Mini Walk About/Red River Wars

Hello Gentlemen, Good Morning.
A sample of the utility of these little blogs.
On my home from my mini-walk-about of some Red River Wars sites, combined with turkey hunting on my cousins and my family farms in mid-eastern Kansas. Those early mornings and the cacophony of sounds as dawn breaks is amazing; turkeys are everywhere, we got six. anyway..
En Route, sought and chased down the Adobe Walls site, along with a neat little museum in Borger, TX, after stopping in Amarillo for directions. They don't really have good maps to these sites at all and, in fact, the lady in Borger gave me some literature that had serious errors in it. Wild goose chase that needed some correction. But I did find Adobe Walls and it is in a very picturesque valley of the Canadian, easy to see why the spot/valley was chosen not only by the Bent brothers for their trading post (the first Adobe Walls), and the merchants willing to risk death for the buffalo trade deep in Indian Terr ruled by the Comanche/Kiowa/Southern Cheyenne. The site where Billy Dixon drew a bead on Ishtay is not marked, and there are about 3 possible bluffs/hills on the north side of the Canadian. You are bouncing along among the rocks and jagged topography on the plains one minute, then you are down in a fairly level green grassy river bottom about 1/2 mile wide with heavily forested Cottonwoods along the river. It's beautiful. It's all within private land but the gravel road is public and the owners (similar to the Dull Knife site in Wyo) have owned the Turkey Creek Ranch ever since. They have donated the 5 acre site to Texas. For me, worth the trip. After that side trip I just booked it to Emporia KS. The Rath wagon trail to Dodge City was a well used trail, but it's gone now and not marked. They must have been brave men to do that, even in the fairly large company that they had. Personally, I think the buffalo hunters were just rough, uneducated men being manipulated by the merchants (Rath, etc) who talked them into going down with them (using them for protection) to get the robes easier and first. In fact, as you know, they had a spy within the Indian ranks and the merchants were informed there was going to be a raid intent on wiping them out, and even knew the night and the tme. One of them left a couple of days early to just get out, one of them (Rath I think) stayed on to protect their investments of stores, and they did not tell anyone else but kept them there to protect their stores/materiel. That included the elderly man and his wife who they employed as a cook, and, of course, Billy Dixon.
While in Borger, btw, I met a man from Kansas who portrays Billy Dixon in re-enactments and he really resembles him from the pictures that are available. Had a very interesting chat.
More in the next blog, coming right up.
R