The Founding of Dodge City - Cow town
howdy folks and greetings from the heat of the Great Plains of
North Texas were it's 102 degrees today and rising.
Well I've been talking about the Wild West during the 1800's and
nothing was wilder than Dodge City before the Lawmen came
into town and settled things down a bit.
Dodge City started out as a small sod home located about 5
miles from Fort Dodge. The fort was used as a base for the Army in
the Indian Wars and as protection for wagon trains moving West
along the Santa Fe Trail which also started there. Oh, and the U.S.
Postal Service also used the fort as it's base.
This was in the 1850's folks, so there were A LOT of Indian War
Parties marauding around there attacking anything that moved
basically.. because they were Pissed! These were the Kansas
tribes of Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, Pawnee, Comanche and a
few others but there were MANY.
And their lands were being taken away so it was very dangerous
for white folk of any kind. Those folks heading West on the wagon
trains were either stupid, ignorant of the dangers, or the bravest
people on earth!
Comanche war party: tshaonline.net.jpg)
The man who built that sod house 5 miles from the fort began
trading with hunters and soldiers and his little place became a
popular stopping point so people from the fort decided that it was
a nice spot for town so they started building there.
Of course the first building they put up was a whiskey bar made from
sod and old boards! lol but hey, it was a building! too bad that one
didn't survive to be a tourist joint. Anyway shortly thereafter came
the new railroad tracks and the city's boom was on.
At first they called it Buffalo City because of the huge numbers of
buffalo hides they were shipping out by rail to the East but that
name was already taken by another town so they just called it
Dodge City after the fort.
Here's some buffalo hides, 40,000 of them stacked up:
.jpg)
There were thousands of buffalo being slaughtered every year in the
Plains. why? Because it was a strategy to starve the Indians into
submission by taking away their main food and clothing source.
The man in charge of putting an end to the Indian Wars said this:
“Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is
the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance.”
– General Philip Sheridan
here is a famous photo which gives you an idea of the numbers:
wikipedia common
The bounty on hides was $3 and also 25 cents for tongues so that
means very good money back then and hundreds of hunters flocked
to the Plains to take advantage of it. Hundreds of buffalo were being
killed each day.
His plan worked too, dang near exterminated the entire species
and did indeed drive the Indians to starvation. Okay that was a
bit of a sidebar but it was such an important fact which affected
all the Plains tribes and Dodge City so I wanted to include it.
Dodge was the main center for buffalo hunters and buyers as
well as railroad workers, cowboys, gamblers, drifters and
gunfighters. And there was no Lawmen in town! You can guess
what happened...lots of people got killed and wounded, usually
for no reason. Just a bunch of men getting drunk and fighting.
vintage photo of Dodge from 1874.
To try and stop the violence and bloodshed the city founders
decided to hire tough, hardened men who knew no fear..buffalo
hunters, gunfighters, ex soldiers and the like who would be a
disincentive for trouble makers to mix it up with.
And it worked..for awhile. Then men with evil intent began to
join the ranks of these enforcers and used their authority to take
advantage of people, to bully, intimidate and extort them for
their own selfish desires. What good men were left quit in disgust.
So things were falling apart again and order had to be established.
Enter the Lawmen. Wyatt Earp, Bat Matterson, Charles Bassett,
Bill Tilghman. What happened when they come to town will be
discussed in the next post.
thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck
ps- ya know, you might just be a redneck if:
your wife's hairdo was ever ruined by a ceiling fan!
Thanks @janton, I'm quite a history buff and this is a subject that I know next to nothing about. I am really enjoying this series.
– General Philip Sheridan
Do we have that peace yet? :P
Sounds like the template for our modern police force Haha.
Peace.
haha! great comments sir bobaphet! well sir, in the first atrocity concerning wiping out the noble buffalo, it did take away the food supply of the Indians and help to force them onto the reservations.
the second observance you made is so brilliant because there are so many in law enforcement who joined because they like to order people around and take advantage of people and are easily corrupted and those are usually the mean, nasty ones so great point!
