Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Page 42
4. Joseph Taulman and Araminta Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre and Its Aftermath,” unpublished manuscript, Cynthia Ann Parker vertical files, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, TX, p. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 247.
6. Bill Yenne, Sitting Bull, p. 35.
7. Daniel Parker is given credit for making the first formal proposal to create Ranger companies to protect settlers. His proposal was accepted by the permanent council of the Consultation of 1835, a committee that directed the affairs of the Texas Revolution, of which Parker was a member. See Margaret Schmidt Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and Legend, p. 7; see also Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso 1821–1900, p. 42.
8. Hacker, p. 6.
9. James Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 9.
10. Ibid.
11. Thomas W. Kavanaugh, The Comanches: A History 1706–1875, p. 250; see also Cox, p. 49, and Noah Smithwick’s account in Evolution of a State. He was in the Ranger group.
12. Taulman and Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre,” pp. 2–3.
13. Rachel Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative of Twenty-one Months Servitude as a Prisoner among the Comanche Indians, p. 7. See also Rachel Plummer’s other narrative (she wrote two), Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer. General Note: These narratives, plus James Parker’s Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, form the basis of most accounts of the massacre. There is also an affidavit filed by Daniel Parker and other members of the family shortly after the massacre (Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin), and various other accounts by family members including Quanah’s grandson Baldwin Parker’s own family-based account of what happened (also at Center for American History archive). Yet another narrative was pieced together by Joseph and Araminta Taulman and is part of their very large archive at the University of Texas in Austin. There is another eyewitness account from Abram Anglin (in Dewitt Baker, ed., A Texas Scrap Book: Made up of the History, Biography and Miscellany of Texas and Its People [New York: A.S. Barnes, 1875, reprint 1991 Texas State Historical Assn.]). Additionally there are many newspaper accounts, based on interviews with immediate Parker relatives and descendants, including “Story of the White Squaw,” McKinney Democrat Gazette, September 22, 1927; “Early Times in Texas and the History of the Parker Family,” by Ben J. Parker of Elkhart, Texas (manuscript at Center for American History); J. Marvin Nichols, “White Woman Was the Mother of Great Chief,” San Antonio Daily Express, July 25, 1909; Ben J. Parker, “Ben Parker Gives Events of Pioneering,” Palestine Herald, February 15, 1935; for secondary sources it is hard to beat the extensively researched Frontier Blood by Jo Ella Powell Exley.
14. Fehrenbach, Lone Star, p. 291.
15. This and other architectural details have been wonderfully re-created at Old Parker’s Fort in Groesbeck, Texas, built on the site of the original.
16. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 93.
17. Ibid., p. 93.
18. Daniel Parker, notes dated June 18, 1836, Parker Documents, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; see also Hacker, p. 8.
19. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 95.
20. Exley, p. 44.
21. Ibid., p. 94.
22. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 9.
23. Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 1.
24. John Graves, Hard Scrabble, p. 15.
25. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative.
26. Rachel Plummer, Narrative of the Capture (1838), p. 7ff.
27. Ibid.
Three WORLDS IN COLLISION
1. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 12.
2. Alfred Thomas, ed., Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, 1777–1787, From the Original Documents in the Archives of Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico, pp. 119ff.
3. Ibid., p. 8; Rupert Richardson, The Comanche Barrier, p. 5.
4. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 133.
5. Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., The Indian Papers of the Southwest,
vol. 1, p. 24.
6. M. Lewis, The Lewis and Clark Expedition, p. 30; in Thomas Kavanaugh’s book The Comanches: A History 1706–1875, he notes that the ethnonym “Padouca” could well have been applied to plains-dwelling Apaches (p. 66). The point, either way, is that in a land where many, many tribes were known and identified, the Comanches of this era were not.
7. George Bird Grinnell, “Who Were the Padouca?” American Anthropologist 22 (1920): 248.
8. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, pp. 218–19.
9. Ibid., p. 235.
10. George Catlin, Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians,
p. 47.
11. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 8.
12. Catlin, pp. 48ff; see also Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians, 33 years’ personal experience among the redmen of the great west.
13. Randolph B. Marcy, Adventure on Red River: A Report on the Exploration of the Red River by Captain Randolph Marcy and Captin G.B. McClellan, p. 5.
14. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, pp. 30–31.
15. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 8.
