The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1954-07-30
Page 10

HAfIO I'll I Oh. H1 - Leaves
from touring reporters notebook:
They have fresh hens eggs on
restaurant menus here-and 60.
million-year-old dinosaur eggs II
museums.
But the naive tourist will do well
to beware of any souvenir bar
gains offered him in dried porcu'
pine eggs. They are nothing but
dried cockleburrs, fixed up by 10
cal pranksters to kid the visitors.
The Black Hills, home of free
roaming buffalo and the famous
Mt, Rushmore memorial, has had
a fabulous past. The area now has
become one of the nations big
tourist meccaS, but a guy from
out of town finds it hard to know
what to believe. For the folks here
still have the old pioneer fondness
for 4 good yarn, whether it is &C
tually a true story or only a tall
tale.
Take Wind Cave, for example
which has 10 miles of explored
passage-ways and several huge
chambers. One called "the bridal
chamber" was named, according
to a guide, because of a girl who
figured the only way she could
carry out promise to her mother
she would never marry the best
man on earth-and still get the guy
she wanted-was to marry him in
the cavern.
But no such ceremonies have
been allowed, according to the
same guide, because naturally the
government doesn't want to run
matrimony into the ground"
Everyone recalls the tragic fate
Of Gen. George A. Custer and more
than 200 men wiped out in the
battle Of the Little Big Horn River
in Montana on June Is, 1876. The
Indians, who always resented the
fact the battle was called "mas
sacre," still point out that the
white troops were fully armed
and they weren't packing water
pistols.
Few today remember, however,
that Custer was sent to the Black
Hills in 1874, following the financial
panic of 1873, to check on reports
the hills held gold.
Custer set forth on his. journey
from a fort on the present site OF
Bismarck, ND, with a force of a
thousand men led by brass bud
mounted on white horses. The ex-
petition, accompanied by the sor
Of President us. Grant, carried
supply Of champagne in its
wagons. Presumably they cooled ii
in mountain streams; there were
no ice statesmen along the route.
The strange caravan did find
gold on Aug. 2, 1874 in the Black
Hills, which for centuries the In.
dams had held to be the inviola te
home Of Manitou, the Great Spirit.
Less than two years later Custer,
neither the first nor the last Amer
lean military leader to undertake
an enemy, and the men with him
were washed out by waves of van
iShing redskins who didn't choose
at that particular moment to van
ish.
No band blared on that day, and
it wasn't champagne that flowed.
Wild Bill Hickok lives in legend
as one of the Vests great gun.
men. Although some scholars be.
lieve he may have bored to death
more people than he drilled.
But undoubtedly he was a tan
handsome, picturesque figure. The
undertaken who laid him out fol
burial after a deadbeat shot him
to death in a Deadwood saloon de-
scribed him as "the prettiest
corpse I ever have SEEN" It ISM
every day a man gets a heartfelt
compliment like that.
Highwaymen made the shipment
OF gold a risky business for ex.
press companies in Old Deadwood
The shipments were kept as secret
as posSihle-With one execution.