Blood brothers : the story of the strange friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill / Deanne Stillman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-272) and index.

In which Public Enemy Number One comes home -- In which the Wild West is born and dies and is resurrected from the bottom of the Mississippi River -- In which the Seventh Cavalry is defeated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and Buffalo Bill stars as himself in "The red right hand, or The first scalp for Custer" -- In which Sitting Bull is hired and heads east for the Wild West -- In which Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill join up in the city of Buffalo, and Tatanka Iyotake reunites with Annie Oakley -- In which an Indian and a Wasichu certify their alliance across the medicine line -- In which there comes a ghost dance, or, a horse from Buffalo Bill responds to the assassination of Sitting Bull, and other instances of the last days of the Wild West -- Epilogue.

Even before the Indian Wars had ended, Cody was bringing the vanishing frontier to citizens across the land in one of America's earliest reality shows. It was so popular that it lasted for thirty years. For four months in 1885, the Lakota chief Sitting Bull appeared in Cody's Wild West show. The appearance spawned one of the earliest advertising slogans: "Foes in '76, Friends in '85"--Referring to the Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull did not participate in Custer's "last stand" but was nearby and popularly blamed for it. With their way of life in tatters, many Lakota and others availed themselves of the chance to perform in the Wild West show. Cody paid his performers well, and he treated the Indians no differently from white performers. As the show traversed America, Sitting Bull and Cody formed an unlikely partnership, united in mutual respect and by their shared history with the animal that gave both of them their names.