Nonprofit and mission is of course to preserve and share treasures of colorados early history. And most of what we do focuses on the early of the first half of the 19th century. And that makes marx lecture that much appropriate to us and we have begun to read a land acknowledgment statement which id like to read to you for our imaginations, who call colorado home, since its in 1999, this Historic CentersMission Statement has recognized and celebrated native American Indian cultures tesoro, a signature annual june created in 2000, is the indian and powwow celebrating todays American Indian nations and featuring award artists and intertribal powwow competitors. American indian patriots who fought bravely in american wars and many of colorado indian nations are honored at this event, this public reaches thousands of visitors. Tesoro acknowledges the forbidden the ute nations, the kiowa, southern and northern cheyenne, the southern and northern arapaho, the pawnee, the lakota and many other indian nations that call this beautiful land, home in colorados history, many injustices impact our American Indian nations that call this land home, including removal of most tribes following. The sand creek massacre on november nine, 1864. Consider with ciceros commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, understanding the historical and current experiences of native peoples will help inform the work we do collectively engaging in building relationships through academic scholarship and collaborative partnerships, acknowledging our past, our present and future native nations, we gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose access strong homelands we gather as well as the diverse and vibrant communities who make their home here today as the cesar today and. For those of you who dont know that little coal, huzzah its something we do at the forward all the time to acknowledge a variety of different things. So without further ado, id like to introduce our speaker today Mark Lee Gardner, a native of Mark Lee Gardner who has authored Award Winning books on billy the kid and pat garrett. Jesse james and theodore roosevelt. Hes written for National Geographic history. American heritage, the Los Angeles Times and numerous other print and online publications. Hes also appeared on pbss his American Experience as well on the History Channel and see the travel channel and on npr, gardner holds an emmy in american studies from the university of wyoming and lives with his family. The foot of pikes peak now. To add to that list of accomplished means, we have his most current book, which is the source of this talk and is the earth is all that lasts at the end of march. Select your and ill remind you about him again he does copies here that are for sale. And at the end of the lecture youre more than welcome to purchase one and to get it signed by mark. So without further ado, here is our speaker mark gardner of where im from would say this is even more this is an even better accomplished true magazine has chosen mark as the Nonfiction Author of the year excuse me and the nonfiction fiction of the year mark thank you. How do i power on the clicker. Its actually can set it down there for me. Thank you. Thank you, sue, thanks for being here. I want to give you a maybe a little more about what journey i took get here and what brought me to writing book. I come from a long line of loggers, men that cut timber, maples and walnuts for several generations. My family, the gardener family has logged in missouri, north missouri and south missouri. I spent many a day as man in the woods with my dad taking gas and oil to the chainsaw, hooking up the choker to, the of those trees. They could be dragged out a skitter to a log truck. Now clearly my passion was not logging and i chose another that i really cherish and treasure those those days i had with my dad in the missouri woods in the sixties, seventies and and early eighties, but you know, my dad, he only made it to like the sixth grade. I dont think even graduated from the sixth grade because he had to help granddad in the woods and the sawmill. They had a sawmill for a while and my dad had a sawmill in the country on a blacktop for a while as well. My mom had me when was 17 years old, so she finish high school, but my and my mom made sure when we were kids that he took off for a week, two every summer. And we on a vacation and. Not only were they educating their children, me and my two younger sisters, but they were themselves. My mom had never really been around either had my dad. And so they loved history. And i dont. There was a battlefield or a Historic House or a museum that we didnt stop at as a family. And one of those early memories one of the first places i can recall was little bighorn battlefield, old and montana. And a young boy. I mean, it was just so overwhelming. You know, i was at the site of this great combat between American Indians and in blue coats, long knives or soldiers. And of course, as a young boy, my fascination was with custer and. The more than 200 men that perished with him, and there was no one course. This is way they phrase. There was no one left to tell the tale of this defeat. But as i got, of course, there were all kinds of people left who told the tale they were the victors. They were lakota, as they were the cheyenne. There were sitting bull two moons crazy horse. There were all kinds of people that left to tell the tale and how custer, the great civil war hero, met his defeat overlooking the little bighorn valley on june 25th, 1876. And that has always a fascination for me and i was very fortunate as a young man. I worked for the National Park service as a seasonal park ranger. I spent three summers at vince, old Fort NationalHistoric Site. I spent the summer harpers ferry, and then after later as career as a director of Historic Site trinidad, colorado, i started freelancing and i got to go back and do histories of some of these parks. So i had visited as a child, western National Parks association hired me to do the