“There was no such thing as emptiness in the world,” one Lakota remembered from his childhood. “Even in the sky there were no vacant places. Everywhere there was life.”
The name Returns Again chose for his child was Jumping Badger—the adult name “Sitting Bull” would not come for several more years. Why Returns Again decided upon this name is unknown, but bestowing an animal name within a personal name allowed for a connection to that animal’s traits or powers. The badger is an amazingly strong mammal for its size. With its long, sharp foreclaws, it burrows deep into the earth in search of its prey: gophers, prairie dogs, and even rattlesnakes. It is fierce, unrelenting, and fearful of no other creature, certainly very good qualities to possess for any boy aspiring to be a warrior.
But as Jumping Badger grew into a boy, he acquired an unusual nickname. Its English translation is “Slow” or “Slow-Moving.” According to one Lakota account, he got this nickname because he was physically slow (his short legs did not lend themselves to speed), and he spoke slowly as well. In playful contests with other children, he consistently lost. In fact, Slow “was always last in everything.” Other accounts, however, tell us that the nickname came from a certain deliberateness that was remarkable in a child, a tendency to carefully think things out at his own pace. In any event, the boy was rarely if ever called Jumping Badger. Family and friends called him by his nickname, Slow.
As with all Lakota children, Slow’s education and training began soon after he could walk. He would learn to ride horseback, to shoot an arrow so that it flew straight and true, and to catch fish in the rivers and creeks. He would learn the ways of the “winged peoples” and the “four leggeds” and of the earth’s many wonders that flood a child’s mind and senses. “There was no such thing as emptiness in the world,” one Lakota remembered from his childhood. “Even in the sky there were no vacant places. Everywhere there was life, visible and invisible, and every object possessed something that would be good for us to have also—even to the very stones.”
The boy would also learn about the Lakotas’ enemies—such tribes as the Crows, the Assiniboines, the Hidatsas, and the Flatheads. Many were the coups Returns Again counted on Crow warriors. The hatred for the Crows ran so deep, in fact, that even decades later, one old warrior described them as the “most cowardly tribe [that] ever lived on earth.” Why did the Lakotas fight the Crows? Because Crow lands were rich with buffalo, and the Crows had lots of horses.