Micah Fox
Bachelorette
Candidate
2015
Presented by:
Help her win
the title!!
OCTOBER 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
Tickets are $50 each
58
Any donation helps the
Weatherford/Parker
County Animal Shelter
Continued from page 35
as she knew he’d “died among the
Indians with smallpox,” which is in
agreement with the second narrative on John, at least with the argument that he never returned to white
society, that he grew to be a fierce
warrior and raider amongst the
Comanches.
“The most repeated story is that
John grew to manhood with the
Comanches and often raided with
them into Mexico,” Michno writes.
The Handbook of Texas Online,
a website maintained by the Texas
State Historical Association, agrees:
“… James W. Parker, [John
Richard Parker’s] uncle, made three
trips in three years into the Indian
country in an effort to rescue the
captives. The Texas legislature, in
1845, appropriated $300 for John
Parker’s rescue, but the money was
never used, as Parker was not located
until he was grown, and he would
not then return to Texas… .”
In this alternative history, during
one of their raids into Mexico, the
Comanches took several Mexican
captives, among them a very comely
señorita named Dona Juanita. She
and John met and mutual infatuation ensued. They planned to marry
upon the raiding party’s return to
their encampment in the north.
Apparently, however, on the trip
north smallpox broke out among the
band and John fell gravely ill. Having
seen the decimation of the dreaded
disease, the Comanches wasted no
time in separating from John and the
other afflicted, leaving them on the
Llano Estacado of North Texas. They
reluctantly agreed to allow Dona
Juanita to remain and, if she could,
nurse their assimilated white tribesman back to health. Sometime later
John did recover, all the more smitten with his own personal “Florence
Nightingale.” (Actually, the famous
nurse [1820-1910] was a contemporary of John’s.)
Reportedly, the lovely Mexican
maiden talked her love struck lover
out of returning to the Comanches
and they settled in Mexico wh ere
John turned his hand to ranching.
When the Civil War commenced
Quanah Parker holding his feather
headdress.
he is said to have joined a company of Mexicans serving in the
Confederacy. Or (and this is rather
amazing if true) he served as a scout
in Lt. Col. John R. Baylor’s 2nd
Regiment of the Texas Mounted
Rifles. Baylor was, of course, a
fervent Indian hater and killer, and
publisher of the Weatherford, Texas,
newspaper The White Man, which he
dedicated to demonizing Indians and
expediting their removal from Texas.
John Parker deserted
“When his unit was sent to fight
in another theater, John deserted, for
he would not cross east of the Sabine
River,” writes Michno. “To escape
repercussions and the strife of wartorn Texas, John Parker and Dona
Juanita permanently removed to a
small ranch in Mexico, where John
was supposed to have passed away in
1915, never once going home to visit
his Texas relatives.”
Writing in The Captured: A True
Story of Abduction by Indians on the
Texas Frontier, Scott Zesch offered a