"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Sons of the Pioneers theme for TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon artist's musings melding metaphors and journalism, for readers in more than 150 countries.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Bacon rinds and creeks...

Thanks to a blogger Richard, for commenting on my imaginative ideas about Bacon Rind Creek. Turns out I was just an ignorant white man.

Baconrind was a chief of the Osage during early 20th century when the tribe members got rich off oil, according to "Oklahoma, The Land and Its People," 1997 OU Press. His friend "Col." Ellsworth E. Walters was the auctioneer of the lands and did his best to get the Osage the best deals.

He built a life-size statue-monument to the Chief in Walters' home at Skedee, expecting it to be a big tourist draw. The town is no more, just across the Arkansas from the Osage, in Pawnee County, six miles north of Pawnee. Skedee is a misspelling of Skidi, or Pawnee for Wolf, a tribe of the Pawnee Confederacy.

Isn't the Internet wonderful?

By the way, there is another Bacon Rind Creek, which feeds into the Gallatin River in Montana, in Yellowstone National park. Maybe my imaginative source of name fits there.

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