Chris McCandless is an enigma because no one really understands why someone so seemingly successful like him (intelligent, Emory University graduate, great athlete, raised in an affluent suburb, seemingly-good home life) would choose to leave his entire life behind and disappear into the woods.
Krakauer’s personal mountaineering experiences affected the story by allowing him to input his own perspective to the story. Krakauer mentions that he can't help but add his own fragments into the story because he and Chris had some parallels in their life and he says his perspective is an attempt to shed some light on the mystery of who Chris McCandless was. I agree with Krakauer’s decision to not be an impartial biographer because he adds his own personal experiences/stories in little author's notes and that adds a new and interesting point of view. I like that he felt so strongly about this story that he felt he needed to "defend" or explain the enigma that is Chris McCandless. I think the fact that Krakauer had parallels to Chris McCandless' life was amazing and seems meant to be because those parallels made him realize he needed to tell Chris's story and he needed to tell it while including his own personal experiences, not as an impartial biographer. It appears that the story was destined for him, as if it was almost foreshadowing his future or could have possibly been a past life.
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Sitting Bull was born in 1831 near Grand River, South Dakota. He became a tribal leader who had a reputation of fearlessness in battle. He had been in hostile contact with the army for a while because they were invading his Sioux tribe’s hunting grounds. Sitting Bull became the principal chief of the entire Sioux nation in 1867.
Sitting Bull stepped out of traditional bounds after gold was discovered on the Sioux reservation because he and his tribe were ordered by the army to move by January 31, 1876, and they didn’t because he knew he couldn’t move his entire village in the winter by the specified time. He hoped to accomplish resistance against white men’s domination over the Native American lands and tribes. Eventually, Sitting Bull accepted peace with the U.S. Government when the Sioux tribe was guaranteed a reservation through the Fort Laramie treaty that promised that the U.S. would not interfere with their land and customs. However, once gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the U.S. ordered Sitting Bull and his tribe be moved by January 31, 1876 otherwise they would be considered hostile to the U.S.. However, because of the winter climate, Sitting Bull refused to move his tribe - and he knew it would not be able to happen by the date he was given. General Crook and his men attempted to invade the tribe to handle the hostile rebels that were resisting. Sitting Bull held a “Sun Dance” where he danced for hours and deprived himself of water and sliced his arms as a symbol of sacrifice. It was during this time that he experienced a “mystical vision” and reported it to his tribe and they prepared for the troops to come into their tribe. They prepared for battle and when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer came into the valley with his men, The Battle of the Little Bighorn began and resulted in Sitting Bull defeating him and his two-hundred-plus men. The response to Battle of the Little Bighorn resulted in stepped-up military action by the whites. Sitting Bull and his tribe fled to Canada for four years in search of buffalo after the number of buffalo in America has declined significantly. The white people didn’t want the Indians to have food so they hunted the buffalo as a means to get them to surrender. Sitting Bull’s followers dwindled due to famine which eventually forced him to surrender. Sitting Bull returned to America in 1883 and after the Ghost Dance religious movement arose in 1889, the police force were sent to arrest Sitting Bull as a precaution. Sitting Bull was seized and later killed on the Grand River on December 15, 1890 after his warriors tried to rescue him. Passengers on the Dover mail were wary because they were unsure of the messenger on the horse. They walked up the steep hill beside the carriage because the journey was treacherous.
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