The Sioux Indians, led by Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890) and Crazy Horse (d. 1877), fought and killed U.S. Army officer George Armstrong Custer and his men on June 25, 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Commemoration of the battle site, located in south central Montana, on the present-day Crow Indian Reservation, is still controversial today: Native American groups and historians have challenged the way the battle is commemorated and successfully argued to erect a memorial to recognize the Indians who fought to preserve their land and culture.
A series of stories about the Battle of Little Big Horn appeared in The New York Fireside Companion several months after the event. In the cover story "Sitting Bull on the War-Path" (August 28, 1876), the Sioux leader is depicted as a blood-thirsty savage armed with a rifle, revolver, spear, and scalping-knife. He points to an approaching army scout who the Indians subsequently capture and torture. In the following week's installment (September 4, 1876), Sitting Bull appears with his squaw, 'Princess Sitting Bull,' in a more contempletive guise, smoking a pipe and watching the enemy encampment.