On the Way Home;

OK, I know this is working since I got the note on my email automatically. Hopefully I put yours in accurately this time.
After a great several days with my cousins (we used to find lots of arrow heads/flints on the farms as well in the bends of the creeks there; id'd as the Osage winter grounds). But I digress.
Made a beeline south from Wichita to Medicine Lodge:
I think the locals don't know what they have there, and several did not know anything about the council that was held in 1867 and the importance thereof. The actual site is not marked at all, the confluence of the Elm Creek and the Medicine River, but it is a little confusing. There is a dominant hill overlooking the plains (must have been a beautiful place before the houses and poor little ramshackle town). They do, Every Five Years, hold a pageant on that hill in a natural little amphitheater of a re-enactment of the history of the area, but now it's a sad little primitive golf course. There is a marker going into the park that says the familiar "near here", and that's it. There is a little idealized memorial on the old high school grounds overlooking the Elm Creek side, and for all I know that was the site. In reality, I suspect the officers/gov't reps put up their tents, etc, on the high ground and the 7000 or so Indians camped down on the plains around the creeks. I could visualize it, with a little concentration. But, they could definitely do better. The sad part is, and it is fairly consistent, the little farm towns along the rural highways are dying. Stores boarded up, only the very occaisional little Mom and Pop cafe, etc. Remember you guys, as you go to Maui and Mammoth and live our lives, it is advertised that one Kansas Farmer feeds 128 people. It's primarily big business now, filled with insecticides and chemical fertilizers. No wonder Cancer and obesity is so rampant, with the Type II D.M. But I digress....eat your Fruits, Vegetables, take Vitamin D at 4000 u a day, and Tumeric for Prostate Cancer avoidance. Ignore at your peril, esp with the state of our health care system. ooops : there I go again.
From Medicine Lodge KS I sought out Camp Supply. Again, I was disappointed. The current town, Fort Supply, is really downtrodden, as is Buffalo OK where I stopped for a hamburger in the Mom/Pop cafe. It was about 1/2 filled with cowboys, ranch family here and there, a building that would have been condemned anywhere else. Horse trailers out front with saddled Quarter horses, etc. I felt at home! Ice tea served in quart jars, nothing fancy there. Fort Supply is the next town, further south into the Panhandle, and was, as I'm sure you know, established by Custer at the direction of Gen'l Miles during/immed after the Washita campaign. The site itself, where the Camp Was, is occupied by a prison, and this is where it gets interesting.
I had to see it. Keep in mind I am a senior citizen these days, traveling alone, and I like a certain bit of personal protection that is getting more and more important along the highways by the way as gas prices become out of reach of most people. I also was returning from turkey hunting and most people use a 12 guage with 3" magnum shells. There are signs all over about how one is subject to search, and the felony and steep fines in the thousands of $$ if one brings firearms, drugs, or alcohol onto the prison property and through the gates. Well, one out of three isn't bad, I thought, so I went in anyway. There are inmates walking around everywhere, but I did find the site, got to take some pics, and marveled at what it must have been like. The original wood stockade and buildings built during the 1860's and into the '70's are gone. The old Dodge City/Camp Supply road is marked within the prison, then is obliviated. The current mock-up of the stockade that is put up for tourist visitation is about 1/4-1/2 mile from the actual site. I just thought of the colorful characters from our western history that have been there.
After the utility of the camp was done, squatters from the Ok Land Rush dismantled the fort and buildings for other stuff, and very few things remained. It then became a psychiatric hospital and that has some history in it too. The original cemetery, for example, was moved to Ft Leavenworh (the soldiers, for ex.), so the current old cemetery is filled with old psych patients. The most current burial is the Doc and his wife, in their 80's, who were buried there in the early '80s since they had lived there and provided medical care for that population. There are a smattering of very old grave sites but not many and the markers are pretty much unintelligble. Again, though, one really has to seek out this site, and even then it's tough because of the prison. There were a lot of tough looking hombres walking around staring at the Jeep Grand Cherokee, let me tell you.
After that, another little wild goose chase, finding the site of the Lyman Wagon Battlefield. That fight lasted about 4 days, and if the Comanche had been able to overwhelm that force of 98 soldiers in that valley, they would have had tons of supplies/ammo/rifles. But, once again, a scout escaped, made it about 100 miles back up to Camp Supply, notifed the camp of the besiegement, and they were rescued. And so goes history. In getting home, where I have a black tie dinner tonight and I'm still 6 hours away just south of ABQ, it was a detour first 10 miles one way to the Texas marker, then that marker unbeknownst to me directed the visitor another 2.4 miles south and 1.7 miles east bouncing along dirt/rocky roads, among honest to God prairie dog towns, sage and scrub plants, to the descent again into the Canadian R valley where the battle took place over about 380 acres. Again, while they have done lots of good archaelogical work, it's hard to get to, not well marked at all at the site, and it's on private land where cattle roam and there are LOTS of oil well derricks. There are more being added. Of interest, however, is that along the way are the recent graves of a family that have ranched that area for generations. Reminded me of the family grave sites of that family in Legends of the Fall movie, if you saw it. I can just picture a little group of ranchers out there on the windswept promontory that overlooks the Canadian valley, burying their loved ones. A lonely, kind of sad, but beautiful place. Again, when you look down into the valley, the grass is greening and the trees are all leafed out along the banks.
Well, got to get back on the road. As time allows, I'll get the pics of the trip on Snapfish, so don't ignore the notification if you want to see some dead turkeys and (mostly) the Red River Wars topography. I don't expect I'll get back there, but I would like to visit Palo Duro Canyon some day.
All the best, R