As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Medicine Lodge Creek is but a memory which few have, but that Kiowa location in Kansas was the gathering of a peace treaty, between the Federal Government led by General William Tecumseh Sherman and a host of the horse tribes from the Southern Plains, namely the Comanche and Kiowa who had a long history of robbery, rape, enslavement and murder of other Indian tribes, Spanish, Mexicans, Texans and in that era, Americans.
The message from General Sherman was simple and the Indians did not like it. It simply was, "Stop terrorizing Americans and educate yourselves to provide for yourselves in farming on Oklahoma lands and live, or continue on as terrorists out on the plains, and the US government will kill you."
The treaty of 1867 was signed and the Indians had their own ideas of never keeping it, as the crooks in American government intent on profits did not intend to keep it. The race haters will blame either side, but the wild Indian was not going to stop their easy life for work, and the American was not going to give something away that they could profit from as capitalists.
This though is not about the clash of the uncivilized terrorist and the Christian, this is about two boys or young men were there. One was 17 years old and the other was 22 years old. What was interesting about Medicine Creek Lodge is both were curious and were there as they did not want to miss the display.
For the 17 year old, his ordeal was he was a teamster, who had been kicked in the back by a mule while harnessing that beast, and it almost killed him. It paralyzed him for sometime, but he made a friend promise not to day anything as he knew the wagonmaster would not let him go. So he sat on a rough wagon for days, in severe pain, but he got to Medicine Creek Lodge.
His name was Billy Dixon and would become one of the legends of the American west, equal to Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill Cody.
The 22 year old, had heard about the gathering from staying at a Cheyenne camp. He had been out terrorizing the American public on raids, but had been informed that beef and presents were being given out and he wanted to see.
His name was Quanah or Stinker Parker, a product of the Comanche terrorists and would be the last leader of the wild Comanche in the west Texas wars which would break that terror ring and place the Indians in American government houses, receiving welfare and being the heathens they always were.
What is of interest is these young men were both born about the same time. Billy Dixon was an orphan in his parents and family died. Stinker was an orphan in his father Comes and Goes, was shot in retaliation for a rape and rapine raid that Texans trailed back to his camp. His mother was captured. She herself was a White woman, who had been made a savage in her name was Cynthia Parker.
The two siblings that Stinker had, both would die of disease.
The common course of Billy and Stinker did not end there. They would both live free and roam the plains. One a terrorist and the other a Buffalo Hunter. They would meet unknowingly at a place called Adobe Walls, where Billy Dixon and the Americans there would almost be slaughtered by the Comanche. Later in what Dixon would term a "scratch shot", he would at almost a mile shoot an Indian from his horse with a Big 50 Remington Rolling Block. It would be years later as Dixon was riding with the US Cavalry and a Stinker Parker was a captive, that in a discussion, Parker admitted to being at Adobe Walls, and the told a story which was strange to him, in he was sitting on his horse, and something stuck him hard in the back and knocked him from the horse, senseless. That was Billy Dixon's shot.
Both men would marry, Parker had 6 wives and a big house in Oklahoma, living as an American. Bill Dixon would plant an orchard and build a lovely home in his West Texas on the same grounds he once hunted and scouted over.
Both would die in Oklahoma, Dixon in Cimarron County in 1913 and Parker would die in Cache Count Oklahoma in 1911.
I always remember Billy Dixon at the end of his life, having all the comforts of the modern age, that he longed again for the open prairie, his cook broiling up a steak, sourdough bread and a quart tin cup of coffee.
For Parker, the now statesman who founded his own pagan religion based on peyote, was remembered for the epitaph on his tombstone.
Resting Here Until Day Breaks
And Shadows Fall and Darkness
Disappears is
Quanah Parker Last Chief of the Comanches
There are not many instances in this world where two people are born, live different lives, which intersect at times, and both rise to prominence in each world. The one reality though is that if Stinker Parker had won, Billy Dixon would not have been given a nice home, been appointed a statesman for Americans and died in peace.
Billy Dixon would have been tortured to death, his wife gang raped and murdered and his children turned into savages.
That is the difference in this and the one which is not to be forgotten in all the rhetoric. I would have loved to have been at Medicine Lodge Creek too, just to see what was going on.
Nuff Said
agtG
