Infamous Bank Robbery of Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

Tragedy struck early on the morning of April 30, 1884. A heavy rain was falling that morning and there were few people on the street. Several men had gathered at the local livery to pass the time, as they were awaiting a roundup.

The bank opened at 9:00AM as usual. Frank Chapin, the office boy had gone to the post office. George Geppert, the cashier was settling the monthly accounts; and E.W. Payne, the president of the Medicine Valley Bank was working at his desk.

Four men rode into town from the south and hitched their horses behind the bank. When Mr. Geppert and Mr. Payne glanced up from their work a few minutes later, they found themselves confronted with the barrel of a revolver. They were ordered to put up their hands. Geppert did so, but Payne leaped to seize the revolver. Four shots were fired. Geppert received two of those shots, Payne one.

The Reverend Friedley across the street gave the alarm and Marshall Denn opened fire. The robbers broke for their horses and rode out of town. However, the outlaws were closely followed by a posse, those men that were at the livery awaiting the rain to let up. The town citizens that remained behind found George Geppert in the vault, dead. E.W. Payne was mortally wounded. The robbers left the bank without any of the bank money, but greater crimes were now afoot.

The robbers were seen crossing the Medicine River south of town. The posse opened fire. The robbers rode into the Gyp Hills and took refuge in Jackass Canyon, which is a box canyon. The outlaws were hemmed in, surrounded and brought into town and thrown in jail.

The identity of the outlaws turned out to be quite interesting. The leader was Henry Newton Brown, the Marshal of Caldwell, Kansas. His men were Ben Wheeler, assistant Marshal of Caldwell; William Smith, well-known cowboy; and John Wesley, alias Harry Hill, well known cowboy. Brown was the only notorious member; he had ridden with Billy the Kid in New Mexico.

When the robbers were brought into the rickety jail, the crowd yelled, “Hang them!” About 9:00PM, the still of the night was broken by three shots. Armed men had gone to the jail, forced open the door. The prisoners broke for freedom. Brown was killed; Wheeler was wounded, the hanged; and Smith and Wesley were hanged from trees along Spring Creek at the bottom of the hill of East First Avenue. The sheriff walked to the pump at 215 East First, the Watkins home, to fetch the outlaws their last drink of water.

Carry A. Nation, at home in Medicine Lodge Kansas

David and Carry Nation moved to Medicine Lodge in 1889. David was a lawyer and a minister, and had come to town to serve for the Christian Church. Carry was a jail evangelist and took her duty seriously. After repeatedly hearing the tales of the prisoners; crimes that resulted from drinking too much alcohol, Carry took it upon herself to stop the source. Carry was more than happy to move to Kansas, the first state to have a constitutional amendment outlawing the manufacture and the sale of alcohol in 1881. Though Kansas had a state prohibition, city and county officials were permitting the saloons to operate. Carry was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She began her crusade peacefully praying outside of saloons in Medicine Lodge. One particular afternoon in 1899, after a day of prayer, Carry strode into the saloon belonging to Mort Strong. Mr. Strong took her by the shoulders, turned her around and pushed her back into the street. After several more unsuccessful attempts to enter the saloon she started home. That evening there was great excitement throughout the town and finally it was told that Mr. Strong had horsewhipped a woman. The mayor and several councilmen went to Strong’s place and expressed indignation and surprise at finding beer and whiskey on the premises. They sternly told Mort he must leave town at once. Carry rejoiced that there were only six saloons remaining in her town. She attacked Henry Durst next by saying there would be prayer meetings twice a day until he did quit. In March of 1900, there were no longer any saloons left in Medicine Lodge.

Carry decided to take her saloon closures to the next level, thus began the barroom smashing at Kiowa, Wichita which is where she purchased and used her first hatchet, Enterprise, and even Topeka’s Senate Saloon. Just about every town in Kansas experienced Carry’s barroom destruction personally or by followers. Carry paid her court fines and supported a Drunkard’s Wives Home by selling pewter hatchet pin souvenirs and “The Home Defender” buttons.

March 12, 1901, Carry announced that she would no longer smash barrooms, but continues her crusade through a circulation entitled The Smasher’s Mail. Just before the Indian Territory of Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Carry was in Washington D.C. lobbying to also make it illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol. Carry’s travels took her overseas to the British Isles as well.

