Hi there; Blogger Friends,
It's a cold and windy night on the plains of Kansas, and I complain with a warm house and everything a body needs for comfort. It's hard for us to imagine what the pioneers went through when they first came here and tried to survive on almost nothing. We are so blessed.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about my research paper lately. I think I need to narrow my quest down to some main issues. I have an idea about what my topics main question should be, roughly speaking, something like," Did the Wichita Indians Really Give Wichita It's Name, Or Was It Simply Named Wichita Because The Wichita Indians Once Lived Here"? Something like that maybe, or what about, " Marker Commemorating The Wichita Indians Is Incorrect." Well whatever the thesis statement turns out to be, I still have a long way to go before I'm anywhere ready to start writing my essay.
One thing that I think I need to change is the scope of my searching. I really like to dig up old stories about the people and places of the old west and the pioneer days. I've been fascinated with that subject since I was in grade school. Having had the opportunity to have lived for weeks at a time on a farm without any modern conveniences such as electricity, running water, indoor and sometimes outdoor facilities, cooking on a coal-oil stove and doing homework by oil lamp light has given me a small taste of the of early life on the open prairie, but I knew I'd be coming back to home; to this home, when the work at the farm was done for a while.
I've been focusing my research on the men who came to Kansas and started trading with the Indians and opening trading posts. Some of the men who had a vision of a town at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers. For a while I think I will begin to look at that marker; the one that is about the Wichita Indians that is in Wichita, somewhere around Riverside Park; I think that's where it is. Guess I just might need to learn some things about it; like when was it erected and who wrote the words that were placed on it. You know, little things like that.
History is a big place to visit, you can get lost in it if you're not careful. But it's always a fun and interesting place to hang-out.
I know this post is somewhat short, but it was either short, or not at all, so I chose short.
Have a pleasant evening,
Cheri