USA > Texas > Tarrant County > History of Texas, together with a biographical history of Tarrant and Parker counties; containing a concise history of the state, with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens of the above named counties, and personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families > Part 32
USA > Texas > Parker County > History of Texas, together with a biographical history of Tarrant and Parker counties; containing a concise history of the state, with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens of the above named counties, and personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families > Part 32
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dians ascertained that the child was still alive, they tore it from my arms and knocked me down. They tied a plaited rope around its neck and threw it into a bunch of prickly pears and then pulled it backward and for- ward until its tender flesh was literally torn from its body. One of the Indians who was monnted on a horse then tied the end of the rope to his saddle and galloped around in a circle until iny little innocent was not only dead but torn to pieces. One of them untied the rope and threw the remains of the child into my lap, and I dng a hole in the earth and bnried them.
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" 'After performing the last sad rites for the lifeless remains of my dear babe, I sat down and gazed with a feeling of relief npon the little grave I had made for it in the wilderness, and could say with David of old, " You can not come to me, but I must go to you ;" and then, and even now, as I record the dreadful scene I witnessed, I rejoiced that my babe had passed from the sorrows and sufferings of this world. I shall hear its dying cries no more, and, fully believing in and relying on the imputel righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, I feel that my inno- cent babe is now with kindred spirits in the eternal world of joys. Oh that my dear Savior may keep me through life's short journey, and bring me to dwell with my children in realms of eternal bliss !'
" Mrs. Plummer has gone to rest, and no doubt her hopes have been realized.
" After this she was given as a servant to a very ernel old squaw, who treated her in a most brutal manner. Her son had been carried off by another party to the far West, and she supposed her husband and father had been killed in the massacre. Her infant was dead and death to her would have been a eweet relief. Life was a burden, and driven
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almost to desperation she resolved no longer to submit to the intolerant old squaw. One day when the two were some distance from, although still in sight of, the camp, her mis- tress attempted to beat her with a elub. De- termined not to submit to this, she wrenched the elub from the hands of the squaw and knocked her down. The Indians, who had witnessed the whole proceedings from their camp, now came running up, shouting at the top of their voice. She fully expected to be killed, but they patted her on the shoulder, crying: Bueno! Bueno! ! (Good! Good !! or Well done!). She now fared much better, and soon became a great favorite, and was known as the ' Fighting Squaw.' She was eventually ransomed through the intervention of some Mexican Santa Fe traders, by a noble-hearted American merchant of that place, Mr. William Donahne. She was pur- chased in the Rocky Mountains so far north of Santa Fe that seventeen days were con- smmed in reaching that place. She was at once made a member of her benefactor's fam- ily, where she received the kindest of care and attention. Ere long she accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Donahne on a visit to Independence, Missouri, where she had the pleasure of meet- ing and embracing her brother-in-law, L. D). Nixon, and by him was escorted back to her people in Texas.
" During her stay with the Indians, Mrs. Plummer had many thrilling adventures, which she often recounted after her reclama- tion. In narrating her reminiscences, she said that in one of her rambles, after she had been with the Indians some time, she dis- covered a cave in the mountains, and, in com- pany with the old squaw that guarded her, she explored it and found a large diamond, but her mistress immediately demanded it, and she was forced to give it up. She said
also she saw here in these mountains a bush which had thorns on it resembling fish-hooks, which the Indians used to catch fish with and she herself has often caught trout with them in the little mountain streams.
"On the 19th of February, 1838, she reached her father's house, exactly twenty- one months after her capture. She had never seen her little son, James Pratt, since soon after their capture and knew nothing of his fate. She wrote or dictated a thrilling and graphic history of her capture and the horrors of her captivity, the tortures and hardships she endured, and all the incidents of her life with her captors and observations among the savages. This valnableand little book is now rare, and out of print. The full title of the volume is: ' Narration of the perilous adven- tures, miraculous escapes and sufferings of Rev. James W. Parker, during a frontier residence in Texas of fifteen years. With an important geographical description of the cli- mate, soil, timber, water, etc., of Texas. To . which is appended the narration of the cap- ture and subsequent sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plmnmer, his daughter, during a captivity of twenty-one months among the Comanche In- dians, etc. (18mo., pp. 95 and 35; boards. Louisville, 1844).'
