White Bull

White Bull (aka Joseph White Bull)(ca. 1850-1947)

A Sioux warrior and member of the Miniconjou Band, who participated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. For years it was said White Bull himself boasted of killing Lt. George Armstrong Custer at the infamous battle. Other sources say White Bull himself never made that claim but admitted to struggling with Custer.

White Bull came from a prominent Sioux family. He was the son of a man named Makes Room (ca. 1825-1905) and the brother of One Bull. His uncle was the famous Hunkpapa Sioux leader Sitting Bull, whom he joined in fleeing to Canada after the Little Big Horn battle. White Bull's relationship to his uncle made him an important contributor to Stanley Vestal's biography of Sitting Bull.

More than seventy years after the battle, in 1947, White Bull died in South Dakota, at the age of at least ninety-seven. His brother, One Bull, died a month earlier at ninety four.