I assume there are those types in police forces all over the world even in Australia?
brilliant sir, thank you!
Yes, we have them here too, I think the job description attracts the corruptible. Much like politics XD
Peace.
exactly sir bobaphet! and I don't know about there but over here it seems like every single politician is a dang lawyer and they all seem to be cut from the same cloth and attracts these arrogant, greedy, power-hungry SOBs. well not Trump I don't know what he's cut from!
Boom !!
Yes, a huge percentage of our politicians are lawyers/liars. Good call.
Peace.
Holy cow about the buffalo. Again, why is this not taught! Informative wonderful post as always!
The buffalo had a worse time of it than did the Indians. Their story is enough to make any feeling adult feel shame for our collective behavior!
Hi @willymac, I am just amazed in the information age, how much we are uninformed. How can we progress from barbarity if we are not taught the mistakes of the past? We have to teach each other what we didn't learn in our indoctrination centers called school.
The news of the carnage was so bad even for back then that the numbers in official reports to Washington would have a digit removed from the right side because the reviewer assumed it had been grossly exaggerated. In some cases, according to contemporary reports, that "correction" would be made yet again by someone higher up before passing it on to the top; reporting 1/100 of the actual reported number.
It was that biggest slaughter of animals in human history.
That was a true "disturbance in the Force."
My two top losses are the burning of the Library of Alexandria, and the slaughter of the Bison.
Wow. Thanks for the additional information.
It nearly killed me seeing that photo @willymac! Such despicable behaviour; so sad.
How are you doing by the way? Haven't had a chance to talk with you lately :)
Hello, @lynncoyle1! Outdoor chores have consumed all my time for days and I have barely made a dent in what needs to be done! The winds last month left a lot of clean-up and that is slow going when it means picking things up one at a time, hauling them to a safe place and burning them. Cleaning one area around the gazebo meant picking up over 1,300 pine cones! When the heat index in 95 degrees, that wears me out!
I have not touched the book I was writing before starting Steemit. The entry page needs a big WARNING! ENTERING HERE TRIGGERS ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOR! sign.
I'm working on a companion to Sterling:For the Republic and that created another addictive behavior in me. Sterling is so real to me, I have problems separating some of the characters from actual people in my life and that reality from my "now" reality.
My deepest everything to you and Brian. I have been embarrassingly absent but my life has been spent on the fringes of many things I cannot control because I can empathize there as well as anywhere else.
This farm girl understands completely how physical work in the heat can wear you out! No apologies necessary @willymac; real life takes precedent :)
I love how your fictional characters get intertwined with your reality! To me, that's the sign of great fiction...feed the addiction my friend :)
Thank you for the "deepest everything" to Brian and I. I know exactly what that means coming from you, and it's a lot!
Thanks for the update; happy to know you are doing well.
When I was working on that book I had been in the fictional town all morning and it was getting very real in my head. I got up from the keypad for lunch and had a brief disorientation because the room was different from the one I remembered. After eating, I had to run an errand and turned in the wrong direction at the end of my driveway because that's the way it was in the story.
Actually, it was a really cool feeling!
I still have a weird feeling that if I go the the place, the little town will actually be there.
Which reminds me of the dream where I took a wrong turn on a foggy night returning home and had car problems, got the car started again, and parked in front of The Hotel California!
In the dream, I knew it was not real but I said nothing because who would ever get that opportunity again?
hahaha good call on the dream! You need Time to stand still for even a moment at that point in time :)
That is so weird; talk about getting into character, and plot and setting haha
If I really worked at it, I imagine I could get there mentally and stay. Not at the California; they ran out of wine - but MY town. Everything there is perfect and I like the people! Of course, their world is ending, so I might need a rewrite before I get too comfortable there.