" In this book she tells the last she saw of Cynthia Ann and John Parker. She died on the 19th of February, 1839, just one year after reaching home. As a remarkable coin- cidence it may be stated that she was born on the nineteenth, married on the nineteenth. captured on the nineteenth, released on the nineteenth, reached Independence on the nine- teenth, arrived at home on the nineteenth, and died on the nineteenth of the month!
" Her son, James Phummer, after six long and weary years of captivity and suffering. during which time he had lived among many
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different tribes, and travelod several thousand miles, was ransomed and taken to Fort Gib- son late in 1842, and reached home in 1843, in charge of his grandfather. He became a respected citizen of Anderson county. Both he and his father are now dead.
" This still left in captivity Cynthia and John Parker, who as subsequently heard were held by separate bands. The brother and sis- ter thus separated gradually, forgot the lan- gnage, manners and customs of their own people, and became thorough Comanches as the long years stole slowly away. How long the camera of their brains retained the im- pressions of the old home within the old fort, and the loved faces of their pale kindred, no one knows; though it would appear that the fearful massacre should have stamped an im- press indelible while life continued. But the young mind, as the twig, is inclined by pres- ent circumstances, and often forced in a way wholly foreign to its native and original bent.
"John grew up with the semi-nude Co- manche boys of his own age, and played at Inter and warrior with the pop-gun, made of elder-stems, or bows and arrows, and often flushed the chapparal for hare and grouse, or entrapped the finny denizens of the mountain brook with the many peenliar and ingenious devices of the wild nian for securing for his repast the toothsome trout which abonnds so plentifully in the elevated and delightful ro- gion so long inhabited by the lordly Co- manches.
" When John arrived at manhood he ac- companied a raiding party down the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Among the cap- tives taken was a young Mexican girl of great beanty, to whom the young warrior felt his heart go ont. The affection was reciprocated on the part of the fair Dona Juanita, and the two were engaged to be
married as soon as they should arrive at the Comanche village. Each day, as the caval- cade moved leisurely but steadily along, the lovers conld be seen riding together and dis- cnssing the anticipated pleasures of connubial life, when suddenly John was prostrated by a violent attack of smallpox. The cavalcade could not tarry, and so it was decided that the poor fellow should be left all alone, in the vast Llano Estacado, to die or recover as fate decreed. But the little Aztec beanty refused to leave her lover, insisting on her captors allowing her to remain and take care of him. To this the Indians reluctantly con- sented. With Juanita to nurse and cheer him up, John lingered, lived and ultimately recovered, when, with as little ceremony, perhaps, as consummated the nuptials of the first pair in Eden, they assumed the matri- monial relation, and Dona Juanita's predi- lection for the customs and comforts of civi- lization were sufficiently strong to indnce her lord to abandon the wild and nomadic life of. a savage for the comforts to be found in a straw-thatched house. 'They settled in Texas,' says Mr. Thrall, the historian of Texas, ' on a stock ranch in the far West.' When the Civil war broke out John Parker joined a Mexican company in the Confeder- ate service and was noted for his gallantry and daring. Ile, however, refused to leave the soil of Texas, and would under no cir- cuinstances eross the Sabine into Louisiana. Ile was still on his ranch across the Rio Grande a few years ago, but up to that time had never visited any of his relatives in Texas."
OYNTIIIA ANN PARKER.
The following interesting account is a chapter added to the foregoing story: "Four | long years have elapsed since she was cruelly
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torn from a mother's embrace and carried into captivity. During this time no tidings have been received of her. Many efforts have been made to find her whereabouts, but without success, when, in 1840, Colonel Len. Williams, an old and honored Texan, Mr. Stoat, a trader, and an Indian guide named Jack Harry, packed mules with goods and engaged in an expedition of private traffic with the Indians.
"On the Canadian river they fell in with Pa-ha-u-ka's band of Comanches, with whom they were peacefully conversant; and with this tribe was Cynthia Ann Parker, who, from the day of her capture, had never seen a white person She was then about fourteen years of age and had been with the Indians about five years.
