Cynthia Ann Parker

“Parker never fully reintegrated and repeatedly asked to be allowed to return to her sons and husband, but her requests were denied.” – Treva Elaine Hodges

As mentioned in last month’s column the Comanche Indians are widely regarded as being one of the most violent groups of people in history, scalping people they had captured, cutting their throats and torturing them for weeks was all part of the modus operandi of the tribe. One particularly gruesome technique was to tie a detainee to a poll and face him or her towards the sun, then remove their eye lids so the sun would burn them to blindness. Paradoxically, they are also known to be kind, to certain people they have captured. So much so, that often the POWS would rather stay with the tribe than return to their previous family or life. Often marrying a Comanche Indian, having children and staying with the tribe for the remainder or for most of their lives. One such detainee was Cynthia Ann Parker. She is commonly known as the most famous POW in history. Cynthia Ann Parker had blonde hair and blue eyes and was 9 years old when she was captured by the Comanche Indians in a raid on her home.

The historian T R Fehrenbach, author of Comanche: The History of a People, tells of a raid on an early settler family called the Parkers, who with other families had set up a stockade known as Fort Parker. In 1836, 100 mounted Comanche warriors appeared outside the fort’s walls, one of them waving a white flag to trick the Parkers.

‘Benjamin Parker went outside the gate to parley with the Comanche,’ he says. ‘The people inside the fort saw the riders suddenly surround him and drive their lances into him. Then with loud whoops, mounted warriors dashed for the gate. Silas Parker was cut down before he could bar their entry; horsemen poured inside the walls.’

Survivors described the slaughter: ‘The two Frosts, father and son, died in front of the women; Elder John Parker, his wife ‘Granny’ and others tried to flee. The warriors scattered and rode them down.

‘John Parker was pinned to the ground, he was scalped and his genitals ripped off. Then he was killed. Granny Parker was stripped and fixed to the earth with a lance driven through her flesh. Several warriors raped her.

Contemporary accounts also describe them staking out male captives spread-eagled and naked over a red-ant bed. Sometimes this was done after removing the victim’s private parts, putting them in his mouth and then sewing his lips together. One band of Comanche sewed up captives in untanned leather and left them out in the sun. The green rawhide would slowly shrink and squeeze the prisoner to death.

‘Silas Parker’s wife Lucy fled through the gate with her four small children. But the Comanche overtook them near the river. They threw her and the four children over their horses to take them as captives.’

Cynthia Ann Parker was soon integrated into the tribe. Her Comanche name Naduah, translates as ‘someone found’ in Uto-Aztecan the Comanche language. She was adopted by a Tenowish Comanche couple, who raised her as their own daughter. She forgot her original ways and became Comanche in every sense. She married Peta Nocona, a chieftain. Peta had actually taken part in the raid on fort Parker the day Cynthia was captured. They enjoyed a happy marriage, and as a tribute to his great affection to her, he never took another wife, although it was traditional for chieftains to have several wives. They had three children Quanah, Pecos (Pecan) and Topsannah (Prairie Flower), Quanah later became a Comanche chief which was an incredibly difficult distinction to achieve. He became one of the most feared Comanche warriors in history and his story is incredible in its own right.

This practice of adopting captured children was quite common among the Plains Indians as low birth rates combined with the hard nomadic lifestyle resulted in dwindling numbers in several of the bands. Some of the captive children, like John and James Parker, lived with the Indians for several months or years before eventually being killed or ransomed back to white society. In December 1860, after years of searching at the behest of Parker's father and various scouts, Texas Rangers led by Lawrence Sullivan Ross discovered a band of Comanche, deep in the heart of Comancheria, that was rumored to hold American captives. In a surprise raid, the small band of Rangers attacked a group of Comanches in the Battle of Pease River.

After limited fighting, the Comanche attempted to flee. Ranger Ross and several of his men pursued the man who had appeared as the leader, and who was fleeing alongside a woman rider. As Ross and his men neared, she held a child over her head. The men did not shoot, but instead surrounded and stopped her. Ross continued to follow the chief, eventually shooting him three times. Although he fell off his horse, he was still alive and refused to surrender. Ross' cook, Antonio Martinez, identified the man as Nocona and killed him. Cynthia Ann and her daughter Prairie Flower were captured. Cynthia Ann had spent twenty-four years living as a Comanche before being unwillingly reunited with her Anglo family. Cynthia Ann never fully reintegrated into white society. Parker's return to her birth family captured the country's imagination. In 1861, the Texas legislature granted her a league which is rough 4,500 acres of land and an annual pension of $100 for the next five years.

Her son Pecos died of smallpox and her daughter Topsannah died of pneumonia. This increased her longing to return to her tribe to be with her surviving son Quanah. Cynthia tried to escape several times to return to her Comanche tribe but was recaptured by the Texas Ranger and returned to her new residence. In defiance of being returned and in a last ditch attempt for her desire to be returned to be taken seriously, she went on hunger strike. She died in March 1871, she was forty-three years old. She is buried in Oklahoma. Next month’s column will focus on the Texas Rangers organization that was formed because of the Comanche Indians and were the same force that found and returned Cynthia Ann Parker to her original family that she lived with prior to being captured as well as killing her husband Peta Nocona.