Early Life and Leadership
Conquering Bear was born around 1800 a Brulé Lakota otherwise a Sioux. At the Fort Laramie treaty council in 1851, the Americans demanded the name of the head chief of each tribe who could sign for his people. However, none of the tribes responded with a single name of a leader, so the white men arbitrarily picked chiefs for them. Conquering Bear was chosen to represent the Lakota.
Conquering Bear was basically a man of peace, but was also a proud warrior. The advent of the white men into the Native American ancestral homeland was at first just a nuisance to the original inhabitants. The Indians only wanted to live in peace and tolerated the first white men. Given the encroachment of white settlers with their wagon trains and disease, the Native Americans feared the loss of their way of life and culture. So over and over again they signed the white men's treaties to try to slow the flow of white men onto their land. However, younger warriors within the Sioux were beginning to tire of broken treaties, and it fell to the older leaders such as Conquering Bear to try to hold these young warriors in line. Without leadership and guidance from older warriors they surely would not have survived.
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