Volume 11 , Issue 52

1st Week In January 2009 Summary

A summary of the 2009 OkieLegacy for January is listed in this week's Okielegacy, December 2009, Issue 52, starting with the 1st week of January 2009.

Around this time last year (2009) our NWTechie had been doing some fine tuning to our OkieLegacy format and had added a "Classified" section. The Classifieds are moderated and are limited to 150 characters or less. You can post Jobs, For Sale, WAnted, For Rent postings. Do not forget to put in the date of how long you want your Classified to run. You should include your name, email and/or phone number before you click the "send" button.

Another interesting tidbit we learned last January was in the book, "Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales," page 244, concerning Fort Arbuckle's Lost Payroll. It goes something like this, "Early one morning in 1869 a heavily guarded caravan of wagons rumbled out of fort Leavenworth, Kansas, bound for Fort Arbuckle. The iron-rimmed wheels of one wagon left broad, deep ruts in the dirt. it carried a United Sates government gold payroll."

"The caravan safely journeyed through the Indian country and was approaching the designated outpost. A few miles more and the journey would be completed. But as the wagons rounded a bend in the trail near Mill Creek, a barrage of shots from a dozen or more rifles caught the soldiers by surprise. The military detail promptly returned a volley, instantly killing five outlaws who had dared show themselves. All the soldiers were killed in the ambush."

"The outlaws removed the gold from the wagon, fearing that more troops would be dispatched from the nearby fort when the caravan failed to show."

We also learned about the history of the Red River War of 1874. It was during the summer of 1874, the US Army launched a campaign to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian tribes from the Southern Plains and enforce their relocation to reservations in Indian Territory.

According to the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, the government would provide the tribes with a variety of basic services and training, housing, food and supplies, including guns and ammunition for hunting. They would receive these allotments each year for 30 years and would be allowed to hunt on any lands south of the Arkansas River so long as the buffalo may range thereon. In exchange, the Indians agreed to stop their attacks and raids on the settlers. Ten chiefs endorsed the treaty and many tribal members moved voluntarily to reservations.

BUT... the treaty was destined for failure when commercial buffalo hunters ignored the terms of the treaty and the southern herd of American bison was exterminated in just four years -- from 1874 to 1878. The hunters slaughtered the bison and sent the hides back east and left the carcasses to rot on the plains. The US government did nothing to stop it.
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