"Colonel Williams found the Indian into whose family she had been adopted and pro- posed to redeem her, but the Comanche told him all the goods he had would not ransom her, and at the same time ' the firmness of his countenance,' says Colonel Williams, ' warned me of the danger of further men- tion of the subject.' But old Pa-ha-u-ka prevailed upon him to let them see her. She came and sat down by the root of a tree, and while their presence was doubtless a happy event to the poor, stricken captive, who in her doleful captivity had endured everything but death, she refused to speak a word. As she sat there, musing, perhaps, of distant relatives and friends, and the bereavements at the beginnings and progress of her dis -. tress, they employed every persuasive art to evoke some expression. They told her of her playmates and relatives, and asked what message she would send to them, but she had doubtless been commanded to silence, and, with no hope or prospect to return, was afraid to appear sad or dejected, and, by a
stoical effort in order to prevent future bad treatment, put the best face possible on the matter. But the anxiety of her mind was betrayed by a perceptible opinion on her lip, showing that she was not insensible to the common feelings of humanity.
" As the years rolled by Cynthia Ann speedily developed the charms of woman- hood, as with the dusky maidens of her companionship she performed the menial offices of drudgery to which savage custom consigns woman, or practiced those little arts of cognetry natural to the female heart, whether she be a belle of Madison Square, attired in the most elaborate toilet from the elite bazaars of Paris, or the half-naked sav- ages with matted locks and claw-like nails.
"Doubtless the heart of more than one warrior was pierced by the Ulyssean darts from the laughing eyes, or cheered by the silvery ripple of her joyous laughter, and laid at her feet the game taken after a long and arduons chase among the antelope hills. Among the number whom. her budding charms brought to her shrine was Peta Nocona, a Comanche war chief, in prowess and renown the peer of the famous and re- doubtable Big Foot, who fell in a desperately contested hand-to-hand encounter with the veteran ranger and Indian fighter, Captain S. P. Ross, now living at Waco, and whose wonderful exploits and deeds of daring for- nished theme for song and story at the war dance, the council and the camp fire.
"Cynthia Ann, stranger now to every word of her mother tongue save her own name, became the bride of Peta Nocona, per- forming for her imperions lord all the slav- ish offices which savagism and Indian enstom assigns as the duty of a wife. She bore him children, and, we are assured, loved him with a fierce passion and wifely devotion; 'for,
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some fifteen years after her capture,' says Victor M. Rose, 'a party of white hunters, including some friends of her family, visited the Comanche encampment, and recognizing Cynthia Ann-probably through the medium of her name alone-sounded her as to the disagreeableness of a return to her people and the haunts of civilization. She shook her head in a sorrowful negative, and pointed to her little naked barbarians sporting at her feet, and to the great, greasy, lazy buck sleep- ing in the shade near at hand, the locks of a score of scalps dangling at his belt, and whose first utterance on arousing would be a stern command to his meek, pale-faced wife, though, in truth, exposure to the sun and air had browned the complexion of Cynthia Ann almost as intensely as those of the native daughters of the plains and forest.'
"She retained Unt the vaguest remem- brance of her people-as dim and flitting as the phantom of a dream; she was accustomed now to the wild life she led, and found in its repulsive features charms in which * upper- tendom' would have proven totally deficient. ' I am happily wedded,' she said to these vis- itors; ' I love my husband, who is good and kind, and my little ones, who too are his, and I cannot forsake them.'"
This incident, in all its bearings, is so unique an one that it seems highly warrant- able to follow Cynthia's career to the end. About a score of years passed and young Ross, of Waco, had seemingly silenced the Comanches at Antelope hills and Wichita mountains, but it was a false silence, as the writer above quoted shows below:
"For some time after Ross' victory at the Wichita mountains the Comanches were less hostile, seldom penetrating far down into the settlements. But in 1859-'60 the con- dition of the frontier was truly deplorable.
The people were obliged to stand in a con- tinued posture of defense, and were in con- tinual alarm and hazard of their lives, never daring to stir abroad unarmed, for small bodies of savages, quick-sighted and accus- tomed to perpetual watchfulness, hovered on the outskirts, and, springing from behind bush or rock, surprised their enemy before he was aware of danger, and sent tidings of their presence in the fatal blow, and after execu- tion of the bloody work, by superior knowl- edge of the country and rapid movements, safely retired to their inaccessible deserts.
