Ghosts Around the Campfire

by Ron Schwab

  New Year’s Eve we celebrated as usual by staying home with plans to toast with root beer at Eastern Standard Time. We were enjoying our study that evening, indulging in some holiday nuts and popcorn while we caught up on some reading and listened to the soothing music of Floyd Cramer’s piano floating from the stereo. Then it was suddenly deja vu. Punkin and Bennie began to emit throaty growls and crouched on their respective desktops, glaring at the vacant doorway; the room felt like we were sitting in the middle of an igloo.

  Several months later we sold the house as a work in progress. We found a nice single story, ranch-style built on a slab. No basement. Bev has redecorated and done some minor remodeling, but she seems content here. She’s not searching for another house to rescue. We might have found home.

  The Guardian

  CAN ANYONE TELL me what a guardian is? A protector. Someone who protects another person from danger or helps her when she is in trouble. There is a legend that Camp Jefferson has a guardian who protects and looks after campers and that it is not just good luck there’s never been a terrible accident or tragedy here. I’ve always had a particular interest in this legend because the history of it has a connection with someone in my family, and I have experienced things that lead me to think there may be some truth to it.

  Some of you may have heard of a Comanche war chief named Quanah Parker. Quanah was the son of Cynthia Parker who had been captured by the Comanche as a child, and who was raised in the tribe and eventually married Quanah’s father, who was also a great Comanche chief.

  Quanah led the Comanche in the last days of the Indian Wars, and his was one of the last tribes to make peace. When the tribe was resettled on the reservation in Oklahoma, he used his talents as a leader to become a very successful, wealthy businessman.

  Other Indians said he had great mystical powers and had dreams and visions that almost always foretold the future.

  So what does Quanah Parker have to do with the legend of Camp Jefferson? We only have to go back a century and a half to when Quanah Parker was only 16 years old. Not a yet a chief, but considered a young man of great powers.

  One night on the Texas prairie in a time of no rain and no buffalo, Quanah had a vision that he must go north and find a white buffalo. In the dream, Quanah was told by whispers soft as rustling leaves that he should travel north, and when he found a white buffalo, he should touch the buffalo three times with his coup stick. Under no circumstances was he to harm the buffalo or any of his herd.

  After counting coup, he was to locate a river. There Quanah was to establish by natural landmarks an area that would be a sacred safe place for the white buffalo. No harm would come to the buffalo there, and no harm would come to any man, white or Indian. It would become a great council place where all men could meet to discuss their differences. The white buffalo would be the protector of the place. The voice told him that rain would return.

  Quanah left his village in the spring, and traveled northward for many days across the territories we now know as Oklahoma and Kansas, moving further north than any Comanche had ever been.

  One morning, as he crossed the hills of the southern part of what we now know as Jefferson County, Nebraska, the ominous rattle of a snake startled Quanah’s horse and it reared and threw the young brave on the rocky slope. The horse raced away and the rattlesnake struck, biting Quanah on his ankle. Quickly, he took his knife and made slashes over the fang marks in an effort to bleed the poison from his body, but it was too late and dizziness overwhelmed him. Chills racked his body, and he broke out into a fierce sweat. Within an hour, he lost consciousness.

  He lay there among the searing rocks most of the day, but as darkness descended and the evening air cooled, he awakened briefly and then fell back into his troubled sleep. Once he awakened to the snarling and growling of a pack of wolves that inched ever closer, but he was too weak to fend them off. Then suddenly, a huge white figure loomed from the darkness and charged the wolves. It struck one wolf that raced away yelping, and then wheeled to face the others. Some of the braver wolves attacked, but were no match for the beast’s sharp horns. They quickly retreated into the night to look for easier prey.

  Throughout the night, Quanah would awaken from time to time, and shortly before sunrise, he crawled to his coup stick which had fallen nearby. The white buffalo stood there unmoving as Quanah raised himself up and touched him three times with the stick. Quanah fell back and collapsed again on the ground. When he awoke at sunrise, the buffalo was gone and his pony grazed in the meadow at the bottom on the hill.

  Later that day, Quanah made his way to what the white man later called the Little Blue River which follows the edge of Camp Jefferson. He marked a huge cottonwood tree as the corner of one boundary and found a prominent outcropping of rocks that designated another. Each location he touched three times with his coup stick and chanted and sang prayers to the Great Spirit.

  The next morning, a tiny herd of perhaps twenty-five buffalo grazed within the area Quanah had marked, and the white buffalo fed on a hilltop above the others. Quanah returned home knowing in his heart that he had completed his quest. And the rains came in and the grass grew.

  For many years after, other Indians and white travelers reported seeing a white buffalo in this area, but strangely, no one ever thought of killing it. For many years after the buffalo would have died, people continued to report seeing a white buffalo.

  Several times over the years, campers who visited Camp Jefferson claimed to see the buffalo, although, of course, no one believed them. One young girl who fell into the pond at night insisted she was saved by a buffalo who charged into the water and allowed her to latch onto his fur while he dragged her back to shore.

  My own experience was many years ago when I was at this camp with my own daughters. We warned all of the campers to stay in their cabins after they went to bed, but my daughter, Linda, did not always listen to the wisdom of her father, and she decided to take a hike in the moonlight after everyone was supposed to be in bed. Later, when we checked the cabins to be sure that everyone was safe and sound, Linda’s bunk was empty. We awakened the other leaders and began a search. After about an hour, I was panic-stricken. Suddenly, off to the south, I saw a glowing white light moving toward the camp. Moments later, Linda strolled out of the trees. She was frightened and in tears from being lost. I asked her how she found her way back.

  “The buffalo brought me,” she said. “The white buffalo.”

  I shivered involuntarily and I saw the white light moving away from the camp grounds. My curiosity got the best of me and I chased after it. I followed the light into a clearing and then suddenly it disappeared. I looked down at the ground, and the only thing with me in the clearing was an old buffalo skull.

  I didn’t know what to think. Was it Linda’s sometimes-vivid imagination? Was she rescued by the white buffalo? It doesn’t matter. The story had a happy ending, and it added another chapter to the legend.