Good afternoon and welcome to the historic Trinity United Methodist church. We feel fortunate to be in this beautiful space which was made possible by the generosity of jack and mary, im honored to serve as volunteer for the 11th annual savanna book festival and so glad you also participated in this years festival. It is presented by george power, david and nancy cintron, the shia Family Foundation and mark and hats. We want to thank our literary members and individual sponsors and donors who made and continue to make saturday at the book festival a free event. 90 of the revenue comes from donors like you so thank you very much. We are excited to have a savanna book festival apps available this year. Look in your program if you would like information on downloading that apps to your telephone. A couple housekeeping notes. Following this presentation, our author, deanne stillman, will sign festival purchased copies of this book. If you want to stay in this venue for the presentation that will follow this presentation please move forward to make room for people coming in through the big front doors. A couple technology announcements, we ask that you take a minute right now to double check with your cell phone is turned off or in silent mode so we will have electronic interruptions during the talk. The other is if you have cell phones with which you want to take photographs please make sure you dont use a flash. For the question and answer portion i am going to ask that you raise your hand. I will make eye contact with one of the ushers who will bring a microphone to you. Please dont begin until you have a microphone in your hand and in the interests of fairness to the attendees and efforts to make as many questions as possible happen please make sure you limit yourself to just one question and your question is actually a question rather than a comment or a story. Deanne stillman is with us today. Christine and jim. Deanne stillman is a critically acclaimed writer. Her latest book is blood brothers. And the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. It also tells the story of annie oakley who was a friend of both of these men. The book received start review and was named by true west magazine and he millions as the best book of 2017. Deanne stillman is the author of desert reckoning, the winner of the spur award and Los Angeles Press club award for best nonfiction. Her book mustang was an la times best book of the year and was released in audio with angelica houston, Frances Fisher and others. She is also the author of twentynine palms, Los Angeles Times best book of the year with to thompson calling a strange and brilliant story by an important American Writer. We have an important American Writer with us today so please give a warm savanna welcome to deanne stillman. Thank you so much. Trinity United Methodist church and my sponsors. And my books blood brothers about the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. From annie oakley. My journey through this story, let me talk about how i came to write this. This very strange story about a strange friendship. Some time ago while working on my book mustang, the saga of the American Horse in the wild west, i learned about a strange and heartbreaking moment that transpired outside sitting bull lapse cabin while he was being assassinated during an ambush. A horse was tethered to a railing and at the sound of gunfire he started to dance. Trained to do something in the wild west Buffalo Bills famous spectacle of which sitting bull was a part for four months in 1885. I couldnt shake the image and as i began to look into it, the horse was a gift to sitting bull from buffalo bill. Presented when he and home for him at that time was Standing Rock. The fact that buffalo bill had given sitting bull a host horse was significant. This was the animal the transformed the west and was stripped from the tribe in order to vanquish them. It was a gift that sitting bull treasured along with a hat that cody had given him as well. After sitting bull was killed buffalo bill brought the horse back from sitting bulls widows and according to some accounts road it in a parade and then the horse disappears from the record. It was the legend of the Dancing Horse that led me into the story of sitting bull and buffalo bill. And a portal opened into something else. Strange voices coming through the portal. It was all strange, i told you. And other than the fact that he was my next story and it was calling and at some point down its trail. Later i was i was well along the path i came across another image. It is now on the cover of this book and it captured my attention. It was taken for publicity purposes while sitting bull and buffalo bill were on tour in montreal and its caption, friends and 85, i began to imagine these two men on the road, sitting bull on the horse, crisscrossing the nation, visiting lands that belong to the lakota, uncrowded thoroughfares built on top of ancient paths made by animals and the people who follow them with william f cody, another mystical figure of the great plains reenacting wartime scenarios that had one outcome. The end of the red man in the victory of the white leading is a parade in celebration of the wild west became the national scripture. What were the forces that brought these two together i wonder . What was the nature of their alliance. Where they each trapped in a persona, a veneer that was somewhat true. Behind the projected ideas in which they were preserved, who were they in daytoday life. There is was certainly an Unlikely Partnership but one thing was obvious on its face. Both had names that were forever linked with the buffalo. When man was credited with wiping out the species, so that was hardly the case and the other was sustained by its very life. There were two sides of the same coin, foes and friends as the Photo Caption on the publicity poster says so this image too entered my consciousness, two american superstars, icons not just of their era and country but for all time and around the world. What story was this picture telling and how is it connecting to the Dancing Horse outside sitting bulls