Tuesday, August 14, 2007

My Kansas Kronikles: Medicine Lodge


When I announced my Kansas trip on this blog, Kentucky blogger Prairie Bluestem, who has relatives living near Kingman, recommended Medicine Lodge to me.

Like Kingman, it has a fabulous old-style small town main street. But Medicine Lodge has more history. In 1867, in front of 15,000 Kiowa, Comanche, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne Indians, gathered just east of the town to sign the Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty. Among the newspaper reporters on hand to witness the event was Henry M. Stanley, the man who four years later found Dr. David Livingstone in Africa.

Kansas, as others have commented is a contemporary center of America's "Religous Right." I'm not a fan of that term, as it is usually used in a derisive manner.

But those religious conservatives didn't just spring out of nothingness from Kansas' red soil. Abolitionist Carry Nation, the woman who put her axe to many liquor stills, was from Medicine Lodge. Pictured is her home, which is right next to the Stockade Museum, which Prairie Bluestem recommends to anyone interested in Old West history.

Next: The Gypsum Hills.

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