ent Indian depredation claims," writes
Colonel R.A. Sneed, for years the superintendent of the Platt National
Park, "practically all the residents of the Chickasaw Nation, Indian and
negro, whose memories of that country extend back fifty years or more,
were in attendance. In recounting his recollections of a Comanche raid
in which his master's horses were stolen, one old negro incidentally
gave a solution of the Chimney Hills which is the only one the writer
ever heard, and which probably accounts for all of them.

"He said that his master lived at Big Sulphur Springs, farthest west of
any of the Chickasaws; that the Kiowas and Comanches raided the country
every summer and drove out horses or cattle wherever they could find
them unprotected; that he had often gone with his master to find these
stolen cattle; that these forages were so frequent that the Chickasaws
had never undertaken to occupy any of their lands west of Rock Creek,
north of Big Sulphur Springs, nor west of the Washita River south of the
springs; that the country west of Sulphur Springs was dry, and water was
hard to find unless one knew just where to look; and that the Comanches
had a custom of marking all the springs they could find by building rock
chimneys on the hills nearest to the springs. Only one chimney would be
built if the spring flowed from beneath the same hill, but if the spring
was distant from the hill two chimneys would be built, either upon the
same hill or upon two distant hills, and a sight along the two chimneys
would indicate a course toward the spring.

"The old man said that every hill in their pasture had a Comanche
chimney on it and that his master would not disturb them because he did
not want to make the wild Indians mad. There never was open war between
the Chickasaws and the Comanches, but individual Chickasaws often had
trouble with Comanche hunting-parties.

"The Big Sulphur Springs on Rock Creek in the Chickasaw Nation
afterward became the centre around which the city of Sulphur was built,
and after the town was grown to a population of two thousand or more it
was removed bodily to make room for the Platt National Park, around
which has been built the new city of Sulphur, which now has a population
of forty-five hundred.

"Many of the Comanche monuments are extant and the great bluff above the
Bromide Springs of the national park looks out toward the north and west
over a prairie that extends to the Rocky Mountains;