Frontier reminiscences

[elisabeth]

This is rather a nice piece:

digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v001/v001p259.html

It's the reminiscences of one John Murphy, who was a teamster for the army in the Washita campaign. He then went on to work for the Indian agencies in various capacities. Nothing earth-shattering, but a slightly different perspective on things.

[Lawtonka]

Hey Elisabeth,

Thanks for the link, good reading. Below, I have posted a couple of pictures of the Medicine Bluffs mentioned in the story. There are plenty of Rattlesnakes in that country. I spent many a day down at the bottom of the bluffs as a kid cooling off in the creek.



This is a photo taken by William Soule on December 28, 1868. Then Colonel B.H. Grierson, 10th Cavalry, is shown in the foreground. The bluffs are on the left. They had stopped at this point to admire the area.




In this picture, I am standing about where the horses are in the first picture.




I apologize for the poor quality photo, but the only one I have. Oh yeah, here is another creature that is plentiful at Fort Sill, the tarantula spider, this spider is about as big as the palm of your hand, looks ugly, most everyone is scared of them, but they are not deadly. Some people have their fangs removed and keep them as pets. The day I took this photo was just after a rain in the Wichata Mountains, the were on the road by the hundreds! When you run over them it sound crunchy like.

[Melani]

How on earth do you find a vet who knows how to remove the fangs from a tarantula?

[mcaryf]

From a post by Melani: "How on earth do you find a vet who knows how to remove the fangs from a tarantula?"

I came across this post when I was looking at the list of the 10 most recent posts on the site without knowing the context of the previous posts in the thread.

I was so puzzled about this story which I presumed to be of some military veteran that I had to go look at the thread! I thought it might possibly be some old initiation practice in the 7th Cavalry but sadly a more mundane meaning became apparent.

Regards

Mike

[elisabeth]

Lovely idea!

Wonder if there were any initiation practices? Other than the fun of watching new recruits falling off horses, that is. Beheading rattlesnakes seems the most likely ...