Good afternoon. And welcome to the historic Trinity United Methodist church. We feel so fortunate to be in this beautiful space which has been made possible by the generosity of jack and mary romanos. Im honored to serve as a volunteer for the 11th annual savannah festival,o and im so glad you also are participating in this years festival presented by georgia power, by david and nancy citron, the Sheehan Family foundation and mark y and pat suen. Wed also like to thank our wonderful literati members as well as individual sponsors and donors who have made f and continue to make saturday at the book festival a free event. 90 of the revenue for the savannah book festival, in fact, comes from donors like you, so thank you very much. Were excited to have a savannah bookik festival app available year, so please look in your program if you would like information on downloading that app to your telephone. Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping notes. Immediatelys following this presentation, our author, deanne stillman, will be signing festivalpurchased copies of her book out in telfair square. If you intend to stay in this venue for the presentation that will follow this presentation, please move forward in the space so that we make room for people who are coming in through the big front doors. A couple of technology announcements, we ask that you take just a minute right now to double check that your cell phone is turned off or at least in the silent mode so that we wont have electronic interruptions during the talk, and the other is that if you have cell phones with which you want to take photographs, please make sure that you dont use a flash. And then finally, for the question and answer portion im 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 your question until you have of a microphone in your hand, and in the interest of fairness to the other attendees and our efforts to make as many questions as possible happen, please make sure that you limit yourself to just one question and that your question is actually a question rather than a comment or a story. Deanne stillman is with us today courtesy of dave and bobbi irwin and christina and jim trollinger. Deanne stillman is a critically acclaimed writer. Her latest book is blood brothers about the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. It also tells the story of annie oakley who was a friend of both of thesek men. The book received a starred review from kirkus and was named by true west magazine and the millions as the best book of 2017. Stillman is also the author of desert reckoning, which is the winner of the spur award and the Los Angeles Press club award for best nonfiction. Her book mustang was an l. A. Times best book of the year and was released in audio with wendy mallic, anjelica huston, Francis Fisher and others. She is also the author of twentynine palms, a Los Angeles Times best book of the year which Hunter Thompson called, quote, a strange and brilliant story by an important American Writer. We have that important American Writer with us today, so please give a very warm savannah welcome to deanne stillman. [applause] thank you so much, savannah and savannah book festival, cspan, Trinity United Methodist church and my sponsors. Really great to be here. So as you know, im here to talk about my latest book, blood brothers, which is about the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill with kind of a corollary appearance from annie oakley. And im going to read a few excerpts and talk about my journey through this story and then take some questions from you all afterwards. So first i want to talk to you a bit 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 wild horse in the american west, i have to yet adjusted here, i learned about a strange and heartbreaking moment that had transpired outside sitting bulls cabin while he was being assassinate during an ambush. A horse was tethered to a railing, and at the sound of gunfire, he d started to dance, trained to do such a thing while he was in the wild west, Buffalo Bills famous spectacle of which sitting bull wasas a part for fr months during 1885. I couldnt shake the image, and as i began to look into it, i learned that the horse was a gift to sitting bull from buffalo bill presented to sitting bull when he left the show to go home. And home for him at that time was Standing Rock. The fact that buffalo bill had given sitting bull a horse upon his departure was significant. This was the animal that transformed the west and was stripped from theic tribes in order to vanquish them. It wasth a gift that sitting bul treasured along with a hat that cody had given him as well. After sitting bull was killed, buffalo bill bought the horse back from sitting bulls widows, and according to some accounts, rode 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. For it symbolized so much. As i thought about the steed outside sitting bulls dwelling as his killing was underway, a portal into Something Else opened up. [laughter] strange voices coming through the portal. [laughter] its all strange, i told you. [laughter] okay. Where was i . Oh, portal, right. Exactly. A portal opened up. Exactly what, i was not sure of at the time other than the fact that here was my next story, and it was calling, and at some point i would head on down its trail. Later as i was well along this path, i came across another image. Itss now on the cover of this book, and it too captured my attention. It was taken for publicity purposes while sitting bull and buffalo bill were on tour in montreal, and its caption was foes in 76, friends in 85. I began to imagine these two men on the road, sitting bull on that horse crisscrossing the nation, visiting lands that once had belonged to the la coe eta, appearing lakota, appearing as himself on crowded thoroughfares built on top of ancient paths made by animals and the people who followed them with william f. Cody, another mythical figure of the great plains reenacting wartime scenarios that had one outcome. The end of the red man and the victory of the white leading the whole parade many a celebration of the wild west that became the national scripture. What were the forces that brought these two men together, i wondered, and what was the nature of their alliance. Were they each trapped in a persona, a veneer that was somewhat true . And behind the myth, the projected ideas in which they were preserved, who were they in daytoday life . Theirs was certainly an unlikely partnership, but one thing was obvious on its face, both had names that were forever linked with the buffalo. One man was creditedded with wiping out the creditedded with wiping out the species, though that was hardly the case, and the other was sustained by its verype life. Theyas