cabinet. Cant answer all of them. And recount the stories of each men from cradle to grave literally. And tracked parallel histories. Both corrupt on the frontier and both came from rough circumstances, both reviewed in their own tribe, both became superstars, husbands, fathers, sons, warriors, shared a bloodied history, they were enemies for quite some time until they hooked up in Buffalo Bills wild west show. And president s in general sought his advice. His friends included Frederick Remington and mark twain, bronc busters who could drink him under the table and might have even been better writers. Ranch cooks who needed a job. He was open to all. He had no airs. What you saw was what you got. Even if what you saw was sometimes a mirage. He was the simplest of men, as annie oakley would say at the end of his life, as comfortable with cowboys as with kings. Before the term was forever linked to his name, william f. Cody grew up in the wild, wild west. Once he was a boy, not a superstar not named for the animal he would kill by the thousands. Others, for the record, would kill more. But just a boy who played with indians on the great plains, he would pass through territory near his home in kansas as they followed the buffalo. So, too, by his own account did he kill an indian in his youth. And others later while he was employed as a wagon train hand. But of course he was not aware that the curtain would soon fall on their way of life and that he would participate in that last act as well as try to reserve what came before. Once he was just a boy who helped his struggling family eke out a living on the frontier. So how he came to hook up with sitting bull is a Pretty Amazing part of this story. After the battle of the little bighorn during which custer was killed, as i hope all of you know [laughter] sitting bull was blamed for killing custer which was not true. He did not pull the trigger. But he was nearby, and he was certainly a factor in that battle. In fact, his medicine was all over the battlefield as i recount in my book. But because of this very humiliating defeat for the u. S. Cavalry and victory, great victory for the lakota and cheyenne, the native americans who were involved in that battle fellowed northward into fled northward into the arms of the grandmother aka, canada because they were branded as hostiles and had to leave their homeland. Or be arrested. So sitting bull took his people to canada, and they lived there in exile for a number of years. And then at some point, were forced to leave by the canadian government which was being pressured by american authorities and also buffalo there were vanishing as well. You know, there was kind of sitting bull was caught in this squeeze play, and he returned to his, to the dakota territory, his homeland. And he was quite well known; infamous, i should say, at that point. They didnt have the term public enemy number one there, but i use it in my book. He had become public enemy number one. He was the guy who killed custer, you know . A great civil war hero. And pretty notorious for his role in the indian wars. And so when he turned himself in at fort buford with his people and his children including his young son and had his son surrender his rifle in a very poignant sr. Moanny poignant ceremony which i describe in my book, he makes a point of saying that the reason he came back is he wanted to make sure his children could see how the white man was living and learn to endure, assimilate into this new culture. He was so famous then that everybody, people would soldiers would surround him and want his autograph, and, you know, just kind of soak up some of his mojo. He was a celebrity. A lot of people were courting him for their wild west shows. There were a number of circuses traveling the country then including which featured cowboys and indians. And animals too. And he hooked up with a couple of troupes and traveled around. It was not the reason that native americans joined some of these shows isnt because it was, like, oh, this is great, i get to appear in these shows. It was a way off the reservation. It was a sanctioned way for them to leave the reservation. And be he wasnt really treated very well many these shows. He was in these shows. You know, this is one of the great americans of all time. And he was known and still is revered around world. He was not treated with respect many these shows in these shows until cody came along. And cody had been after him for a long time. He knew that sitting bull was like, you know, a big score to use todays parlance. He knew that having him in his show would bring in a lot of money. And by then cody himself was this huge superstar as well. After the little bighorn, he had avenged custers death by scalping an indian and then returning to the stage in new york and elsewhere on the east coast and reenacting this scalping of yellow hand and brandishing the scalp to the dismay of many. But cody was a showman, and he had been acting for some time, and he just really, like, cranked it up at this point. So he was able to convince sitting bull to join his show because of his stature, he promised him, promised to pay him i think he was paid more than anybody else in the show. Sitting bull was kind of, like, in baseball terms a free agent. He kind of wrote his own ticket at that time. He asked to be able to sell his own autograph which other people in the show were doing, and cody, you know, of course a agreed to all this. He really wanted sitting bull in his show. But another reason that sitting bull agreed to travel with cody was the fact that annie oakley was already in the show. And he had met her while traveling to st. Paul, minnesota, with the, with an Army Official a couple of years before hooking up with cody, and he was impressed with her shooting skills and even, like, sent her a note backstage like he became a fan. And they struck up an immediate friendship, and he gave her the nickname little miss sureshot. Which actually translates into something else, but [laughter] youll have to read my book to find that out. Like a lot of things at that time, a lot of native american language, it was a