A popular slogan in barrooms across America was “All Nations Welcome Except Carry”

Carry Nation’s husband filed for divorce in 1901 and is buried in the Medicine Lodge Highland Cemetery.

**Some confusion exists over the spelling of Carry’s name. Her birth records indicate Carrie; however, it is believed that she changed it to Carry, as she believed her temperance movement would “carry a nation.” ** Though Carry died in 1911, her efforts were fruited when in 1919 was the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment banning “intoxicating liquors”. The historical period of our nation known as Prohibition lasted until 1933, when the 21st Amendment repealed the ban.

Legend of Flower Pot Mountain

Late in January 1871, there came a white buffalo hunter to the junction of Elm Creek and the Medicine Lodge River. Orange Scott Cummins, the Ohio born “Pilgrim Bard”.

The Pilgrim Bard listened to strange tales, told and related around wilderness campfires, and in time, recorded some of them, including the tragic “Legend of Flowerpot Mountain”.

“One morning,” wrote the Bard, “I left camp, afoot and alone, unarmed except for a Spencer rifle and two Colt 44’s. I struck out in a westerly direction, through canyons so covered with trees as almost to exclude the light of the noonday sun. I wandered along until I came in full sight of a table-top mountain which so impressed me that I resolved to visit it and explore its lofty summit.

It was well into the afternoon by the time I reached it and climbed its rugged side. When at last I came to the top and pushed through the dense thicket of trees that rimmed the mountain, I was surprised to see a huge buffalo grazing peacefully on the rich buffalo grass that covered the little plateau. I couldn’t resist killing a buffalo in such a romantic place, so, though I could not use so much meat, I laid him low with one shot from my Spencer.

I decided to skin the huge animal, cook some of his flesh for supper, and spend the night on the mountain. I roasted choice bits of the meat over a bright fire of cedar faggots, then spread the great hide beside the coals and lay down upon it.

It must have been near midnight when I was suddenly awakened by the most unearthly cries. The entire summit of the mountain was radiant with a weird light like a continuous glare of lightening. All was ghastly to look upon; there near the center of the plateau I saw a scene that froze the blood in my veins. About a score of hideously painted savages were dancing wildly around a blazing fire, and in the midst of the flames two human beings, bound to a stake, were roasting alive.

It was too awful to look upon and I closed my eyes. Then stillness came over the mountain again and I lay in the darkness, wondering if it has only been only a feverish dream. But suddenly, a hollow voice spoke at my side. ‘Stranger,’ it said, ‘you are the first of my race to put foot on this mountain since my husband and I were burned alive at the stake. Rest here until the sun rises, then repair to eastern edge of the mountain. There you will find a cedar tree with a dead limb pointing northward. Beneath it you will find a large, flat stone. Lift it, and be governed by circumstances. What you have seen and heard tonight actually took place here, many years ago. Farewell. I shall never again speak to you.’

Dawn came at last and I went at once in search of the tree with the dead limb pointing northward. It was there, just as the spirit voice had described it, but at first I could not find the stone. When I finally scratched into the earth at the base of the tree, I found it, covered with the dust and needles of the years. In all my life I had never felt such a strange sensation as the on that came over me as I stood under that ancient cedar, looking down on the stone and wondering what mystery it covered.

When I lifted it, I found a small tin box neatly fitted into an earthen hole. I removed the box and slowly opened the lid. A faint musty smell arose from it. I first took from the box an ear of Indian corn and then a handful of wheat, all as fresh as when plucked from their stalks; a marriage certificate and a roll of papers, yellow with age. The certificate showed that on November 12, A.D. 1832, Even Day and Lenora Blackwood were joined in the holy bonds of matrimony at New Orleans by the Reverend David Green. A not, attached to the roll of papers read: ‘To anyone who m ay discover these treasures. I have been told that only one more sun shall rise before my husband and myself, the last survivors of our ill-fated colony, must perish in the flames on this mountain. You will find enclosed a full and true account of event from the time we left St. Louis up to now. I cannot but believe that these valleys will some day be peopled by my race. Therefore, in the face of the dread angel of death, I ask that whoever shall find this manuscript will publish it and let the world know what has happened here. Farewell forever. Lenora Day.’