"In the autumn of 1860 the indomitable and fearless Peta Nocona led a raiding party of Comanches through Parker county, so named in honor of the family of his wife, Cynthia Ann, committing great depredations as they passed through. The venerable Isaac Parker was at that time a resident of Weath- erford, the county seat; and little did he imagine that the chief of the ruthless savages who spread desolation and death on every side as far as their arms could reach, was the husband of his long-lost niece, and that the commingled blood of the murdered Parkers and the atrocious Comanche now coursed in the veins of a second generation-bound equally by the ties of consanguinity to mur- derer and murdered; that the son of Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker would be- come the chief of the proud Comanches, whose boast it is that their constitutional set- tlement of government is the purest democ- racy ever originated or administered among men. It certainly conserved the object of its institution -the protection and happiness of the people-for a longer period and much more satisfactorily than has that of any other Indian tribe. The Comanches claimed a superiority over the other Texan tribes; and they unquestionably were more intelligent
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and courageous. The reservation policy- necessary thongh it be-brings them all to an abject level, the plane of lazy beggars and thieves. The Comanche is most qualified by nature to receive education and for adapting himself to the requirements of civilization of all the Southern tribes, not excepting even the Cherokees, with their churches, school- houses and farms. The Comanches, after waging an unceasing war for over fifty years against the United States, Texas and Mexico, still number 16,000 souls-a far better show- ing than any other tribe can make, though not one but has enjoyed privileges to which the Comanche was a stranger. It is a shame to the civilization of the age that a people so susceptible of a high degree of development should be allowed to grovel in the depths of heathenism and savagery. But we are di- gressing.
"The loud and clamorous cries of the set- tlers along the frontier for protection induced the Goverment to organize and send out a regiment under Colonel M. T. Johnson, to take the field for public defense. But these efforts proved of small service. The expedi- tion, though at great expense to the State, failed to find an Indian until, returning, the command was followed by the wily Com- anches, their horses stampeded at night, and most of the men compelled to reach the set- tlements on foot, under great suffering and exposure.
"Captain 'Sul' Ross, who had just gradu- ated from Florence Wesleyan University, of Alabama, and returned to Texas, was com- missioned a captain of rangers by Governor Sam Houston, and directed to organize a company of sixty men, with orders to repair to Fort Belknap, receive from Colonel John- son all government property, as his regiment was disbanded, and take the field against the
redoubtable Captain Peta Nocona, and afford the frontier such protection as was possible with his small force. The necessity of vigor- ous measures soon became so pressing that Captain Ross soon determined to attempt to curb the insolence of these implacable ene. mies of Texas by following them into their fastnesses and carry the war into their own homes. In his graphic narration of this campaign, General L. S. Ross says: ' As I could take but forty of my men from my post, I requested Captain N. G. Evans, in command of the United States troops at Camp Cooper, to send me a detachment of the Second Cavalry. We had been intimately connected on the Van Dorn campaign, during which I was the recipient of much kindness from Captain Evans, while I was suffering from a severe wound received from an Indian in the battle of the Wichita. Ile promptly sent me a sergeant and twenty-one men well mounted. My force was still further aug- mented by some seventy volunteer citizens, under the command of the brave old frontiers- man, Captain Jack Cureton, of Bosque county .. These self-sacrificing patriots, without the hope of pay or regard, left their defenseless homes and families to avenge the sufferings of the frontier people. With pack mules laden down with necessary supplies, the ex. pedition marched for the Indian country.
