5/3/2023 0 Comments White comancheQuanah lost his mother when he was just 12 and longed for her all his life. She had died in the deep pine woods where there was no horizon…” She had lived free on the high infinite plains as her adopted race had in the very last place in the North American Continent where anyone would ever live or run free. She had seen all of that death and glory. Gwynne eulogized her this way: “She was a white woman by birth, yes, but also a relic of the Comancheria, the fading empire of high grass and fat summer moons and buffalo herds that blackened the horizon. And Cynthia herself died seven years after that, relatively young, essentially of a broken heart. Sadly, Prairie Flower died of the flu a few years after they were returned to white society. She often sat outside with a small fire and worshiped the Great Spirit according to the customs she knew. In truth, she was being held captive a second time. Her relatives believed she would readjust in time. She told a translator: “Mi corazón llorando todo el tiempo por mi dos hijos.” “My heart cries all the time for my two boys” – Quanah and Pecos. Gwynne reported in his masterpiece, “Empire of the Summer Moon,” Cynthia Ann knew Spanish better than English. She never readjusted to white culture and tried many times to escape and return to her tribe. While being escorted to Tarrant County after the battle, she was photographed in Fort Worth with her daughter, Prairie Flower, at her chest and her hair cut short – a Comanche sign of mourning. Cynthia Ann was finally freed from captivity, but she saw it as being abducted again. Her husband was killed but her boys escaped. Many years later, her camp along a tributary of the Pease River was attacked by Texas Rangers. Though born white, she was now culturally Comanche, the wife of a chief, with three children she loved. This was because Cynthia Ann did not want to go. No matter how much they were offered, tribal elders would not sell her. Her family, having searched for her for years, quickly organized a ransom offer. Cynthia Ann was eventually “discovered” by white men who traded with the Comanches. She had three children, the oldest of whom was Quanah. She was raised as a Comanche and married Chief Nocona. Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was abducted by Comanche raiders on the Texas frontier when she was 9. This is a love story more appropriate for Mother’s Day. This is a love story, but not a love story for Valentine’s Day. The fact that he was the last Comanche chief to decide on his own, without being defeated militarily, to move to the reservation… The fact that he was devastatingly handsome and could have graced the cover of one of those steamy Western romance novels … The fact that he was a ghost on the high plains and disappeared into thin air, even as he was chased in the bright Panhandle sun … The fact that he never lost a battle to soldiers who relentlessly pursued him … He was taller and stronger and faster and more clever than any other chief of his time. Quanah Parker was the most feared of the Comanche chiefs on the Texas frontier.
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