BTW, what has been your favorite writing adventure? Care to do a post about it?
thank you @squirrelbait! yeah I guess the government wouldn't want that advertised, they massacred(well almost) a great and noble species to extinction in order to starve and subjugate many Indian nations.
it's one of the few government programs that actually worked as planned. thank you for your kind words, I had to rush to get it out so I wasn't exactly thrilled with it but it's ok.
Oh I think it came out just fine and you're welcome!
I took your advice by the way and started a weekly S.B.'s Rambles series ( article like posts) and a Bug Out Bits series of little tidbits of info or suggestions. I have several done so I don't feel pressured. Keeping it fun. These give a different format for info than videos as not everything is best done that way. All the other platforms I use are video only so only Steemit will have the additional stuff. I think it will round out my Steemit blog nicely. Thanks for your encouragement. I wouldn't have put as much thought into the idea without it. I'm not a writer but I think I can get the ideas across okay. Thanks again @janton for helping me grow out of my comfort zone.
howdy again @squirrelbait! well, you are so welcome..since you are so relaxed on camera I didn't think you had any uncomfortable zones!
I like that strategy though, that will work. you're moving up in rep steadily aren't you?
I got a big upvote on my newest video. Very unexpected. That propelled my rep. That's good as I like to vote on other people's content. Too much as I can spend my SBD down quite a bit. It's strange. What I think is my best stuff tends to have the least votes. It's interesting. Meanwhile, I have more content coming. So much yet to do.
You're doing well too. I'm always happy to see that as I know how much time and effort you're putting into it. These latest series of posts are just great. I like your writing style as well. Feels good to so your own thing your own way doesn't it?
howdy today @squirrelbait! yes I saw that big upvote from Dtube! yeah, the people who do those videos seem to get on dtubes radar and after awhile every video is upvoted like that! that's how people are making the money on here..well except the giants.
so I think you will be rising fast once they start voting you consistently.
thanks for the encouragement, I'll keep plugging away.
I don't think so but we'll see. It's more important that people watch them. You'll do fine it just takes time to grow. You are not offering fluff as content. It just takes time. I slowly pick up more followers as time goes by. Patience my friend. I found you so others will too and more people are signing up all the time.
yes Ma'am I heard that several hundred a day are signing up so it's stil growing pretty well. ha! I don't put out fluff but I'm going to today because I'm so tired, not much sleep last night and it's hard to think very much.
thanks squirrelbait!
Thanks again for an interesting topic, Jonboy!
Now, I was not there. I'm not related to anyone who was, and I'm not part Native American. However:
I still cannot absorb how badly the story of the Wild West's settlement overlooks the plight of the Indians in that process of intended genocide! The history books just skimm lightly over the details of the losing side, but glorify the "great men" like Buffalo Bill, who was nothing but a killer of animals.
Sorry, but all that imagery twanged a chord in me. I truthfully don't know if killing the Indians for fun and profit bothers me the most, or if it was killing a few million Bison, paying the Indians with alcohol to collect the bones so they could be shipped back East to be used as fertilizer.
Something about shooting into a massive herd of animals and leaving them dead and dying to rot for a year before harvesting their bones just doesn't strike me as a good thing.
Good on you for the posting! If I lived nearby I'd love to join you at your favorite beer joint so I could tell you what is wrong with the way we did things back then!
howdy there @willymac! yes sir I know. I pounded the government hard when I did my series on the Caddo Nation which lived right in my neighborhood for a THOUSAND years until the feds forced them off their ancestral lands.
and that's why I wanted to let everyone know in this post what happened to the Indians food supply and what the feds did to the buffalo, because alot of people don't know and it's not in the history books.
slaughtering the herds and leaving them to rot was disgusting. bytheway the bones were also used to make China as well as fertilizer.
thank you sir for your kind words and I couldn't agree more about the way the feds made huge blunders over and over again.
I'll take you up on that beer though if you're ever in the area!
After reading that last night, I kept thinking about how a generally peaceful people who were tied ancestrally and emotionally to their land must have felt to have been forced off and moved somewhere alien to them and their beliefs.
