![]() Cynthia Ann, who was nursing Toh-Tsee-Ah at the time, was recognized as white and thus spared that she might be returned to civilization. The Quahade Comanche Indians, mostly women and children, were caught completely off-guard and massacred, including another wife of Peta Nocona who had been a second mother to Quanah. In December 1860, Cynthia Ann was recaptured by a white raiding party to the Pease River led by a future governor of Texas, Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross. At the time Quanah was born, the “Lords of the Plains” were battling rival tribes and encroaching on whites for a large territory known informally as “Comanchería.” After the Civil War, the Comanche Indians went into rapid decline as an independent power. Texans were often victims of Comanche raids-and vice versa as the whites retaliated. They lived up to the name given to them by the Utes, “the people who fight us all the time,” ranging from Kansas and Colorado down into Mexico. Quanah Parker’s formative years coincided with the height of Comanche power in the Southwest. ![]() By 1860, Quanah had a 10-year-old brother, Pee-nah (“Peanuts”) and an infant sister, Toh-Tsee-Ah (“Prairie Flower”). Cynthia Ann grew up thoroughly assimilated into the culture of those who called themselves “the People,” and the children she had by Peta Nocona were all raised in the Comanche way. Like most Comanche males, he had several wives, so it was hardly a Boston marriage or a romantic coupling, but it proved a long and happy union. So they adopted her into the Quahade tribe (“Antelope-eaters”), giving her the name Na-u-dah (“Someone Found”).įacebook | Twitter few years later, Chief Peta Nocona took Cynthia Ann as his wife. The Comanches might have ransomed the girl back to her people, which is what happened to the other four captives, but they admired her toughness and her striking blue eyes. The raiders escaped with five white captives, including Cynthia Ann and her brother John. It was May 1836, and Cynthia Ann would not see her family for the next 24 years. Quanah’s mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, who was taken at age 9 by Comanche and Caddo Indians in a raid on Fort Parker, the family compound at the headwaters of the Navasota River in east-central Texas. By Quanah’s account, as told years later to cattleman Charles Goodnight, he was born in a Comanche tepee in the shadow of Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains. However, 1845 seems more likely, based on a review of the chronology of his lifetime. There is no way of telling for certain since the Plains Indians relied on oral history, instead of written records, to preserve their past. Quanah always said he was born “about 1850,” but various historians have placed the date as early as 1845 and as late as 1852. The two names symbolized the two worlds of Quanah Parker. His birth name was Quanah, a Comanche word that translates roughly as “odor” or “fragrance.” Years later he added the surname “Parker” as a concession to the white half of his ancestry. He was born and grew up in the world of the fearsome Comanches but died in the white man’s world after making peace with his people’s longtime enemies. His is the remarkable story of a man with his feet in two cultures who helped heal the wounds of war between them. Yet this son of a Comanche father and a white mother became Fort Worth’s “native son” in the truest sense. Quanah never lived in Fort Worth, had no family roots there and visited the Texas city only rarely. What tourists may not understand is that there is little reason for it to be there. In the heart of the Stockyards Historic District of Fort Worth stands a statue to famous Comanche Chief Quanah Parker. ![]() Comanche Chief Quanah Parker: A Man of Two Worlds Close ![]()
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