"Keeps Warm with Us" Day 2

Howdy from the Kansas Plains and Old Fort Hays. What a day!! 9 longgggg hours on the road but man, what scenery!   I needed to make a few more miles but wanted to find a cool history spot too and thanks to my buddy Joe Herring, I found it.
Fort Hays, originally named Fort Fletcher, was a United States Army fort near Hays, Kansas. Active from 1865 to 1889, it was an important frontier post during the American Indian Wars of the late 19th century.  Lots of famous people worked there like Buffalo Bill Cody, George Custer, Wild Bill Hickok and Phillip Sheridan and a bunch of movies were made here BUT there's one movie that wasn't made here but said it was Fort Hays....Dances with Wolves...where John Dunbar is stationed after the Civil War and he's stuck (not) fighting Indians.  
But here's where the fun starts....In the film Dunbar hooks up with a blue-eyed beauty indian named Stands With a Fist and she tells Dunbar she was captured by the Sioux and raised by them.  And this part is TRUE. Cynthia Ann Parker known to the Comanches as "Keeps Warm with Us", pictured above,  was captured as a young girl by the COMANCHES and then raised by them.  Years later after she bore 3 children as wife of the chief she was captured by white military and taken back to live with the whites.  She never survived it.  She was so heartbroken from being taken from her children and family that she starved herself to death.  But here's the other funny part....in the movie, she's captured by the Sioux. Why? Because there was this gigantic herd of buffalo that the filmmakers were determined to use in the film so they decided to change tribes because the Comanches would've never been that far north.  Was there a John Dunbar.  Nope.  But there were plenty of other famous people at Old Fort Hays out in the middle of nowhere....like me.  haha.
I was surprised that Fort Hays is now a bustling university town, laid back and lots of fun.   Wish I had more time to spend here...maybe next time.  
Stay tuned for more amazing history and fun.  Hugs from the road.