Like moving the Cherokee from the mountains of Appalachia to the flatlands of Oklahoma. That must have been horrible for them!
Nothing to be proud of, so no wonder that part is barely mentioned in classrooms. Teaching American history is a lot like raising mushrooms.....
History written by the losers would be a lot more enlightening.
Yep, a Texas beer would be good!
I always wanted to be a Texan!
Okay @janton, I need to ask this - what is a sod? A first I thought it was a type! By the way, the starting of new towns in the west was indeed ruthless blood thirsty and dangerous. I feel very sorry for the Indians and the buffalo.
howdy again @angiemitchell! yes Ma'am the slaughter of the huge buffalo herds were disgusting, they are a magnificent animal and of course the horrible treatment of the Indians was shameful, the government made hundreds of treaties with them over the years and every single one of them were broken by the government.
both issues were handled horribly and never should have happened the way they did.
As far as the sod house, out on the prairie many settlers built their homes partially underground and used mud for bricks and put a layer of sod, or grass on the roof. here is a photo of one:
thank you so much for commenting!
Ok - interesting! Being partially underground may have been more protective agains an Indian attack? I say that there are people from those times who did the wrong thing with the Indians would be paying a lot of Karma in their future incarnated lives!
yes Ma'am those homes were ugly but strong and the government policies which destroyed the Indian tribes made the federal government responsible for that whole shameful mess. they have apologized since then but haven't done much to help the nations.
A great example of how not to do things! With thinking like that it is a miracle that natives survived and the buffalo didn't totally die out.
howdy today @cecicastor! yes Ma'am it was..both the Indians and the buffalo barely survived!
thanks so much for commenting!
Sheridan was a savage...right up there with Sherman. Those Union generals...Yeck!
Great history lesson here, Jon. I learned quite a bit!
howdy there @mepatriot! well sir, were the Confederate Generals also savages? or just the Union? It seems like there are so many shameful things that they did.
The Confederate Generals still lived largely by the Code of Chivalry we've been talking about. They NEVER mistreated civilians en masse the way the Union's thugs did. They didn't burn civilian home and cities. The Union was guilty of what even the modern Geneva Convention would call "war crimes" on many, many occasions.
ok well that's depressing. no wonder a lot of Southerners still don't like yankees.
Exactly. Surely you've read about "Sherman's March?"
oh yeah, I know this was war and all but that was over the top cruelty!
Yep. The Union is responsible for modern "all-out war," where innocent civilians are constant targets of the enemy.
it's hard to believe that our own country did that against our own countrymen, and women.
that part of the Civil War is shameful.
well written article, it goes to show how the romanticism of the wild west was a mirage. i have read louis lamour and Dodge City appears in quite a few of his books.
thank you for painting reality in such a stark manner. it behooves all of us to learn from factual narration of the west
howdy there @adarshh! yes it is very interesting to learn the real truth as opposed to Hollywood's version which is sometimes opposite the truth! lol
Louis Lamour has some great books!
thank you sir for your comment!
Thanks for the post @janton! The treatment of the Natives and the buffalo just kills me .... so horrible.
Enter the lawmen! Looking forward to the next installment :)
howdy there young filly! a little cowpoke talk there. the emphasis being on "young" not "filly" lol. well I got sidetracked on that point but I figured there may be people who have no idea what happened to the huge buffalo herds and why so I thought it was important to bring that truth out. I don't think they teach that in school.
neither action was moral or acceptable, it was shameful and didn't have to happen that way.
had you seen that photo of the giant pile of buffalo skulls before? that is mind-blowing.
yes the Lawmen. those guys were tough now. they shot first and asked questions later! that one's for you.
