Memories Of The Mounds

For Board Member John Bates, the Medicine Mounds were a magical place steeped in frontier history. As a young man, when school let out for the summer his mother would put him on the "Zephyr" train from Fort Worth to Amarillo to work on his grandparent's farm near Tulia. Luckily for him, his favorite cousin - Myna Potts - would pick him up in Wichita Falls and bring him to Chillicothe to visit for a few days before heading on to Amarillo, and those few days were usually filled with adventure.

A visit with Myna was a welcome diversion from the hard work that lay ahead, and John could usually talk Myna into taking him out to explore the countryside. Before their adventures began, though, Myna would bring me into their "radio room" where she would talk to her husband, John, via ham radio while he was out to sea. Whether it was looking for depression-era glass in the deserted dumps behind old homesteads or digging for arrowheads in the dirt, John could count on Myna to make every visit an interesting one. Myna knew of his fascination with the distant dolomite mounds, so she would take time out of her day to drive him out to the ranch where the Medicine Mounds stood.

"We would enter the ranch and drive as close as we could to the largest mound, then park the car and walk", John said. "For a twelve year old, hiking up the side of that big dolomite mound seemed like climbing Mt. Everest, but once we got to the top I was mesmerized. I could see the plains around me for fifty miles in every direction !"

Of course, Myna had already told him much of the lore and history of this place, so it was easy enough for John to fancy himself as one of Chief Quanah Parker's braves as he stood on the highest ground in the county. No doubt the Comanche could see the Cavalry coming for many miles ! John remembers finding "worked" flint almost everywhere he looked, at times locating intact arrowheads simply sticking out of the gypsum-laden soil. The only sound he remembers is that of the incessant, warm winds blowing off the surrounding prairie. "I was in awe of this place, filled with so much colorful history, and having Myna there really made that history seem to come to life", said John.

"Myna explained to me how the Comanche would come to the Medicine Mounds for their healing powers, often trading flint and other goods and racing their ponies around the mound below us.  As I recall, we carefully descended about 75 feet or so to an almost imperceptible track that circled the entire mound, which was used by Quanah Parker's braves to test their horsemanship. Forty years ago, this 'track' was still quite visible, especially for a young man with a fertile imagination. Sadly, it is slowly disappearing as the young cedar trees begin to reclaim the ground."

The ranch is now privately owned, and access to the Medicine Mounds is very limited. For one of our Board of Directors, though, the memories of those visits are still fresh. As a matter of fact, every April 1st the local school children played "hookey" and would climb as many of the mounds as their little legs would allow. Maybe there really is some magic in those dolomite hills, after all.....

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