Cowtown Wichita and the Wild, Wicked West

Before she was Wichita, Kansas, she was a collection of grass huts, home to the ancestors of the Wichita Indians. Then came the Spanish conquistadors, seeking gold but finding instead vast herds of buffalo.

After the Civil War, Wichita played host to a cavalcade of Western men: frontier soldiers, Indian warriors, buffalo hunters, border ruffians, hell-for-leather Texas cattle drovers, ready-to-die ...