Cynthia Ann Parker

Cynthia Ann Parker and her daughter, Topsannah (Prairie Flower), in 1861

Cynthia Ann Parker, or Naduah (also sometimes spelled "Nadua" and "Nauta," meaning "someone found"), (ca 1827–1870) was an Anglo-Texas woman of Scots-Irish descent who was kidnapped at the age of nine by a Native American raiding party. Cynthia Ann was a member of the large Parker frontier family that settled in east Texas in the 1830s. She was captured in 1836 by Comanches during the raid of Fort Parker near present-day Groesbeck, Texas. Parker adapted to Comanche life during 24 years of captivity, taking a husband and bearing three children before she was taken, at age 34, by the Texas Rangers. Parker spent the remaining 10 years of her life trying to escape back to the Comanche people. She was the mother of the last Comanche chief, Quanah Parker.

Early life

Cynthia Ann Parker was born to Silas M. Parker and Lucy Parker in Crawford County, Illinois. There is considerable dispute about her age, as according to the 1870 census of Anderson County, Texas, she would have been born between June 2, 1824, and May 31, 1825. When she was nine years old, her family moved to Central Texas and built Fort Parker, a log fort, on the headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County. Her brother James was killed on the way from Illinois to Texas, when the wagon lost a wheel and he was struck through the chest with a piece of splintered wood.

Fort Parker massacre

Main article: Fort Parker massacre

Her grandfather, Elder John Parker, the patriarch of the family, had negotiated treaties with the local Native Americans, and historians conjecture that he believed those treaties would bind all Native Americans, and that his family was safe from attack. If so, this was a tragic error. On May 19, 1836, a force of Comanche warriors approximately 500 strong, accompanied by Kiowa and Kichai allies, attacked the fort and killed a number of its inhabitants. During the attack, the Comanches took five captives, including Cynthia Ann Parker. The other four were released after the typical ransom was paid, but Cynthia remained with the Indians for nearly twenty-five years.

Cynthia Ann Parker and Peta Nocona

Main article: Peta Nocona

Peta Nocona was one of the war chiefs present at the Fort Parker massacre, and had afterwards formed his own band of the Comanche called the Noconi or Nokoni. He became the husband of Cynthia Ann Parker. A great tribute to his affection to her was that he never took another wife, though it was common among the Comanche for such a successful war chief to do so. The couple had three children, famed Comanche chief Quanah Parker, another son named Pecos ("Pecan") and a daughter named Topsanna ("Prairie Flower").

Recapture by Texas Rangers at Pease River

In December 1860, Cynthia Ann and her 2-year-old daughter, Topsanna (Anglicization: Topsannah), were among a Native American party captured at the Battle of Pease River by Texas Rangers led by Lawrence Sullivan "Sul" Ross. After fierce fighting, the Comanche realized they were losing and fled. Ross and several of his men pursued the chief who had been giving orders. The chief was fleeing alongside another rider. As Ross and his men neared, the other rider 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 the chief fell from his horse, he was still alive, and refused to surrender. Ross's cook, Antonio Martinez, who had been taken captive in Mexico after Nocona killed his family, identified the captured chief as Nocona. With Ross's permission, Martinez fired the shot that took Nocona's life. There is some dispute whether the man killed was actually Nocona or someone else.

When Ross arrived back at the campground, he discovered that the woman his men had captured had blue eyes. He assured her that no young boys had been killed in the battle, so her sons, Quanah and Pecos were safe. The woman could not speak English, and did not know her American name or where she came from. After much questioning, she remembered a few details of her capture as a child. The details matched what Ross knew of the Fort Parker Massacre of 1836.

