vocabulary. It’s also a warning: if his mandate isn’t granted by Washington, it can’t be revoked by Washington.