Sitting Bull did not agree to the treaty. He told the Jesuit missionary, Pierre Jean De Smet, who sought him out on behalf of the government: "I wish all to know that I do not propose to sell any part of my country." He continued his hit-and-run attacks on forts in the upper Missouri area throughout the late 1860s and early 1870s. The events of 1866–1868 mark a historically debated period of Sitting Bull's life. According to historian Stanley Vestal, who conducted interviews with surviving Hunkpapa in 1930, Sitting Bull was made "Supreme Chief of the whole Sioux Nation" at this time.
Sitting Bull parties against Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, and Fort Buford and their environs from 1865 through 1868. Sitting Bull also made guerrilla attacks on emigrant parties and smaller forts throughout the upper Missouri River region. By early 1868, the U.S. government desired a peaceful settlement to Red Cloud's War. It agreed to Red Cloud's demands that the US abandon forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith. Gall of the Hunkpapa (among other representatives of the Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, and Yankton Dakota) signed a form of the Treaty of Fort Laramie on July 2, 1868 at Fort Rice (near Bismarck, North Dakota). Sitting Bull