American-history buffs with an interest in Custer's Last Stand know that one of the icons of the Battle of the Little Bighorn resides in a big glass case in Dyche Hall at the University of Kansas. However, for most visitors to the KU Museum of Natural Science in Lawrence, Comanche is a surprise.

In life, Comanche was a good-luck, bad-luck Army horse. The bad luck was that the big bay gelding ridden by Captain Myles Keogh seemed to get wounded every time General George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry rode into battle. The good luck was that Comanche always survived.

It was no different on the hot afternoon in June, 1876, when the Little Bighorn battle was fought. When Custer's Last Stand ended, the severely wounded Comanche was one of the few survivors.

Comanche was retired to Fort Riley, Kansas, until his death in 1890. Then he was stuffed, shown at the 1893 Chicago Exhibition and finally, put on permanent display at KU wearing his cavalry saddle. Over the decades, other museums and states associated with the battle have tried and failed to lay claim to the horse that's become a beloved, if quirky, fixture on this hilltop campus.

After paying homage to Comanche, you can browse the museum's more traditional natural-history exhibits. They include collections of dinosaur, mammal and reptile fossils, dioramas depicting animals and plants in their natural environments and even a beehive full of live bees going about their business.

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