Biography of the famous sharpshooter.

In 1885, sharpshooter Annie Oakley has to prove herself to Buffalo Bill Cody, owner of a popular Wild West show.

When Annie Oakley joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as a sharpshooter not everyone is thrilled with her celebrity.

A biography of America's greatest female sharpshooter delves beneath her popular image to reveal a conservative but competitive woman who wanted to succeed.

Long before the silver screen placed Mary Pickford before the eyes of millions of Americans, this girl, born August 13, 1860 as Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses, had won the right to the title of the first "America's Sweetheart." After winning first prize at a shooting match as a teenager, Annie quickly gained worldwide fame as an incredible crack shot. In August 1903, when she was well known as a champion shot in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Oakley became a target of defamation by a reporter for a newspaper owned by media magnate William Randolph Hearst. The libelous story alleged that the famous sure shot had been arrested for stealing and buying drugs. Annie sent a telegram denying the claim and asked the story to be retracted. Hearst refused and the story was then published in all his newspapers. Miss Oakley responded with a libel suit and spent seven years in court fighting the well-known businessman. During the long, drawn-out legal battle, Annie was struggling with health issues. Despite these trials she poured her energy into advocating for the U.S. military, encouraging women to engage in sport shooting, and supporting orphans.

Today, most remember “California Girl” Lillian Frances Smith (1871–1930) as Annie Oakley’s chief competitor in the small world of the Wild West shows’ female shooters. But the two women were quite different: Oakley’s conservative “prairie beauty” persona clashed with Smith’s tendency to wear flashy clothes and keep company with the cowboys and American Indians she performed with. This lively first biography chronicles the Wild West showbiz life that Smith led and explores the talents that made her a star. Drawing on family records, press accounts, interviews, and numerous other sources, historian Julia Bricklin peels away the myths that enshroud Smith’s fifty-year career. Known as “The California Huntress” before she was ten years old, Smith was a professional sharpshooter by the time she reached her teens, shooting targets from the back of a galloping horse in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West. Not only did Cody offer $10,000 to anyone who could beat her, but he gave her top billing, setting the stage for her rivalry with Annie Oakley. Being the best female sharpshooter in the United States was not enough, however, to differentiate Lillian Smith from Oakley and a growing number of ladylike cowgirls. So Smith reinvented herself as “Princess Wenona,” a Sioux with a violent and romantic past. Performing with Cody and other showmen such as Pawnee Bill and the Miller brothers, Smith led a tumultuous private life, eventually taking up the shield of a forged Indian persona. The morals of the time encouraged public criticism of Smith’s lack of Victorian femininity, and the press’s tendency to play up her rivalry with Oakley eventually overshadowed Smith’s own legacy. In the end, as author Julia Bricklin shows, Smith cared more about living her life on her own terms than about her public image. Unlike her competitors who shot to make a living, Lillian Smith lived to shoot.

Winner of the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Nonfiction The little-known but uniquely American story of the unlikely friendship of two famous figures of the American West—Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull—told through the prism of their collaboration in Cody's Wild West show in 1885. “Splendid… Blood Brothers eloquently explores the clash of cultures on the Great Plains that initially united the two legends and how this shared experience contributed to the creation of their ironic political alliance.” —Bobby Bridger, Austin Chronicle It was in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883 that William F. Cody—known across the land as Buffalo Bill—conceived of his Wild West show, an “equestrian extravaganza” featuring cowboys and Indians. It was a great success, and for four months in 1885 the Lakota chief Sitting Bull appeared in the show. Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration, in “a compelling narrative that reads like a novel” (Orange County Register). “Thoroughly researched, Deanne Stillman’s account of this period in American history is elucidating as well as entertaining” (Booklist), complete with little-told details about the two men whose alliance was eased by none other than Annie Oakley. When Sitting Bull joined the Wild West, the event spawned one of the earliest advertising slogans: “Foes in ’76, Friends in ’85.” Cody paid his performers well, and he treated the Indians no differently from white performers. During this time, the Native American rights movement began to flourish. But with their way of life in tatters, the Lakota and others availed themselves of the chance to perform in the Wild West show. When Cody died in 1917, a large contingent of Native Americans attended his public funeral. An iconic friendship tale like no other, Blood Brothers is a timeless story of people from different cultures who crossed barriers to engage each other as human beings. Here, Stillman provides “an account of the tragic murder of Sitting Bull that’s as good as any in the literature…Thoughtful and thoroughly well-told—just the right treatment for a subject about which many books have been written before, few so successfully” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Children will share the excitement of the heroine, Tay, when they read about the Wild West Show at Chicago's World Fair. They will see the show and meet its stars through Tay's eyes as she experiences the thrills of the Wild West Show and struggles to gain the respect of her older brother. From her stories, readers will learn details about the Columbian Exposition of 1893, the legendary Wild West Show, and the difficulties of life on the American frontier.

As a traveling performer with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West, Annie Oakley became a legend for her shooting skills and her role in creating the colorful myth of the American West. This book presents the exciting details of the female sharpshooter's life, and shows how the real Annie Oakley, while different from the image promoted in movies and books, was still an adventurous and interesting woman who broke barriers and created new opportunities for women all over the United States.

Profiles Phoebe Ann Moses, the star sharpshooter of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show under the name Annie Oakley, who began shooting to help feed her family after her father's death.