Mary Christopher Shares Family Lore - 'Our Friend Sitting Bull'

Author and 5th generation Iowan, Mary Christopher, joins us to discuss her first book, Our Friend Sitting Bull, which tells the real-life account of her great grandparents, Lizzie and George Dell, and their friendship with the famous Lakota Indian chief, Sitting Bull. The story begins with the four-month long journey of 20-year old Lizzie and 39-year old George as they travel from Iowa to the Dakota Territory in the late 1800’s. While there, they meet and befriend Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, and his tribe of Sioux Indians. At the time, many of the settlers were friends with the Native Americans and had fairly good relationships with them despite their different customs and languages. Christopher said, “Sitting Bull would bring up to 30 people at a time to my great grandparent’s home; he didn’t come and argue about ‘this is our land and you should get off it,’ he came and they brought handmade moccasins for the family, they brought all kinds of warm furs and hides and they said thank you for letting us use your water and for feeding us for a few days and here are some gifts for you. It was just kind of a trade and understanding…”

Christopher also elaborates on her inspiration for writing this story, the near extinction of the American bison at the end of the 19th century, and her thoughts on working with Steve Semken from Ice Cube Press. Her advice for those who want to turn their interesting family stories into a book is, “…try to get all the rest of the family on board because there’s nothing like that big family to support you… and the other thing that I would say is… try to find and use local contacts before you go crazy on Google. There’s a lot of stuff out there…that was how I found my publisher and my editors and everybody who helped me with this book was just reaching out locally.”