Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (58 page)
Authors: S. C. Gwynne
Tags: #State & Local, #Kings and Rulers, #Native American, #Social Science, #Native American Studies, #Native Americans, #West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), #Wars, #Frontier and Pioneer Life, #General, #United States, #Ethnic Studies, #19th Century, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #Biography & Autobiography, #Comanche Indians, #West (U.S.), #Discrimination & Race Relations, #Biography, #History
One
A NEW KIND OF WAR
1
. Robert G. Carter,
On the Border with Mackenzie,
p. 159.
2
. Captain George Pettis,
Kit Carson’s Fight with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians,
pp. 7ff.
3
. Cited in C. C. Rister, ed., “Documents Relating to General W. T. Sherman’s Southern Plains Indian Policy 1871–75,”
Pandhandle Plains Historical Review
9, 1936.
4
. T. R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches,
p. 494.
5
. F. E., Green, ed., “Ranald Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–1879,” p. 7; this incident is also known as the Wagon Train Massacre, per Fehrenbach, p. 506 (and occasionally as the Warren Wagon Train Massacre).
6
. Carter, pp. 81–82.
7
. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
The Comanches,
pp. 50–55.
8
. Ibid.
9
. Cited in Herbert Eugene Bolton,
Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains.
10
. Thomas W. Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
p. 3.
11
. Rupert Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement,
p. 156.
12
. Carter, p. 149.
13
. Ibid., p. 160.
14
. Ibid., p. 161.
15
. Ibid., p. 176.
Two
A LETHAL PARADISE
1
. Quanah Parker interview with Charles Goodnight, undated manuscript, Goodnight Papers, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
2
. Marshall DeBruhl,
Sam Houston: Sword of San Jacinto,
p. 305.
3
. Deed of indenture, November 1, 1835, signed by Juan Basquis for sale of half a league of land to Silas Parker; document in Taulman Archive, Center for American History, University of Texas.
4
. Joseph Taulman and Araminta Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre and Its Aftermath,” unpublished manuscript, Cynthia Ann Parker vertical files, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, TX, p. 2.
5
. Ibid., p. 247.
6
. Bill Yenne,
Sitting Bull,
p. 35.
7
. Daniel Parker is given credit for making the first formal proposal to create Ranger companies to protect settlers. His proposal was accepted by the permanent council
of the Consultation of 1835, a committee that directed the affairs of the Texas Revolution, of which Parker was a member. See Margaret Schmidt Hacker,
Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and Legend,
p. 7; see also Mike Cox,
The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso 1821–1900,
p. 42.
8
. Hacker, p. 6.
9
. James Parker,
Narrative of the Perilous Adventures,
p. 9.
10
. Ibid.
11
. Thomas W. Kavanaugh,
The Comanches: A History 1706–1875,
p. 250; see also Cox, p. 49, and Noah Smithwick’s account in
Evolution of a State.
He was in the Ranger group.
12
. Taulman and Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre,” pp. 2–3.
13
. Rachel Plummer,
Rachel Plummer’s Narrative of Twenty-one Months Servitude as a Prisoner among the Comanche Indians,
p. 7. See also Rachel Plummer’s other narrative (she wrote two),
Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer.
General Note: These narratives, plus James Parker’s
Narrative of the Perilous Adventures,
form the basis of most accounts of the massacre. There is also an affidavit filed by Daniel Parker and other members of the family shortly after the massacre (Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin), and various other accounts by family members including Quanah’s grandson Baldwin Parker’s own family-based account of what happened (also at Center for American History archive). Yet another narrative was pieced together by Joseph and Araminta Taulman and is part of their very large archive at the University of Texas in Austin. There is another eyewitness account from Abram Anglin (in Dewitt Baker, ed.,
A Texas Scrap Book: Made up of the History, Biography and Miscellany of Texas and Its People
[New York: A.S. Barnes, 1875, reprint 1991 Texas State Historical Assn.]). Additionally there are many newspaper accounts, based on interviews with immediate Parker relatives and descendants, including “Story of the White Squaw,”
McKinney Democrat Gazette,
September 22, 1927; “Early Times in Texas and the History of the Parker Family,” by Ben J. Parker of Elkhart, Texas (manuscript at Center for American History); J. Marvin Nichols, “White Woman Was the Mother of Great Chief,”
San Antonio Daily Express,
July 25, 1909; Ben J. Parker, “Ben Parker Gives Events of Pioneering,”
Palestine Herald,
February 15, 1935; for secondary sources it is hard to beat the extensively researched
Frontier Blood
by Jo Ella Powell Exley.
14
. Fehrenbach,
Lone Star,
p. 291.
15
. This and other architectural details have been wonderfully re-created at Old Parker’s Fort in Groesbeck, Texas, built on the site of the original.
16
. Plummer,
Rachel Plummer’s Narrative,
p. 93.
17
. Ibid., p. 93.
18
. Daniel Parker, notes dated June 18, 1836, Parker Documents, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; see also Hacker, p. 8.
19
. Plummer,
Rachel Plummer’s Narrative,
p. 95.
20
. Exley, p. 44.
21
. Ibid., p. 94.
22
. Plummer,
Rachel Plummer’s Narrative,
p. 9.
23
. Parker,
Narrative of the Perilous Adventures,
p. 1.
24
. John Graves,
Hard Scrabble,
p. 15.
25
. Plummer,
Rachel Plummer’s Narrative.
26
. Rachel Plummer,
Narrative of the Capture
(1838), p. 7ff.
27
. Ibid.
Three
WORLDS IN COLLISION
1
. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
The Comanches,
p. 12.
2
. Alfred Thomas, ed.,
Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, 1777–1787, From the Original Documents in the Archives of Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico,
pp. 119ff.
3
. Ibid., p. 8; Rupert Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier,
p. 5.
4
. T. R. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 133.
5
. Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day, eds.,
The Indian Papers of the Southwest,
vol. 1, p. 24.
6
. M. Lewis,
The Lewis and Clark Expedition,
p. 30; in Thomas Kavanaugh’s book
The Comanches: A History 1706–1875,
he notes that the ethnonym “Padouca” could well have been applied to plains-dwelling Apaches (p. 66). The point, either way, is that in a land where many, many tribes were known and identified, the Comanches of this era were not.
7
. George Bird Grinnell, “Who Were the Padouca?”
American Anthropologist
22 (1920): 248.
8
. Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
pp. 218–19.
9
. Ibid., p. 235.
10
. George Catlin,
Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians,
p. 47.
11
. W. S. Nye,
Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill,
p. 8.
12
. Catlin, pp. 48ff; see also Colonel Richard Irving Dodge,
Our Wild Indians, 33 years’ personal experience among the redmen of the great west.
13
. Randolph B. Marcy,
Adventure on Red River: A Report on the Exploration of the Red River by Captain Randolph Marcy and Captin G.B. McClellan,
p. 5.
14
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
pp. 30–31.
15
. David La Vere,
Contrary Neighbors,
p. 8.
16
. Clark Wissler,
The American Indian,
pp. 220ff.
17
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 33.
18
. Walter Prescott Webb first made this observation in his book
The Great Plains
(p. 53)
;
it has been repeated by others since.
19
. J. Frank Dobie,
The Mustangs,
pp. 23ff.
20
. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 41.
21
. Ibid., p. 24.
22
. Fehrenbach,
Lone Star,
p. 31.
23
. Dobie, p. 25.
24
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 86.
25
. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 35ff.
26
. Wissler, p. 220.
27
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 126.
28
. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 39.
29
. Ibid., p. 35; Dobie, p. 69.
30
. Athanase de Mézières, “Report by de Mézières of the Expedition to Cadadachos, Oct. 29, 1770,” in Herbert E. Bolton, ed.,
Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780,
vol. 1, p. 218.
31
. Catlin, pp. 65ff; see also Colonel Richard I. Dodge,
Our Wild Indians.
32
. Dobie, p. 65.
33
. Dodge,
The Plains of the Great West,
pp. 401ff.
34
. Dobie, p. 48. He is citing an account by Captain Randolph Marcy.
35
. General Thomas James,
Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans,
St. Louis, 1916, cited in Dobie, p. 83.
36
. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 46.
37
. Richard I. Dodge,
The Plains of the Great West,
pp. 329–30.
38
. Ralph E. Twitchell,
The Spanish Archives of New Mexico,
p. 269.
39
. Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
p. 63.
40
. Marvin Opler, “The Origins of Comanche and Ute,”
American Anthropologist
45 (1943): 156.
Four
HIGH LONESOME
1
. Rachel Plummer,
The Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer,
1839.
2
. T. R. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 97.
3
. Jo Ella Powell Exley,
Frontier Blood,
p. 133.
4
. Plummer, p. 96.
5
. Ibid., p. 97.
6
. Walter P. Webb,
The Great Plains,
p. 9.
7
. Plummer, p. 97.
8
. Noah Smithwick,
Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days,
p. 113.