Sitting Bull in their land, as specified in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. It was alarmed at reports of Sioux depredations (encouraged by Sitting Bull). In November 1875, President Grant ordered all Sioux bands outside the Great Sioux Reservation to move onto the reservation, knowing full well that not all would comply. As of February 1, 1876, the Interior Department certified as "hostile" those bands who continued to live off the reservation. This certification allowed the military to pursue Sitting Bull and other Lakota bands as "hostiles". Based on tribal oral histories, historian Margot Liberty theorizes many Lakota bands allied with
Sitting Bull who counted twelve people in the Hunkpapa leader's immediate family. Forty-one families, totaling 195 people, were recorded in Sitting Bull's band. The military decided to transfer Sitting Bull and his band to Fort Randall, to be held as prisoners of war. Loaded onto a steamboat, the band of 172 people was sent down the Missouri River to Fort Randall (near present-day Pickstown, South Dakota) on the southern border of the state. There they spent the next 20 months. They were allowed to return north to the Standing Rock Agency in May 1883. In 1883, rumors were reported that Sitting Bull