Though some of the Rangers urged Ross to set her free to return to the Comanches, he considered it best to try to return her to her white family. Ross knew many settlers had lost children to the Indians, and many of them might feel this was their child or relative. Ross sent the woman and her child to Camp Cooper and sent a message to Colonel Isaac Parker, the uncle of a young girl kidnapped in the raid. When Parker mentioned that his niece's name was Cynthia Ann Parker, the woman slapped her chest and said "Me Cincee Ann." Isaac Parker took her to his home near Birdville. In 1861, the Texas legislature granted her a league (about 4,400 acres) of land, a pension of $100 per year for the next five years, and made her cousins, Isaac Duke Parker and Benjamin F. Parker, her legal guardians.

Cynthia Ann never adapted to her new life among the whites, and attempted to escape on several occasions. Her brother, Silas Jr., was appointed her guardian in 1862, and took her to his home in Van Zandt County. When Silas was mustered into the Confederate Army, Cynthia Ann went to live with her sister, Orlena. According to some accounts, the Parker family was negotiating to return her to west Texas and her adopted people when the American Civil War broke out. The chief cause of Cynthia Ann's unhappiness was that she missed her sons and never knew what had happened to them.

Quanah Parker

Death

Cynthia Ann Parker's gravestone

In 1864, her daughter, Prairie Flower, caught influenza and died of pneumonia. In her grief, Cynthia Ann stopped eating. She became sick and died in 1870. She was buried in Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County near Frankston. Her son, Quanah, moved her body in 1910 to the Post Oak Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. He was buried there in 1911. She and her son were moved in 1957 to the Fort Sill military cemetery in Oklahoma.

Aftermath

The city of Crowell, Texas, holds the Cynthia Ann Parker Festival annually - a two-day celebration to honor the memory of Cynthia Ann Parker. They advertise the event as "a fun and educational weekend showcasing both Native American and European settlers history of the region."

The town of Groesbeck, Texas, holds an annual Christmas Festival at the site of old Fort Parker every December. The original fort has been re-built on the original site to exact specifications.

In 2010, the historian Paul H. Carlson, professor emeritus at Texas Tech University, published the revisionist Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker.

Adaptations

The 1956 movie The Searchers, which was based on an Alan Le May novel, directed by John Ford, and featured John Wayne as an obsessed frontiersman searching for years for his kidnapped niece, is widely believed to have been principally based on Cynthia Ann Parker's story; Natalie Wood and her younger sister Lana Wood portray the kidnapped woman at different ages.

Cynthia Parker is a one-act opera composed by Julia Smith.

The Dutch writer Arthur Japin also wrote a book, "De Overgave" (The Surrender), about the life of the Parker family and the loss of Cynthia Ann.

Footnotes

1. There is some confusion about the correct birth and death dates for Cynthia Ann Parker. Different sources place her birth from 1825 to 1827 in Coles, Clark or Crawford counties of Illinois, and her death from 1864 to 1871 in Anderson County, Texas. However, her presence in the 1870 Anderson County census makes an earlier death date unlikely.
2. Writing in the Crowell Index on October 8, 1909, Tom Champion opined, "...I am convinced that the white people did more harm by keeping her away from them than the Indians did by taking her at first."

References

• Benner, Judith Ann (1983), Sul Ross, Soldier, Statesman, Educator, College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press
• Exley, Jo Ella Powell (2001), Frontier Blood: Saga of the Parker Family, Texas A&M University Press, ISBN 978-1585441365
• Hacker, Margaret (1990), Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and the Legend, Texas Western Press, ISBN 978-0874041873

Further reading

• Meyer, Carolyn (1992), Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker, Gulliver Books, ISBN 9780152956028
• Robson, Lucia St. Clair (1985), Ride the Wind, Ballantine Books, ISBN 978-0345325228
• Selden, Jack (2006). RETURN: The Parker Story. Hardcover: 328 pages, ISBN 0-9659898-2-8

External links

• Cynthia Ann Parker from the Handbook of Texas Online - from Handbook of Texas online
• Account of the 1836 attack Parker's Fort from Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas by John Henry Brown published 1880, hosted by The Portal to Texas History
• Cynthia Parker program notes
• Cynthia Ann Parker - Comanche (By Adoption)
• Cynthia Ann Parker at Find a Grave