Sitting Bull Falls in springs further down the canyon or joins the Pecos Valley underground water supply. The area around Sitting Bull Falls is the remnant of a reef system known as the Capitan Great Barrier Reef dating from the Permian period. Approximately 250 million years ago, the region was located near the edge of an inland sea. The origin of the name Sitting Bull Falls remains uncertain. One version holds that the falls were named after a Sioux medicine man. The Apache name for the area was gostahanagunti which means "hidden gulch". A number of hiking trails allow visitors access to the
Sitting Bull the Cheyenne during the Plains Wars because they thought the other nation was under attack by the US. Given this connection, she suggests the major war should have been called "The Great Cheyenne War". Since 1860, the Northern Cheyenne had led several battles among the Plains Indians. Before 1876, the U.S. Army had destroyed seven Cheyenne camps, more than those of any other nation. Other historians, such as Robert M. Utley and Jerome Greene, also use Lakota oral testimony, but they have concluded that the Lakota coalition, of which Sitting Bull was the ostensible head, was the primary target of