@janton I taught History as well, and it was always a part of our curriculum, although most of our isn't US based, But really, the same thing unfortunately happened in Canada. That pile of buffalo skulls was a new one to me. So sickening!
howdy there @lynncoyle1! what???? you're saying that the Canadian government also paid hunters to wipe out buffalo up there so that the Indians up there had no food or hides? dang I didn't ever hear that? I don't even know what tribes Canadians had up there? had to be a little weird being the first Canadians though. huh, very interesting, thank you!
I wanted to include that buffalo skulls photo because it is so incredible to see an illustration of the numbers of them that were killed. and many had never seen anything like it.
thanks so much Lynn!
Not specifically @janton, but the Hudson's Bay Company, the major trading company in Canada at the time, was closely tied to the government and they bought all the hides, and the skulls were used as fertilizer and all the new settlers wanted them. The natives ended up signing treaties just to ward off starvation. That's all a condensed simplified version of the history, but the gist of it is, that no one cared about the natives here either!
More schools should be teaching this stuff; I'm surprised the schools in the States don't. You'd only have to show that photo to get the point across. A picture tells a story...that's for sure!!
howdy back again lynncoyle1...well were there Indian wars in Canada like we had here?
There sure were @janton, especially when they were being forced to leave their homes only to be 'contained' in certain areas/reservations etc. We had a 'wild west' of sorts, but it was always tamed because we had England's influence all the time too.
what did England do to contain it?
Lynn I need to ask you a question, are you around tonight?
Sorry @janton, I took the day off. If you're still around, I'm here :)
the day off? I thought Steemit was a 7 day a week thing? I didn't know we were allowed to take a day off! lol. I'm glad you're here, thank you. you're the most experienced person I know on Steemit so I wanted your opinion about something.
hebrewhousewife put out a post about me this afternoon, really was wonderful of her and it really shocked me of course. here is the link:
https://steemit.com/community/@hebrewhousewife/they-aren-t-all-bots-shout-out-to-an-amazing-steemian
I thought about resteeming it but my question to you is..would that be seen as arrogant or too self-promoting? because the thing is all about me which is crazy. but of course my earnings are next to nothing and I AM trying to grow and this would give me more exposure.
so could you look at that post and let me know what you think?
If I'm not too late, yes, resteem it. It's a sign of thanks to the author. I totally get what you are saying though, but no, it's not arrogant at all :)
That's so nice of her too. I'm going to go check it out :) Congratulations for making the kind of difference where someone feels the need to write a post about it!
Miss Lightweight..did you go to bed before you even got my reply?
I think you said yes I'm hear how can I help you and then you went to bed immediately! hahaha.. you're the best I'm so thankful that you checked your replies, ok, I will resteem it. hey, do you know of any research that shows what's the best time to post or resteem for maximum exposure, it's hard to figure since so many are in other countries.
Also, Jaynie invited me to join steemitbloggers but do you know where i find those banners to put at the bottom of the post?
and also, what section in the discord group do I put proof that I upvoted and commented on a member's post?
hahaha I think I did :) And I read the post; that was so nice of her to do!
In steemitbloggers discord, on the left you will see this:
If you scroll up in "admin-announce", you'll find the information on the banners. And you just have to copy and paste it, but the instructions are there. Make sure when you post, one of your tags is #steemitbloggers too.
In "support_confirmations" is where you put the names of those you upvote. Just have a look and it'll make perfect sense :)
As far as timing for posts, you got me! I try not to do it too late at night or mornings, but lots do. It's a crap shoot I think :) That's why joining some of these communities is such a good idea because there's a spot in all of them where you can share your post and a lot of people select their reading material from there.
thanks Lynn for all this information and help. I upvoted a couple of steemitbloggers yesterday, at least, do I only put in ones that I do today? how often do you put these in, just one a day?
thank you!
Interesting stuff. Waiting for the next one.
howdy there @oldtimer! thank you sir for the kind words!
Hi @janton. I look forward to your posts as they are interesting and you are learning at the same time. Looking forward to when the lawmen arrive next.
thank you sir! I know most of the material, just not the exact dates and some of the names. with Dodge it's easy because that's my hometown.