Everybody knew a storm was brewing.  Everybody knew it was going to break - and soon.  The showdown that everybody knew was coming was bound to take place in Oglala, a small community in the White Clay District, just twelve miles west of the Wilson stronghold in Pine Ridge village, on the road leading northwest toward the Black Hills.  Aside from the brown bare government housing, set down on a dry treeless plateau east of the road, Oglala consists of a white man's store, a scattering of old trailers, and some some stripped-down "igloo" huts from the abandoned Black Hills Ordinance Depot, acquired by the BIA from the U.S. Army."  (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 135.)

Della Star Comes Out was a Community Health representative on the reservation for eight years.  Like Ellen Moves Camp before her, she too had been fired (after Wounded Knee II) because of her traditional sympathies.  "For a long time," she said, "every time we start having a bingo or something, the goons and the BIA police would start coming around and you know, start shooting around.  And they'd start some kind of trouble and then we'd have to break up. . . . They were even shooting at our houses, and there's a lot of kids, you know, in some of those homes.  The goons really done a lot of harassing, but there was nothing that that could be done; we couldn't go to the BIA police because they were right with them.  So finally the traditional, the elderly people, got together and asked, you know, that we'd have our own security around the Oglala area so we can have at least a little protection."  (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 135.)

"Grandpa" Jumping Bull, who was eighty, and "Grandma" Jumping Bull, who was seventy-six, allowed a group of AIM folks to occupy a log cabin on their property while away on a trip.  They were glad to have the strangers there, since the AIM people could teach the young Indians from other places something about Lakota spiritual traditions.  Also, the elderly couple enjoyed their protection from those 'breeds' who had been trespassing and shooting fish with guns down at the reservoir.  Leonard had been sort of involuntarily "volunteered" to serve as a working AIM leader.  He had worked with alcoholics in Seattle and Milwaukee, and had forbidden liquor and drug use in his group - concentrating on one particular young man's alcoholism.  He and [Dino] Butler were both good mechanics, and they offered free repairs on local cars that were not only malfunctioning but dangerous.  Peltier soon put back in service a red-and-white Chevy van belonging to Sam Loud Hawk, which came to replace Leonard's old green Ford as the group's vehicle.  (All of the gear, including cars and food and guns was owned collectively.)  The women, led by Anna Mae Aquash (a young Micmac woman from Shubencadie, Nova Scotia) attended to the old people.  In response, the Oglala community offered the outside Indians whatever food and gas money could be spared and also their respect and gratitude, particularly to Leonard Peltier - who in Dennis Banks' absence was recognized increasingly as a leader.  (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 142.)  "He was respected a lot," Jean Day said.  "People listened to what he said, and I don't what more than that to say.  For you to gain respect in the community like that is one of the highest honors you can have."

Speaking about the AIM group at Oglala, Nilak Butler says "Because Oglala was so violent at the time we were asked to be like a peacekeeping force."  Dino Butler, though not shy, keeps silent as often as possible, with the result that when he does speak, people listen.  "The stories that go out from the reservations look like Indian versus Indian - you know, Dick Wilson and his goons versus the American Indian Movement.  But we know different.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, and the BIA, and all these different organizations working for the government - they were the ones causing all the trouble.  They gave Dick Wilson and his goons money. . . . When AIM gathers, the FBI buys ammunition and booze and stuff for these goons so that they will start drinking.  That's how they get their courage.  They have to have this white man's poison in them before they can act like white people.  They shot peoples houses up, old people's houses.  I seen a little girl at the sun dance, half of her arm was shot off, deformed.  I seen a lot of people walking around with gunshot wounds and burns. . . . We know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew we were there.  They knew that there was an American Indian Movement camp south of Oglala. . . . They knew that Dennis Banks was living there, that he had supporters there, and that we were trying to get these people to break away from the government that was doing them no good."

In the late afternoon of June 25, 1975, two FBI agents came to the outlying cabin northwest of the Jumping Bull's compound, accompanied by two BIA policemen.  Insisting on searching the cabin, they told Wanda Siers, June Little's wife, that they were in search of Jimmy Eagle, aged nineteen, who was wanted on charges if assault and theft.  The BIA police had received a report that Eagle, traveling in a red vehicle, had been seen in the vicinity of this cabin.  The agents were told by Eagle's friend Dusty Nation, resting in a hammock in the small grove north of the cabin, that Eagle had not been seen in several days.  Siers declared that since the agents could show no warrant, they were trespassing, and she asked them to leave.  From the cabin, the agents could see a number of Indians who were watching in silence from the compound, perhaps two hundred yards away along the rim of the plateau, and apparently they decided against going closer.  Later that evening the same two FBI agents accosted three young Indian males walking along the road and brought them to the BIA police, who informed the agents that none of those three kids was Jimmy Eagle.