Volume 17 , Issue 20

Quanah Parker (1897)

It was The Record-Union, out of Sacramento, California, dated 3 September 1897, page 6, we found this interesting headline: "Quanah Parker, Romantic Origin of the Famous comanche Chief."

The reported death of Quanah Parker the other day called attention to one of the most famous figures in Southwestern history, says the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat." His life paralleled the boldest romance of modern fictionists. The story of his birth, the captivity of his white mother, and her unwilling return to her own people, was as picturesque as his life had been bold.

It had nearly been half a century back in 1897 a Texan named Parker lived on a ranch south of the Red River. At that time the Comanche Indians were a roving, blood-thirsty, marauding group, located by the Government on what was their present reservation, but forever wandering over the whole Southwest, from the staked plains up into Nebraska, to the Colorado Mountains, to the wilds of Arkansas, fighting everybody they came across, and making their name a terror to the scattered whites, as well as to other Indian tribes.

As reported in the 1897 newspaper, it was at that time that the Government sent the Comanche Indians an agent in the person of an Irishman. The Government was striving to introduce Christianity among the Indians, and solicited reports from each of the agents in the United States. All the agents except one reported that the Indians were doing their best to improve spiritually, and would, in time. The one exception was tis Irishman, who was agent of the Comanches. He wrote back to Washington that christianity would do the Comanche Indian no good; that he was a brutal, filthy, blood-thirsty, unconscionable scoundrel, and that the best thing to do with him was to kill him on the slightest provocation.

The Comanches, in a word, were the terrors of the plain. One night, with their famous yell, they came down with a rush on the ranch of Mr. Parker. Parker and some of his family fought for their lives and escaped. Others were killed. Afterward, little Cynthia Ann Parker, a baby girl, was found to be missing. It was believed that she had been taken away by the Indians. From that day on for many years Parker never flagged in his search for his child. Years passed and he found no trace of her. The Texas Rangers scoured the Indian country, but could hear no report of a white child captive among the Indians.

One day a gang os Texas Rangers came upon a Comanche camp. A ranger named Tom Pollard wandered about among the Indians, talking to them jovially and promising to buy their squaws, when he was struck with the strange pallor of the face of one of the squaws. He wanted to buy her, too, but the Indians told him she was the first wife of the chief, and tried to get him to go away and say no more. But Pollard was persistent, and insisted.

However, he gave up at last, and forgot all about the squaw with the white face, until he brought it up at the camp fire that night. Some of the boys thought it might be old Parker's daughter. The more they talked about it the more convinced they were that she was Parker's stolen daughter grown up to womanhood. They had no particular liking for the Indians, and were anxious to pick a quarrel, anyway; so, bright and early the next morning, they all went and took a look at the white squaw. They attempted to talk to her, but she was mute, and retiring, and they could get nothing out of her.

At last they mounted and rode away. They had not gone far when one of the men proposed that they go back and get her anyway. If she was not Parker's daughter they could return her. So they all rode back and demanded the white squaw. The chief pleaded and threatened, but the Rangers were firm. The Chief insisted on going along, and so the camp set out, the white squaw more excited and fearful than anybody else. When they reached Parker's ranch they presented the prize and Parker at once made a show of affection for his rescued daughter. But she repelled him, and the old chief, her husband, looked daggers. Every manner of means was employed to get the white squaw to remember something of her youth, but she would answer no questions and timidly held tongue. Word was sent out all over Parker County, Texas, and people trooped in and looked at the diffident squaw and asked her foolish questions which she could not understand. The Indians now demanded that as she was an Indian, she should return. Some man whose name was not preserved then appeared on the scene. He went into an investigation intelligently. He said that a baby which was stolen could necessarily remember but one thing, the first thing it had ever learned, to-wit: Its Christian name. He demanded that the room be cleared of everybody but himself, Mr. Parker and the Indian chief, and that perfect quiet prevail. He sat down before the white squaw and waiting until everything was subdued, said distinctly, twice:

"Cynthia Anne! Cynthia Anne!"

Out of the depths of her dull Indian eyes crept a faint light, and the white squaw bent her head to her breast and striking her heart with her open hand, repeated twice in a low monotone:

"Cynthia Anne! Cynthia Anne!"

Everybody was convinced and Mr. Parker was overjoyed. After she learned the English language Cynthia Anne was told her story. But she loved the Indian chief and begged to be permitted to return with him. This was granted. Her eldest son was Quanah Parker.

Quash Parker succeeded his father as chief. He was thoroughly Indian in his way, but he had a fine sense of the humorous and had great affection for the whites. Upon one occasion, in 1893, during a local row between some of his followers and the whites at Fort Sill, he knocked a big Indian buck flat to the ground for abusive treatment of a white woman.
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