Quanah Parker            B                                                  Biographer Bill Neeley writes:                    "Not only did Quanah pass within the span of a single lifetime from a                           Stone Age warrior to a statesman in the age of the Industrial Revolution, but                 he accepted the challenge and responsibility of leading the whole                                    Comanche tribe on the difficult road toward their new existence." Quanah                     was traveling the "white man's road," but he did it his way. He refused to                       give up polygamy, much to the reservation agents' chagrin. Reservation                        agents being political appointees of the Federal Government, their main                         concern was to destroy all vestiges of Native American life and replace their                 culture with that of theirs. Quanah Parker also used peyote, negotiated                           grazing rights with Texas cattlemen, and invested in a railroad. He learned                    English, became a reservation judge, lobbied Congress and pleaded the                        cause of the Comanche Nation. Among his friends were cattleman Charles                   Goodnight and President Theodore Roosevelt. He considered himself a                         man who tried to do right both to the people of his tribe and to his pale                           faced friends". It wasn't easy. Mackenzie appointed Quanah Parker as                            the chief of the Comanche shortly after his surrender, but the older chiefs                      resented Parker's youth, and his white blood in particular." And in 1892, when      Quanah Parker signed the Jerome Agreement that broke up the reservation,                 the Comanche were split into two factions:                (1). those who realized that all that could be done had been done for their                            nation; and                (2). those who blamed Chief Parker for selling their country."                               Quanah Parker died on February 23, 1911, and was buried next to his                              mother, whose body he had re-interred at Ft. Sill Military cemetery on Chiefs                 Knoll in Oklahoma only three months earlier. For his courage, integrity and                   tremendous insight, Quanah Parker's life tells the story of one of America's                   greatest leaders and a true Texas Hero.

Born 1845                                                                                                     Died February 23, 1911                THE COMANCHE Indians were described as the Lords of the Plains, and under their                  brave and resourceful chiefs they ravaged the High Plains from the Platte River down                  into Mexico. One of the most distinguished chiefs of this proud people was Quanah                       Parker. Quanah had an unusual background. He was the son of a Comanche chief and                  a white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker. Cynthia was taken from Parker's Fort on the                         Navasota River in East Texas at the age of nine, when the Comanche's raided the fort                 and left only a few survivors.                Quanah was born in 1845, although the stone erected over his grave gives the date as                   1852. He died February 23, 1911, and was buried in Post Oak Cemetery, near the                         mission of the same name. Quanah's band of Comanche's, the Kwahadi, refused to go                   onto the Reservation following the Treaty of 1867. About seven hundred Indians were                  with Quanah at the famed Battle of Adobe Walls, in West Texas. This started a series                  of border rampages along the southern edge of Kansas that lasted for years. In 1876                    Quanah finally led his band in to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they surrendered and                         submitted to reservation life. Quanah made the best of the new conditions, and was the                 most prominent and influential member of the confederation of Comanche, Cheyenne,                   and Kiowa tribes which settled in the neighborhood of Fort Sill.                 The City of Quanah, Texas was named for him. Quanah has many relatives living in                    Oklahoma.                Quanah Parkers Mother has a story all her own.   As touching as anything else I've                      read so I feel it should be told.                                                 "A white Indian and her tragic saga"                On a May day in 1836 in northern Texas, a 9-year-old frontier girl was abducted by a                   raiding band of Comanche's, who swooped down on the family home and killed her                         father. The child was Cynthia Ann Parker, favorite niece of Isaac Parker, rancher,                        soldier and legislator. The story of her 25-year captivity and her subsequent return is                   one of the most poignant of all the frontier tales.                As Cynthia Ann toiled at the work of a Comanche woman, her complexion darkened                      from the sun and dirt, and her flaxen hair, clipped short, became greasy. Yet as a white                 she remained an alluring prize. The chief, Peta Nocona, chose her as his bride when                      she was 18, and she bore three children two sons, Quanah and Pecos, and a daughter,                   Topasannah. For 15 years she cared for her family as the tribe staged forays into                          Parker County, named after her uncle. Cynthia Ann's return to white society occurred                  the way she had left it, through a raid. While camped near the Pease River in 1860, her                 tribe was surprised by a detachment of government Indian hunters. Her husband and                    her teen-age sons escaped into the prairie. Quanah later would become a noted                             Comanche warrior and chief. During the skirmish Cynthia Ann's short hair and buffalo                  robe gave her the look of a brave, but just as she was about to be shot by a white man                   she held up her baby, Topasannah, as a sign that she was a woman. Closer inspection                   revealed her blue eyes, conclusive evidence that she was white. Certain that they had                   found the long-lost lady of the Parker family, the soldiers summoned Isaac Parker. He                  tried to talk to the blue-eyed woman, but she spoke little English. Finally Parker said,                  "Maybe we were wrong. Poor Cynthia Ann."On hearing the name the 34-year-old                          woman remembered it from her childhood: "Me Cynthia," she replied simply. Cynthia was welcomed back by the whites, who even voted her a pension and some land. But she never smiled. Several times she stole horses and went out in quest of her sons. After about four years back with the settlers, Cynthia Ann's little girl died from a fever. Devastated by grief, Cynthia Ann starved herself to death.