AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – Remembered variably for leadership, dignity, business savvy, and intelligence, Quanah Parker made lasting marks on the history of the High Plains and broader United States as the “last Chief of the Comanches” amid the tumultuous decades leading into the 20th century.
Early life and family
Parker cited his birth year as “about 1850” in letters and interviews throughout his life, on Elk Creek near the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma, though historians sometimes vary in estimating his birth year between 1842 and 1852. He was born as a member of the Comanche Kwahadi band to Peta Nocona (son of the Kwahadi chief “Iron Jacket”, known for wearing Spanish armor, and a chief himself) and Cynthia Ann Parker, the eldest of their three children.
Cynthia Ann had been a child in Fort Parker in 1836, when it was attacked by a group including Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo raiders. Five people were killed, and Cynthia Ann was among five captives (alongside her brother John and other extended relatives) taken as a result of the raid. While the other four were eventually released, she was eventually assimilated into the Comanches, took the name Naduah, and later went on to marry Nocona.
In December 1860, Captain Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross led a group of about 40 some-odd Texas Rangers (including Charles Goodnight among their hired scouts) and 20 United States cavalry troopers in attacking a Comanche encampment on Mule Creek, less than a mile above its mouth on the Pease River. Most of the people in the camp were killed in what one Texas Ranger, Hiram Rogers, later described as “just a killing of [women].” Cynthia Ann, her infant daughter Topsannah, and one other Comanche boy were taken captive…