New Distinctly Montana Stories episode: "The Life and Afterlife of Comanche"

On a hot Sunday afternoon in June of 1876, thousands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors surrounded 210 cavalrymen and cut them down. Two days later, when General Terry's column arrived to bury the dead, the bodies on the field had been so changed by sun and wind and the hands of the victors that Terry mistook them for buffalo carcasses. The burial party had eight shovels among them. They used bullet casings to pin paper names to the makeshift grave markers. They shot the wounded horses where they stood, after letting them drink.

One horse they did not shoot. His name was Comanche.

The newest episode of Distinctly Montana Stories follows what happened to him next: the years of careful nursing, an unlikely friendship with a blacksmith named Korn, a second American massacre that took Korn away, and a death that looked, to the people who witnessed it, a great deal like grief. It follows him to the taxidermist's table. It follows him to the Chicago World's Fair. And it follows him to a humidity-controlled glass case at the University of Kansas, where he stands today.

The story appears in the forthcoming summer issue of Distinctly Montana, released early here in audio form.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts.