Winfield Courier, June 10, 1875. Front Page.

[Galveston News.]

Many old Texans will remember the massacre at Fort Houston, Texas, in 1838; the capture of women and children by the Indians, and the subsequent recovery of Cynthia Parker, after some twenty years of captivity among the savages. The following letter of inquiry, will doubtless, meet the eyes of someone who can give the desired information. The last information on this subject possessed by the News placed Cynthia Anne Parker with her relatives in Parker County, probably in the family of her uncle, the venerable Isaac Parker, long a member of the Texas congress, who spent years in endeavoring to recover the captives.

HEADQUARTERS, FORT SILL,

Indian Territory, May 19, 1875.

Capt. E. J. Strang, A. Q. M., U. S. A., Denison, Texas:

SIR: Citra, a Qua-ha-de Comanche, who came into this post a few days ago, is the son of Cynthia, or Cynthia Anne Parker, a white woman, and is very desirous of finding out the whereabouts of his mother, if still alive, who was captured by the Indians near the falls of the Brazos nearly forty years ago, while yet a girl, and captured by the United States troops eighteen years ago, since which time she has remained in Texas.

She took with her to Texas a little girl and left with the Indians two boys, one of whom has since died, and the surviving one (Citra), who was here, makes inquiry concerning her and his sister.

Any information you can obtain as to this woman, dead or alive, or of her daughter, will be gratefully received.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant.

R. A. MACKENZIE,

Colonel Fourth Cavalry, commanding post.

The Medicine Lodge Creek Council, which was held in Kansas in October 1867 was a marvelous spectacle in which both the uniformed troops of the army and the bedecked warriors of the southern plains performed splendidly. The army marched the soldiers and wagon trains to the meeting place with considerable pomp and ceremony, but the Indians surpassed him by riding up in a swirling formation of five concentric circles, their horses striped with war paint, the riders wearing war bonnets and carrying gay battle streamers. Then an opening was formed, and the great chiefs waited dramatically and silently for the outnumbered white men to step inside and prove their bravery and good faith.

The Medicine Lodge treaty accomplished nothing. The government authorities wanted the Indians to retreat to assigned reservations and follow the road of the whites. The Indians wanted to be left free to roam the plains and hunt their buffalo. No middle ground was possible.

Attending this council was Quanah of the Comanches. He was a merciless killer, because he knew no other way to keep the lands of his people.

Quanah, the leader of the Kwahadi Comanches, was a half-breed son of a chief and a captured white girl, Cynthia Ann Parker. He could see no good in a treaty that would take away from his people their freedom of the range. He left the council before the day of the signing, saying to the other Indians as he departed: AI am not going to a reservation. Tell the white chiefs when they ask, that the Kwahadi are warriors and that we are not afraid.@

The settlers kept coming from the east. The buffalo hunters came by tens and by hundreds, and it seemed that all would be lost. In the spring of 1874, Quanah realized that his people must make a great descision. All the Indians of the southern plains would have to join forces and fight with their concerted might against the buffalo hunters and the settlers, or else all the Indians would have to move on the reservations and live like whites. Quanah called for a great council of the Comanches, and invited their friends who were still free among the Kiowas and Cheyennes. From all over the vast plains the Indians came together for a medicine dance near the mouth of Elk Creek on the North Fork of the Red River.

During the dance, the Kwahadis= medicine man, Isatai, convinced Quanah that he had conversed with the Great Spirit. AThe Great Spirit has at last taken pity on the People,@ said Isatai. AHe will make us strong in war and we shall drive the white men away. The buffalo shall come back everywhere, so that there shall be feasting and plenty in the lodges. The Great Spirit has taught me strong medicine which will turn away the white man=s bullets.@

Quanah was not certain of Isatai=s power, but he permitted him to make a ceremony at the final feast. When Quanah saw that the other chiefs wanted to believe in Isatai, he presented them with a plan of attack. AFirst we will drive out the buffalo hunters,@ said Quanah.

Lone Wolf of the Kiowas disagreed. He wanted to raid the reservations and kill the agents and the soldiers. AIf Isatai=s power is strong,@ he said, Awe shall have nothing to fear from the soldiers.@ Stone Calf of the Cheyennes, however, was more practical and thought it best to attack the small isolated groups of buffalo hunters. The Great Spirit might be displeased if they asked for too much help from him all at once.

At last the decision was made. Quanah would make the plan and lead the Comanches. Isatai would make the strong medicine. Lone Wolf would lead the Kiowa and Stone Calf would lead the Cheyenne warriors.

Quanah=s plan was simple. They would attack the southernmost of the buffalo hunters= camps at Adobe Walls in the Panhandle country. After disposing of the hunters there, they would move northward to the next camp, the next, and then the next, always moving more swiftly than the news of the killings, until they had destroyed all the invaders of the buffalo country.

Before dawn on June 27, 1874, seven hundred warriors rode up out of the shadows of the Canadian River valley and spread themselves along the edge of the timber of Adobe Walls Creek. Quanah, in the lead, could see only the smudgy outlines of the buildings of Adobe Walls, picketed and built stockade fashionCtwo stores, a saloon, and a blacksmith shop. The thirty hunters, who had come to slay the Indians= buffalo and leave the skinned carcasses rotting on the plains, were all asleep.

They would have remained asleep, had not a drying ridge pole over one of the sheds happened to crack loudly just before daylight. The sharp noise awakened Billy Dixon, a Texas scout. Dixon was in no mood to go to bed again. As he walked toward his horse, he saw the animal fling its head back and prick up its ears. Dixon whirled around. In the graying dawn, the mounted Indians were sweeping toward the trading post. Dixon had barely enough time to awaken his companions before the first war whoops shrilled out above the drumming hooves. The noise of the breaking ridge pole had probably saved their lives.

Although Quanah led his warriors in charge after charge, sometimes to the point of beating upon the doors of the stockade with their rifle butts, they could never break into the trading post.

Quanah kept the battle going for three days, and then he knew he was beaten. The day of the buffalo was over for the Comanches. The wild free days were ended for all of the Indians of Oklahoma and Texas. They could choose either to die or to take the whites= road. Quanah chose to take the white man=s road. He led his Kwahadi to their reservation and then went to visit the white relatives of his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker. AIf she could learn the ways of the Indians,@ he said, AI can learn the ways of the white man.@ And the Parkers helped him in his long struggle.

He then started calling himself Quanah Parker. He became a shrewd businessman, built a large house, and successfully managed his farm and ranch. He traveled all over the country, and went to Washington to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt=s inaugural parade. After long years of effort he finally achieved full American citizenship for all the members of his tribe. The old fighting Kwahadi had come a long way down the white man=s road.

Source - AThe American West@ by Dee Brown.

NOTES

Book - Quanah, the Eagle of the Comanches, by Zoe A. Tilghman. Published in 1938 by Harlow Publishing Corp. in Oklahoma City, Okla.

June 2, 1875, Quanah and his Quahadis surrender.

May 19, 1836 there was a raid on Parker=s Fort where Cynthia Ann Parker was captured.

Quanah Parker was born in 1852 and died Feburary 23, 1911.