Ready, Set, FIRE!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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We headed to Fort Abraham Lincoln and State Park today. It was quite warm today. Weird. Sometimes you just can’t control the weather, or anything else for that matter.
First off, we took a tour of ruins of an old Mandin Indian villiage. It was occupied in the late 1700’s. Lemme tell ya, the more you learn about Indians the more you come to realize that they were smarter that we are today. They’re ways of governing were brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. They had a little thing called MATRILINEAL. That’s when the women rule! They decide who’s chief, the bloodline was passed through the females, the women owned the house (which they built themselves), and everything else. If the women wanted a divorce, she simply set the husbands possessions outside the house, and “bye bye hubby.”
We also heard this really, well, I guess disturbing is the right choice of word, Indian story. I’ll have to find it online and email it to ya’ll. I don’t remember the details which are so vitally important in the story. I wouldn’t want to alter the tale.
Next we toured General Custers house and Fort Abraham Lincoln. General Custer’s quarters burned down in the middle of winter, so when he built the new quarters his wife “altered” it a bit. Custer seemed like an odd fellow. You either loved him or you hated him according to the tour guide. He went on a hunting trip once and brought home a mountain lion, which they kept as a pet chained up in the cellar for some time. He also used to slide down the stair banister. The first time he slid, he flew off the banister right smack dab into the door. From then on the servants always opened the door so he could sail right out onto the porch.
We lurked around the fort for a while more, and extensively browsed the gift shop. They had old fashioned candy. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that, and my mom owed me a couple candy bars for numerous different reasons, so I was good to go.
We ate lunch and headed to the campground. We hung out the rest of the evening playing games: Darby and Tatum decided to go swim in the Missouri River, they were really cold. I didn’t have my suit on so, sadly, I just had to observe.

SMILES!
~Morgan~