Cynthia Ann Parker
"White" Mother of Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief
PARKER, CYNTHIA ANN (ca. 1825-ca. 1871).
Cynthia Ann Parker, a captive of
the Comanches, was born to Lucy (Duty) and Silas M. Parker in
Crawford
County, Illinois. According to the 1870 census of Anderson County
she would
have been born between June 2, 1824, and May 31, 1825. When she
was nine or
ten her family moved to Central Texas and built Fort Parker on
the
headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County.
On May 19,
1836, a large force of Comanche warriors accompanied by Kiowa and
Kichai
allies attacked the fort and killed several of its
inhabitants. During the
raid the Comanches seized five captives, including Cynthia
Ann. The other
four were eventually released, but Cynthia remained with the
Indians for
almost twenty-five years, forgot white ways, and became
thoroughly Comanche.
It is said that in the mid-1840s her brother, John Parker, who
had been
captured with her, asked her to return to their white family, but
she
refused, explaining that she loved her husband and children too
much to
leave them. She is also said to have rejected Indian trader
Victor Rose's
invitation to accompany him back to white settlements a few years
later,
though the story of the invitation may be apocryphal.
A newspaper account of April 29, 1846, describes an encounter of
Col.
Leonard G. Williams's trading party with Cynthia, who was camped
with
Comanches on the Canadian River. Despite Williams's ransom
offers, tribal
elders refused to release her. Later, federal officials P. M.
Butler and
M.G. Lewis encountered Cynthia Ann with the Yamparika Comanches
on the
Washita
River; by then she was a full-fledged member of the tribe and
married to a
Comanche warrior. She never voluntarily returned to white
society. Indian
agent Robert S. Neighbors learned, probably in 1848, that she was
among
the Tenawa Comanches. He was told by other Comanches that only
force would
induce her captors to release her. She had married Peta Nocona
and
eventually had two sons, Quanah Parker and Pecos, and a daughter,
Topsannah.
On December 18, 1860, Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross
attacked a Comanche hunting camp at Mule Creek, a tributary of
the Pease
River. During this raid the rangers captured three of the
supposed Indians.
They were surprised to find that one of them had blue eyes; it
was a
non-English-speaking white woman with her infant daughter. Col.
Isaac
Parker later identified her as his niece, Cynthia Ann. Cynthia
accompanied
her uncle to Birdville on the condition that military interpreter
Horace P.
Jones would send along her sons if they were found. While
traveling through
Fort Worth she was photographed with her daughter at her breast
and her hair
cut short, a Comanche sign of mourning. She thought that
Peta Nocona was
dead
and feared that she would never see her sons again. On April 8,
1861, a
sympathetic Texas legislature voted her a grant of $100 annually
for five
years and a league of land and appointed Isaac D. and Benjamin F.
Parker
her guardians. But she was never reconciled to living in white
society and
made several unsuccessful attempts to flee to her Comanche
family. After
three months at Birdville, her brother Silas took her to his Van
Zandt
County home. She afterward moved to her sister's place near the
boundary of
Anderson and Henderson counties. Though she is said in some
sources to have
died in 1864, the 1870 census enrolled her and gave her age as
forty-five.
At her death she was buried in Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson
County. In
1910 her son Quanah moved her body to the Post Oak Cemetery near
Cache,
Oklahoma. She was later moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and
reinterred beside
Quanah. In the last years of Cynthia Ann's life she never saw her
Indian
family, the only family she really knew. But she was a true
pioneer of the
American West, whose legacy was carried on by her son Quanah.
Serving as a
link between whites and Comanches, Quanah Parker became the most
influential
Comanche leader of the reservation era.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James T. DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story
of Her
Capture (St. Louis, 1886; rpts.: The Garland Library of
Narratives of North
American Indian Captivities, Vol. 95, New York: Garland, 1976;
Dallas: Chama
Press, 1991). Margaret S. Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life
and the
Legend (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990). Grace Jackson,
Cynthia Ann
Parker (San Antonio: Naylor, 1959). Paul I. Wellman,
"Cynthia Ann Parker,"
Chronicles of Oklahoma 12 (June 1934). Women of Texas (Waco:
Texian Press,
1972).
Margaret Schmidt Hacker
*****
From http://www.powersource.com/gallery/womansp/cynthia.html
Cynthia Ann Parker - Comanche (Adopted)
By Julia White
Even though she was not born of Native blood, the life of Cynthia
Ann Parker
certainly earned recognition and respect because of her devotion
to Native
life, her husband and her children. It only seems fitting that
her spirit be
honored here.
Cynthia was born in Clark County, Illinois and moved with her
family to the
headwaters of the Navasota River in Texas as a young child. The
family
developed a community around the church of her uncle, Elder John
Parker, who
headed the Texas branch of the Primitive Baptist Church. As
protection
against the Natives of the area, they built substantial walls
around their
community and created a company of Texas Rangers for the area.
The
settlement became known as Fort Parker.
In the Spring of 1836, Fort Parker was attacked by several
hundred Caddo,
Comanche and Kiowa who captured five residents of the Fort. Among
them was
Cynthia, who was 9 years old at the time. Within 6 years, all the
captives
had been returned to their white families - except Cynthia.
Cynthia was given to a Tenowish Comanche couple who cared for
her, and who
raised her like their own daughter. She became Comanche in every
sense; was
trained in Native ways and was totally devoted to her adopted
parents. The
memories of her white life quickly faded, and every attempt to
ransom her
was refused by the tribal council at her request.
She married Peta Nocoma, the young chief who gained fame for his
many
violent raids on white settlements in the territory. While it was
customary
for prominent Comanche warriors to take several wives, Peta never
took any
wife except Cynthia - a mark of extraordinary devotion and honor
for her.
They had 3 children: Quanah, Pecos and Topsannah (2 boys and 1
girl).
In December of 1860, Peta's camp on the banks of the Pease River
was
attacked by Captain Lawrence Sullivan Ross. Peta was wounded, but
managed to
escape with their two sons, Quanah and Pecos. Whether or not Peta
survived
these wounds and lived is cloudy for he is not mentioned again.
Cynthia was
"rescued" along with their daughter Topsannah and the
two were taken to Camp
Cooper. She was identified by her uncle Isaac Parker, and
subsequently taken
to his farm in Birdville, Texas. Cynthia's every attempt to
return to her
people failed, and she was repeatedly caught and returned to
Birdville.
Even though she refused to speak of her Comanche life, many
fanciful and
fictitious stories were written about this strange and mysterious
woman.
"Historical fiction" was used to incite anti-Indian
feelings, and these tall
tales eventually became accepted as truth and fact. Never
satisfied, and
never at home in a society that was foreign to her, Cynthia was
shuttled
from one family member to another. Her grief and longing for her
lost family
never left her.
In 1863, Cynthia received word that her son Pecos had died of
smallpox, and
only a few months later, the daughter who had remained with her
died of
influenza. Heartbroken, Cynthia refused all food and starved
herself to
death in 1870 at the age of 43.
Only Quanah survived, and his name is legendary as the fierce,
half-breed
Comanche warrior chief. In his later years, Quanah began living
in peace
with the whites and went on to be very prosperous. He searched
for his
mother for most of his life and, upon discovering that she was
dead, had the
bodies of both Cynthia and Topsannah moved to friendly soil. When
Quanah
died in 1911, he was laid to rest beside his devoted mother.
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