Leader of the Santee Sioux, Inkpaduta (1815-79) participated in some of the most decisive battles of the northern Great Plains, including Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn. But the attack in 1857 on forty white settlers known as the Spirit Lake Massacre gave Inkpaduta the reputation of being the most brutal of all the Sioux leaders.

Paul N. Beck now challenges a century and a half of bias to reassess the life and legacy of this important Dakota leader. In the most complete biography of Inkpaduta ever written, Beck draws on Indian agents' correspondence, journals, and other sources to...