work. The Plains Indians’ world revolved around the buffalo. The herds were their wooly Walmart’s.
For nearly a month, the pitiful procession of 407 dispirited men, women and children and 1,500 horses moved
at a snail’s pace toward Fort Sill, hunting daily, taking buffalo and antelope, feasting on the fresh meat as they had
from the beginning. In the face of utter change, they made
a last-ditch effort to live as Comanches just a little longer.
They were the last holdouts among the “wild Indians” of
the lower plains. They were in no hurry.
Chief Quanah Parker, “The Last Comanche’s Chief,”
the masterful warrior and strategist who had battled fiercely against the onslaught of Anglo settlement, particularly
that of the hated Texans, could see the “writing on the
wall,” the vanishing of the Plains Indians’ horse culture.
According to a Parker family story, Quanah sequestered
himself atop a mesa and sought the Great Spirit’s counsel.
A wolf howled at him, then loped away to the northeast,
in the general direction of Fort Sill where the other oncefearsome Plains tribes and bands lived on white-drawn
reservations. An eagle, too, came to the beleaguered
leader, swooping down at him several times before winging its way toward Sill. Maybe, maybe not, but one thing
is clear — the man who had spoken vehemently against
surrender now preached it to all. The Quahadi band of the
Comanches set out for subjugation May 6, 1875, arriving
at Signal Station a few miles west of Fort Sill June 2. There
they surrendered everything to the U.S. Army — themselves, their horses, their arms, their way of life.
NOVEMBER 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
BEGINNINGS
8
Depending on which expert weighs in, Quanah Parker
was born in 1848 or 1852, or maybe it was circa 1850, as
some historians suggest. Quanah himself is quoted as saying, “From the best information I have, I was born about
1850 on Elk Creek just below the Wichita Mountains
[Southwestern Oklahoma].” White accounts seem to corroborate this as traders reported seeing his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, with an appropriate-aged child shortly
after 1850. Odd name for a Comanche mother, Cynthia
Ann Parker? Not really. She was not, strictly speaking, a
Comanche, rather a white captive who willingly assimilated into the tribe. Quanah Parker had the blood of two
peoples coursing through his veins.
Cynthia Ann’s story is both a familiar and an odd one,
a tale of savage frontier culture clash and kidnapping
to be sure, but with a twist: she chose her captors over
her blood family. Taken from Fort Parker by Comanche
raiders on May 19, 1836, the 9-year-old lived among The
People for 24 years before being forcibly recovered by
the whites in 1860, shunning all offers of reunion with the
Parker family. The reason commonly given for this is that
she had married a powerful chief, Peta Nocona, and given
birth to three of his children — sons Quanah and Pecos
and daughter Topsannah. She was a wife and a mother,
and for all intents and purposes, a Comanche.
Nocona, according to the Handbook of Texas Online, was a “physically enormous Comanche chief who
led a band, the Noconies, in raids on the Texas frontier
Quanah Parker