mistranslation. But it doesnt much matter in terms of her career because when you think about it, who would annie oakley have become without that nickname, little miss sureshot . He he really kind of branded her. So having found out that she was, she had been hired by cody, he that was one other thing that made him join up. And then there were a couple of other things, but perhaps the most important of which was the fact that he wanted to get to washington, d. C. To meet the grandfather, aka the president , and ask him why the American Government had betrayed his people. That was, like, really the overriding reason for him to join up with cody. And they did get to washington, d. C. As well as a number of other places, and he and some of the other native americans in codys show did have a meeting with some state department officials. And i describe this really another strange scene in my book where theyre inside a building, an office on capitol hill, and theres all this western art on the walls, you know, like portraits of indians and paintings of buffalo and so on. And apparently some of the indians at the, at this meeting started to laugh. But sitting bull remained silent. So he apparently did not get to meet the president , the grandfather, you know, to his disappointment. And, you know, that part of his desire to join up with cody was not fulfilled. But he did get to see what was going on with the white man, and he wanted to understand how this new civilization worked, and he admired all this great new technology, you know, like telephones and fire trucks. Acknowledged the white mans superior firepower but wondered how come as he traveled he was meeting all these Homeless Children around the country. There were all these orphans. And he would often give them money. Cody helped out a lot of people too. They were very generous. He couldnt understand how this technologically advanced culture was failing its people. And i think that, you know, quite interesting in terms of whats going on today. So at any rate, after the well, sit ising bull traveled sitting bull traveled with cody for four months in 1885, and i just want to read you this short paragraph about what that might have been like for him. Imagine being born into a world where your tribe was the most powerful in all the land, and within that being born at the climax of its power. Imagine that in your lifetime you witnessed a thing that consumed nearly everything you loved and were nourished by and that nearly everyone you cherished or parlayed with was destroyed, altered, killed or locked up. Imagine being a person who lived through such a thing, sought to head it off directly and softly, was both celebrated and hated for doing so. And yet because of an alliance with the Natural World and it with you, saw the whole thing coming, even your own end. And then finally, imagine embracing life with all of your might and force, your generosity and joy trying to contain the wellspring of sorrow and blood that was flooding your world and drowning it. Knowing that a river cannot be stopped, but there are many different ways to ride it. This was sitting bulls fate and condition. So here he was, you know, joining up with buffalo bill for the reasons i mentioned. Weirdly, their first meeting was in, of all places, buffalo. [laughter] and i wonderedded, i mean, when i found that out, i was completely stunned. Another, like, breathtaking moment as i was working on my book. I wondered, like, what sitting bull thought when he was told he was going to buffalo. I mean, im sure it was translated, and he had to, you know, have known irony of that, if thats what you could call it. And he certainly knew that codys name was buffalo bill, codys nickname. And then i started to think about jokes that he sometimes reporters followed him around he traveled. He happened an entourage of friends, and there were often reporters. And i started to wonder if reporters were making jokes about, you know, hey, chief, here we are in buffalo, what do you think about that . It just seemed like he was in a very, again, strange and humiliating position. And i want to reiterate that leafing the reservation for leaving the reservation for native americans at that time and joining up with buffalo bill and these other shows was not like this, like, fantastic thing that they could do. They were essentially prisoners of war, and this was a way off the reservation that was sanctioned. And they could continue living a life that was banned within a limited frame. You know, they were allowed to ride horses, and they were reenacting moments in our history and theirs, although not there their point of view, certainly. But the cowboys, too, were engaged in these reenactments which, weirdly enough, were almost had pretty much ended as codetys show was touring codys show was touring. The frontier was vanishing. So here were all these cast members, all these americans and by that, im including white and red men and some women. Here were all these people locked out of time but reenacting what has become the national scripture. And the way i see it, thats where america lives, you know . We live inside the wild west, and it all comes right out of buffalo bill. I mean, again, think about its not just annie oakley who wouldnt have a snuck nickname. Think about what stories we would tell ourselves about who we are as americans without buffalo bill and his wild west show. What dreams would this country have about itself. And, of course, theres a dark side, and i talk about and write about all of this in my book. Heres a little bit about the two men together. Some friendships form quickly and fade just as fast, others last for a short period of time, an hour say or a day, but even they may be as deep as the kind that lasts for a lifetime. And then there are those in which mysterious forces, a hand of the creator perhaps, necessity, desire brings two people together. Even former enemies in an alliance that seems unlikely. And in the end, not at all. Such was the joinup of sitting bull and buffalo bill. Foes in 76, friends in 85 as the Photo Caption said of the pair. Each an icon to himself, together a power