Quanah Parker

Category: Tribal chief

Tribal affiliation: Quohada Comanche

Significance: Although a fierce warrior and battle leader, Quanah became an outspoken advocate of Indian assimilation and aided his people in the transition from freedom to reservation life

Quanah Parker was the son of a Nacona Comanche chief named Peta Nocona and a white woman named Cynthia Ann Parker. A mixed band of Comanches, Paiutes, and Kiowas captured Cynthia Ann (age nine at the time), her younger brother, and her older female cousin in 1836 during a raid on Parker’s Fort in what is now east-central Texas. Cynthia Ann’s brother and cousin escaped captivity within a few years, but a Comanche family adopted Cynthia Ann and reared her as a Comanche. At age seventeen or eighteen she married Peta Nocona and in due course gave birth to Quanah, another boy named Pecos, and a daughter named Topasannah (Prairie Flower).

In December, 1860, a Texas Ranger named Sul Ross (later a governor of the state) led a force of 120 men against a Comanche camp on the Pease River near the present Oklahoma-Texas border. In a running fight, the Rangers killed a number of Comanches and captured others—among them Cynthia Ann and her daughter. Quanah’s father died at the hands of Sul Ross himself during the battle, and his brother died shortly afterward, leaving the fifteen-year-old boy without close relatives. He was adopted by the Quohada Comanches and quickly proved himself an able warrior.

The Quohadas were a nomadic people who hunted buffalo from Kansas into Mexico, but their primary territory was the Llano Estacado (Staked Plain), especially the area that is now the Texas panhandle. Although Texas records do not mention Quanah by name during the next decade, he almost certainly participated in some of the Comanche raids that resulted in many deaths and much property damage in the Southwest during the 1860’s. Many of the young white men being in the Confederate army during the early part of the decade, the frontier became especially vulnerable to Comanche raids. During the 1860’s, Quanah apparently distinguished himself in raids and became a subchief. The raids of the 1860’s pushed back the frontier more than one hundred miles and left many hundreds of white settlers dead. In 1866, the federal government enacted legislation to deal with the “Indian problem,” which resulted in the Medicine Lodge Treaty of October, 1867, which specifically targeted the Plains Indians and directly affected Quanah.

Representatives of the U.S. government met with leaders of the Arapahoes, Eastern Apaches, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas on Medicine Lodge Creek in southern Kansas on October 19, 1867. Many of the chiefs at the negotiations signed the treaty between October 21 and 27, agreeing to take their people to reservations in Oklahoma and Texas. Quanah Parker was not among those who signed the agreement. He and other Comanche subchiefs vowed they would never be confined to reservations, and led their bands to the Llano Estacado in the Texas panhandle. For the next seven years they raided incessantly throughout the Southwest. General William Tecumseh Sherman, army commander in the region, attempted to force the recalcitrant chiefs and their people to relocate to the reservation, but with little success. Quanah and other leaders managed to evade the army units put into the field against them. Colonel Ronald Slidell Mackenzie led many expeditions against the Comanche from 1868 to 1873, but usually failed to find his adversaries. Indians and whites committed many atrocities against each other during the raids and battles during this period.

On June 27, 1874, Quanah’s band fought a hard battle at Adobe Walls in the Texas panhandle. Many of the Comanche bands had come under the influence of a medicine man named Isatai, who claimed to have spoken with the Great Spirit in heaven. The Great Spirit had told him that if the Indians did a Sun Dance they would be immune to bullets and would drive the whites from their lands. Quanah and Isatai were instrumental in organizing a large-scale attack on a group of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. The attack ultimately failed, and many Indians died despite Isatai’s promises. After the battle, many of Quanah’s allies agreed to go to the reservations after an ultimatum from the federal government. Only Quanah’s band and a few others remained at large. The U.S. Army consequently launched a three-pronged campaign against the recalcitrant bands that eventually forced them onto the reservations.

On June 2, 1875, Quanah led his band into Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and surrendered to Mackenzie. Quanah, who had been the fiercest opponent of white settlement on the Texas plains, immediately became the most outspoken Comanche advocate of Indian assimilation into white culture. In time, he became the principal chief of the Comanche nation. From that position, he advocated Indian education in American-style schools and Indian technical education. Quanah became friends with many wealthy and influential white men, including Theodore Roosevelt, in whose inaugural parade he rode in 1905. He used his influence to fight for Indian rights for the remainder of his life.

Quanah later became a judge for Indians accused of crimes and a deputy sheriff. He also became a successful capitalist as a rancher and as an investor in the stock market. Ironically, he made considerable profits from railroad investments—strange for the man who had done much to retard the building of railroads in the Southwest. As recognition for his efforts in white-Indian relations, he became a favorite speaker at social gatherings throughout the Southwest and eventually had a Texas town named for him.

Quanah’s popularity with many whites probably derived from the fact that he himself was half white. After his surrender, Quanah became fascinated with his mother’s people. He arranged to have her remains disinterred and buried on his reservation, with the intention of being buried beside her. He visited many of his mother’s surviving relatives, including her brother, who had been captured with her. His unique white-Indian heritage, coupled with his positions of leadership in both cultures, allowed Quanah Parker to become a major force in reconciling the differences between the two cultures.

Bibliography

Carter, Robert G. On the Border with Mackenzie. Washington, D.C.: Enyon, 1935.

Jackson, Clyde L., and Grace Jackson. Quanah Parker: Last Chief of the Comanches. New York: Exposition Press, 1963.

Richardson, Rupert N. The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1933.

Tilghman, Zoe A. Quanah: The Eagle of the Comanches. Oklahoma City: Harlow, 1938.

Wallace, Ernest, and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952.