"On the 18th of December, 1860, while marching up Pease river, I had suspicions that Indians were in the vicinity, by reason of the buffalo that came running in great numbers from the north toward us, and while my command moved in the low ground I visited all neighboring high points to make discoveries. On one of these sand hills I found four fresh pony tracks, and, being satisfied that Indian vedettes had just gone, I galloped forward about a mile to a higher
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point, and, riding to the top, to my inex- pressible surprise, found myself within 200 yards of a Comanche village, located on a small stream winding around the base of the hill. It was a most happy circumstance that a piercing north wind was blowing, bearing with it a cloud of sand, and my presence was unobserved and the surprise complete. By signaling my men as I stood concealed, they reached me without being discovered by the Indians, who were busy packing up prepara- tory to a move. By this time the Indians mounted and moved off north across the level of the plain. My command, with the detachment of the Second Cavalry, had out- marched and become separated from the citi- zen command, which left me about sixty men. In making disposition for attack, the sergeant and his twenty men were sent at a gallop, behind a chain of sand hills, to en- compass them in and cut off their retreat, while with fifty men I charged. The attack was so sudden that a considerable number were killed before they could prepare for de- fense. They fled precipitately right into the presence of the sergeant and his men. Here they met with a warm reception, and finding themselves completely encompassed, every one fled his own way, and was hotly pursued and hard pressed.
" The chief of the party, Peta Nocona, a noted warrior of great repute, with a young girl about fifteen years of age, mounted on his horse behind him, and Cynthia Ann Parker, with a girl child about two years of age in her arms, and mounted on a fleet pony, fled together, while Lieutenant Tom Kolliheir and I pursued them. After running about a mile Kelliheir ran up by the side of Cynthia's horse, and I was in the act of shooting when she held up her child and stopped. I kept on after the chief, and about
half a mile further, when about twenty yards of him, I fired my pistol, striking the girl (whom I supposed to be a man, as she rode like one, and only her head was visible above the buffalo robe with which she was! wrapped) near the heart, killing her instantly, and the same ball would have killed both but for the shield of the chief, which hung down covering his back. When the girl fell from the horse she pulled him off also, but he caught on his feet, and before steadying him- self my horse, running at full speed, was very nearly on top of him, when he was struck with an arrow, which caused him to fall to pitching or ' bucking,' and it was with great difficulty that I kept my saddle, and in the meantime narrowly escaped several arrows coming in quick succession from the chief's bow. Being at such disadvantage he would have killed me in a few minutes but for a random shot from my pistol (while I was clinging with my left hand to the pom-
. mel of my saddle), which broke his right arm at the elbow, completely disabling him. My horse then became quiet, and I shot the chief twice through the body, whereupon he de- liberately walked to a small tree, the only one in sight, and leaning against it began to sing a wild, weird song. At this time my Mexican servant, who had once been a captive with the Comanches and spoke their lan- guage fluently as his mother tongue, came up in company with two of my men. I then summoned the chief to surrender, but he promptly treated every overture with con- tempt, and signalized this declaration with a savage attempt to thrust me with his lance which he held in his left hand. I could only look upon him with pity and admiration. For, deplorable as was his situation, with no chance of escape, his party utterly destroyed, his wife and child captured in his sight, he
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was undaunted by the fate that awaited him, and as he seemed to prefer death to life, I directed the Mexican to end his misery by a charge of bnekshot from the gun which he carried. Taking up his acconterments, which I subsequently sent to Governor Houston, to be deposited in the archives at Austin, we rode back to Cynthia Ann and Kellileir, and found him bitterly cursing himself for hav- ing rnn his pet horse so hard after an ' old squaw.' She was very dirty, both in her scanty garments and person. But as soon as I looked on her face, I said: ' Why, Tom, this is a white woman: Indians do not have : blue eyes.' On the way to the village, where my men were assembling with the spoils, and a large caballada of ' Indian ponies,' I dis- covered an Indian boy about nine years of age, secreted in the grass. Expecting to be killed he began crying, but I made him mount behind me and carried him along. And when in after years I frequently pro- posed to send him to his people, he steadily refused to go, and died in McLennan county last year.
" After camping for the night Cynthia Ann kept crying, and thinking it was caused from fear of death at our hands, I had the Mexican tell her that we recognized her as one of our own people, and would not harm her. She said two of her boys were with her when the fight began, and she was distressed by the fear that they had been killed. It so happened, however, both escaped, and one of them, ' Quanah,' is now a chief. The other died some years ago on the plains. I then asked her to give me the history of her life among the Indians, and the circumstances attending her capture by them, which she promptly did, in a very sensible manner. And as the facts detailed corresponded with the massacre at Parker's Fort, I was im-
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