general booklet on little battlefield. And if you go to little bighorn today, youll see my book its for sale there. They call it a general interpretive publication so ive always been fascinated that story. And as sue mentioned, ive done some other books about jesse james. I grew up in jesse james country, of course, and billy the kid and pat garrett, but i wanted to revisit that that momentous occasion that battle between the lakota and custers men. And i really wanted to focus on the lives of probably the two most fierce believers and non coex with the whites. And that was crazy horse and sitting bull. And thats how this book came about. Its about their but also their struggle to protect their people and their culture, their heritage and their language and their lifeways and know sitting bull and crazy horse never signed a treaty and a lot of book talks. I being im not going to try to tell you everything thats in the book i would prefer you read the book, but ill give you a little brief background. Sitting bull was hank poppa, one of the divisions of the western sioux lakota as he was both a war leader, a political leader and a revered holy man had the gift of prophecy, and well talk about that in a minute. He was born about 1831. Crazy horse was oglala, another tribe of the lakota, born about 1840. So hes about nine years younger. He was a fierce warrior and maybe the most acclaimed, most heroic of all lakota of all time. As a young boy, he had hair and his nickname was curly, and it was very light. And he had light complexion. So he had a fairly different look than most lakota is at the. And he was very quiet, a modest he didnt like to speak council meetings. The only time he seemed to really show true emotion was on the battlefield and men wanted to follow him. He had several horses shot out, underhanded, various encounters with enemy tribes as well as the white man, but both sitting bull and crazy horse emerged as. The leaders of what i call the anti bans. And those were the ones who wanted to live apart from whites who did not want to live on reservations and. Thats what found them away from the whites in the little bighorn valley in 1876, where they were found by custer and his men. So this talk is really about decisions. I love talk about you know how a book is made the craft of writing a book. I had kinds of resources to in putting this together and i use dozens, dozens of oral histories of lakota that were fortunately preserved, written down in the late 1920s and 1930s. One of the questions i often get asked, you know, did you go and and talk to living lakota and i really didnt do that because wanted to use the story of those who were contemporaries of, sitting bull and crazy horse, who fought them, who were related to them. And fortunately, as i, there are a lot of those accounts that are theres literally dozens and i list in the back of the book all the different oral histories, the names of the individuals whose stories that i used in writing this book. So fortunately i didnt have to to go and interview descendants today because i wanted to use primary sources and Actual Stories of those who there and experience those battles in those times. The other thing that i was able to use is resources today different from ago and when i started out as a historian today there are literally of newspapers that have been scanned digitized and i found oral histories or accounts by lakota that were published in the late 1800s, early 1900s. I use those sources as. Well, my wife who was here can tell you we traveled all over the Northern Plains. We even crossed the holy line into canada, where sitting bull escape with his followers after the little bighorn. So i had a plethora of resources, stories to consult and your book can only be so long. You cant be too thousand pages, so youre constantly decisions as a writer to make that narrative powerful. The information that needs to be there, make sure its accurate and you have to cut things that really you would love to include and youre not cutting them because. Thats not good. Its just theres just the room or the space or it doesnt fit in that chapter that youre writing. And since this talk is about decisions, i this is a Little Something i wanted add in this is the cover of the book thats being printed for sale today but it wasnt the only cover we considered and im going to show you another cover that our designer at harpercollins put together. This could have been cover of the book and i do like this. The the actual image is a stephen Standing Bear drawing on muslin of the battle the little bighorn. And a lot of thought goes into covers because despite that saying dont judge a book by its cover a lot of people the covers what makes you pick it up when youre at the store and so we went back and forth but we finally decided the one on the left was the one that we used. Thats a photograph made by joseph dixon in the early 1900s when there was a gather ring of lakota leaders and shine leaders. Little bighorn thats actually taken a little bighorn and so thats was we thought was the more compelling cover. But what i like to do when i give this talk is i like to do a poll and a show of hands to see if we made the right decision. So for those who prefer the cover on the left lets see, a show of hands. Okay, now cover on the right. You know, its about equal. Thats interesting. So okay, well, we wont it were going to keep it like that. The. Okay so lets talk about some things that didnt make it into the book. The earth is all at last. This is a photograph thats actually in the book. The man on the right is horn chips. He was a cousin of crazy horse thats his wife to his right called fields all around it horn chips was a legendary holy man and holy man one of their duties was they prepared quote war medicine for the warriors and. These would be made up of charred arms effigies, horns, ships, was known as a stone dreamer. So a lot of his medicines involved a stone of some kind. And for crazy horse was crazy horse a medicine man . They also friends. And