Black Kettle National Grasslands, Oklahoma
You can see by the satellite image a water course by the name of Dead Indian Creek ran through here.
That intrigued me last time here. I looked into it.
Here is the blogpost about it from back in 2018.
Rather than rewrite the story I thought I’d just reshow the post.
Hope you don’t mind my laziness.
Cheyenne, Oklahoma
If I rest my head on the steering wheel while we drive I get my chin rubbed.
With a name like Dead Indian Creek I had to find out how it came by this name. It seems that early settlers to this area discovered a number of Native American sky burials along the creek and so named the creek. In the 1950's a dam was built and the resulting lake carried the name of the creek. History records that General Custer attacked a Cheyenne camp in this area resulting in the death of Chief Black Kettle. Today a large tract of land is now known as Black Kettle National Grassland managed by the National Forest Service. In recent times a do-gooder felt the Dead Indian name was derogatory to the Native Americans and filed a petition for it to be renamed Black Kettle Creek/lake or Medicine Woman Creek/lake after Black Kettle's wife. Meanwhile those who opposed the name change contacted the local Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and gained over 1000 signatures to keep the names as they are.
The do-gooder moved to California and the case was dropped.
Let's climb this dad.
I think I am changing my mind about going to the top.
Present day: look how much greener it is now, same time in April as five years back.
Back to the old post.
Oh gee, I climbed all the way up here and it's just a bunch of water!
I'm tired, I wanna go home.
Present Day
Ground-plum
The native people would eat the fruit. I gave it a try.
It wasn’t fully ripe yet I could tell they would be very tasty with a sweet tartness to them.
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Lizards have been scarce for a long time. We bot miss the desert.
I could possibly swim in the lake but I’m sure it is too cold for me. May walk over and test the waters.
4 comments:
I wandered off to have a read about sky burials. For anyone who wishes to read it: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/23/1962663/-Indians-101-Sky-burials.
The plums look delightful. Surprised birds or rodents haven't eaten them...but maybe they know they're not ripe yet! Good combo of 2 posts, before/after.
What a beautiful landscape. I tend to think of Oklahoma of rolling grasslands. Beans is saying, "Carry me, Dad! My little short legs are tired! I have to take 10 steps to your one."
Somehow, that place feels restful to me.
Nice to see the landscape was green this time around.
Loved the story about the do gooder!!
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