Parker County Today April 2016 | Page 22

disappeared our history: COMANCHE WAR the Part 8 Crossing Over To The White Side Half-white war chief Quanah Parker shows a surprising aptitude for peace BY MEL W RHODES APRIL 2016 PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY A 20 profound sense of defeat and disillusionment permeated reservation life once the one-time, “Lords of the Plains” were corralled by the U.S. Army at Fort Sill in June 1875. No longer free to pursue their ages-old nomadic lifestyle and separated from the buffalo, whose decimation all but guaranteed the Plains Indian culture would never rise from the ashes of defeat, they saw no way forward, no future for The People. If ever a people needed a messiah, the Comanche did. Chief Quanah Parker — with a little push from the fe deral government — emerged from the smoking ruins of a burned down culture and with an