again, he was a cousin of crazy horse. But for crazy horse he made for him, he took a black stone, which had a small stone. It had a hole in it, and he encased it in buckskin. And he told crazy horse protection to wear this stone his armpit so it would be tied with a leather under his arm. He also crazy horse and holy will interpret the visions of of warriors and and help them and again try to create medicines to to give them more power and to protect them in in violent encounters and battles. So he also told crazy horse that he was never to wear a headdress or war bonnet. You know, the classic war bonnet that you see. Well, for instance, like corn chips as were in this photo, told him, never wear a war bonnet, but wear a single feather in your hair from a spotted eagle and crazy horse went into battle with hardly anything on but a breach cloud, a in his hair and a few blades of grass. Also in his hair that again something, that came from his vision but it was very important to crazy horse to to go through and dress exactly as was told before he went into battle and horn ships was legendary in part because everyone knew he was crazy horse was a holy man. And i mentioned earlier crazy horse had several shot out from under him. He was never, you know, rarely wounded. He was a wounded occasionally, but he survived all these amazing encounters. Ill tell you one story which i thought was very telling the crows who enemies with the lakota dakotas, the crow said, we always recognize crazy horse because was way out in front of everybody else. He was in front of all you, other lakota warriors. So we all know who crazy horse is. And you could say the same thing for the blue coats or the white soldiers. Crazy horse would do what was called bravery runs and bravery. Run is you race in front of the line of the enemy by yourself on horseback and draw their fire and crazy horse did multiple bravery runs and was never knocked off his horse or or seriously wounded. Another reason for the bravery runs crazy horse knew this was it in the days before repeal weapons. If you drew the fire, the enemy, it took them time to reload and so the other workers could rush in. That was another reason for these. These it was still dangerous, but it was another reason for these bravery rules. So why am i talking about horn ships and about things that are left out . This is an example of the charm or war medicine that horn ships would make. There is a collection in south dakota of dozens of these charms. It came from the family of horn ships. Um he made various charms just for use in battle. But horn ships it was claimed, made a charm for love. Crazy horse very. He was quite taken with a married woman and a horn. Supposedly made this charm so that this married woman would fall in love with crazy horse. Im not going to get too much into that in. The book. But crazy horse took off with this woman and horn ships apparently was in some danger from the the husband of the woman because he had supposedly made this charm. But these charms. I got to examine in person. Let me give you another picture. Thats a guitar pick the bottom. So theyre very small, theyre handmade for brain ten buckskin. They came from the horn ships, family, and theyre said to have been crazy horse as charms according to what we know and i was told once was killed, all these went back to haunt ships and they stayed in the family. And theyre quite exquisite. I mean, the detail and like i said, each each has a purpose. It was made for some protection, love, sickness various things that would encounter in life as a lakota but i just struggled these charms. I examined them. They looked right but there were just there were dozens of them and i, i just in my could not confirm that these indeed had once belonged to crazy horse. Im not saying that they didnt they could very well have, but it just wasnt enough for me to include these the book and i would have loved to include a picture but i just im going to include something im not 100 because you. 100 believe that it is indeed what im saying. Its going to be so i had to leave some of these pictures of, these charms out. I understand that this collection is now at the memorial in dakota. You know, the big you know, the mount rushmore, like a carving. And it i ill answer this question before i get asked. This is one of the questions i always get asked. And ill say no, i do not know when the crazy horse memorial is going to be completed. So i have no insights into. This is another one. I mean, theyre just beautiful. Theyre theyre theyre really correct for the time. And, you know, the owner had the lineage and, the provenance and all that. But i just could not become convinced that were indeed belonged to crazy horse. Och heres Something Else that i had to leave and for a different kind of reason. So i mentioned before that that cover of the the potential cover for the book was by stephen Standing Bear, a mini kaiju lakota and he was a Famous Artist and he lived from 1859 to 1933. But in the early 1900s he did many, many and drawings. If you ever read a great book i can highly recommend it called elk speaks by hart, published in 1932. Stephen Standing Bear did the illustrations for that book. He did several images of the little bighorn, and this one is is just a spectacular image. It not only includes the little bighorn battle up there in the upper portion of the drawing, but here in the and i think theres a pointer here. This area depicts the famous sitting bull sundance. So were going to talk about this sundance for a minute in early june, near a rock formation known today as the deer rocks in montana, lakota, the anti treaty bands and lakota and the gather for this annual and sitting bull dance the sundance here now, ill give you a little bit of background on sundance. The sundance was a religious and social gathering very several tribes, lakota and sometimes cheyennes gather for this and luther Standing Bear the it is a it was tribute to the great spirit for life and its blessings. Now the warriors who danced the sunda