were, in effect, two sids of the same coin, foes and then friends, just as the Photo Caption on the publicity poster said. So this image, too, entered my consciousness. Here were 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 was it connected to the Dancing Horse outside sitting bulls cabin . Okay. So now a little bit, a little bit about all of these questions. Cant answer all of them, but there are a few thoughts. First of all, something i do in my book is i recount the stories of each man from cradle to the grave literally, and i kind of track their parallel histories. I mean, both grew up, both men grew up on the frontier, both came from very rough circumstances, both were quite revered in their own tribes, both became superstars, both they were husbands, fathers, sons, warriors. They shared a bloody history. They were enemies, you know, for quite some time million they hooked up until they hooked up in Buffalo Bills wild west show. So heres a little bit about cody. In europe he was known as natures nobleman, a frontier selfsufficient with the sophistication of western civilization. In america he was king of the old west, a title he deserved. He was a hunter, scout, shooter, rider, warrior, teller of tall tales and man of adventure par excellence. His experiences in sitting [inaudible] rendered him a kind of wise man, and president s and generals sought his advice. His friends included Frederick Remington and mark twain, pawnee chiefs, broncs busters who coud drink him h under the table, archdukes from foreign lands and 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. Hehe was the simplest of man, 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, notot named for the animal that he would kill by the thousands. Others, for the record, killed more. But just a boy who played with indians on the great plains, perhaps even members of sitting bulls extended tribe. He would pass through a 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 preserve 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 the 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 a [laughter] sittingg 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. 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 fled northward into the arms of 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 n it in my book. Hehe was, he had become public enemy number one. He was the guy who killed custer, you know . Civil war hero. And pretty notorious for his role in the indian wars. And so when he turned himself in at fort buford or with his people and his children including his young son and had his son surrender his rifle in a very poignant with ceremony which i describe in my book, he makes a a point of saying that e reason he came back is he wanted to make sure his children could see how the white man was living and learn to endure and assimilate into this new culture. He was so famous then that everybody, people would him and would surround 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. He hooked up with a couple of troupes and traveled around. It was not the reason that native americans joined some of theseom shows isnt because it s like, oh, this is great, i get to, like, appear in these shows. It was a way off the reservation. It was a a sanctioned way for tm the reservation. And he wasnt really treated very well in these shows. He was just not, you know, this was one of the great americans of all time. And he was known and still is revered around the world. He was not treated with respect in these shows until cody came along. And cody had been after him for a long time. Head knew that sitting bull was like a, you know, a big score, to used todays parlance. He knew that having him in his show would bring in a lot of money, and by then cody himself washe this huge superstar as wel after the little bighorn. He had avenged custers death by scalping an indian and then returning to the stage many new york and elsewhere in new york and elsewhere on the east coast and reenacting the 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 inas 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 agreed to all this. He really wanted sitting bull in his show. But another reason that sitting bull agreed to travel with cody was c 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 was, he became a fan. And they struck up an immediate friendship, and he gave her the nickname little miss sureshot. Which actually translates into else, but [laughter] youll have to realize my book to find that out. [laughter] 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 . You know, 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 was there were a couple of over 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 , to ask him why the American Government had betrayed his people. That was, like, really the overriding reason for him to join upp 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 b office on capitol hill, andit 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 meeting started to laugh but sitting bull remained silent. So h he apparently did not get o meet the president , the grandfather, you know, to his disappointment. And, you know, that part of his desire to join up with codety 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 and acknowledged the white mans superior firepower but bond 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 both were very generous. But he couldnt understand how this technologically advanced culture wasan failing its peopl. And i think thats, you know, quite interesting in terms of whats going on today. So at any rate, after the well, sitting bull traveled with cody for c four months in 1885, and i just want to reed you this realizes you this short paragraph 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 floorly 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 s 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 yourn own end. And then finally, imagine embracing life with allly of yor might and force, your generosity and joy, trying to contain the wellspring off sorrow and blood that was flooding your world and drowning it. Knowing that a live cannot be stopped 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[l i wondered, 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 translatedded and he had to translated and he had to have, you know, known the 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 each reporters followed him around as he traveled, you know, he had an entourage of friends, and there were often reporters. And i started to wonder if reporters werert making jokes about the, you know, hey, chief, here we are in buffalo, what do you think about that . And i it just seemed like he was in a very, again, strange and humiliating position. They