16. Clark Wissler, The American Indian, pp. 220ff.
17. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 33.
18. Walter Prescott Webb first made this observation in his book The Great Plains
(p. 53); it has been repeated by others since.
19. J. Frank Dobie, The Mustangs, pp. 23ff.
20. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 41.
21. Ibid., p. 24.
22. Fehrenbach, Lone Star, p. 31.
23. Dobie, p. 25.
24. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 86.
25. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 35ff.
26. Wissler, p. 220.
27. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 126.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 39.
29. Ibid., p. 35; Dobie, p. 69.
30. Athanase de Mézières, “Report by de Mézières of the Expedition to Cadadachos, Oct. 29, 1770,” in Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, vol. 1, p. 218.
31. Catlin, pp. 65ff; see also Colonel Richard I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians.
32. Dobie, p. 65.
33. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West, pp. 401ff.
34. Dobie, p. 48. He is citing an account by Captain Randolph Marcy.
35. General Thomas James, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, St. Louis, 1916, cited in Dobie, p. 83.
36. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 46.
37. Richard I. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West, pp. 329–30.
38. Ralph E. Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, p. 269.
39. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 63.
40. Marvin Opler, “The Origins of Comanche and Ute,” American Anthropologist 45 (1943): 156.
Four HIGH LONESOME
1. Rachel Plummer, The Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer, 1839.
2. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 97.
3. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 133.
4. Plummer, p. 96.
5. Ibid., p. 97.
6. Walter P. Webb, The Great Plains, p. 9.
7. Plummer, p. 97.
8. Noah Smithwick, Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days, p. 113.
9. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 122.
10. Plummer, p. 97.
11. Ibid., p. 98.
12. Ibid., p. 107.
13. Ibid., p. 108.
14. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Comanches, 1870–1879, p. 155.
15. The scant historical information about Crazy Horse is discussed in some detail in Larry McMurtry’s brief but excellent study Crazy Horse.
16. See chapter 7 for a fuller explanation of this imp
ortant phenomenon.
17. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, pp. 77ff.
18. Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America, pp. 222ff.
19. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 194.
20. Ibid.
21. Ramon Jimanez, Caesar Against the Celts, pp. 27ff.
22. Ibid., p. 36.
23. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 59.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Scott Zesch, Captured, p 127.
27. John S. Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, p. 231.
28. Clinton Smith, op. cit., pp. 69ff.
29. Zesch, p. 79.
30. Clinton Smith, p. 69.
31. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 22.
32. Ibid., p. 25.
33. The only exception was when members of the Penateka band joined U.S. Army forces as scouts during the final campaign against the Quahadis in the Texas Panhandle. They were never combatants.
34. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, the Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 7.
35. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 10.
36. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 23.
37. Plummer, p. 113.
Five THE WOLF’S HOWL
1. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 160.
2. Alfred Thomas, ed., Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, from the Original Documents, p. 58: “As early as 1706 Iribarri reported harrowing details of the inter-tribal conflict that indicated the collapse of Apache civilization northeast of the province.”
3. Ibid., p. 58.
4. Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, vol. 1, p. 34.
5. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 10.
6. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 12.
7. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889), p. 239.
8. References to this battle appear in several places. First, in a report [Ynforme] dated September 30, 1784, by then Spanish governor of Texas Domingo Cabello y Robles. Second, in Herbert Bolton’s 1914 compilation of the writings of noted eighteenth-century Indian agent Athanase de Mézières. p. 25.
9. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 138.
10. Richard I. Dodge, Plains of the Great West, p. 414. This account came from Pedro Espinosa, a “Mexican Comanche” warrior.
11. La Vere, pp. 30–31.
12. Almost all of what we know about Comanche-Spanish relations comes from official Spanish documents from the era. Two sources are exceptionally thorough: the reports filed by Don Juan Bautista de Anza, translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas in Forgotten Frontiers, and the intelligent and insightful reports of Spanish Indian agent Athanase de Mézières, compiled in 1914 by Herbert Bolton in Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier 1768–1780. Also helpful and interesting is Ralph Twitchell’s edited multivolume compilation Spanish Archives of New Mexico.
13. Pedro de Rivera Villalón, Diario y derrotero de lo camionado, visto y observado en la visita que lo hizo a los presidios de la Nueva Espana septentrional. Edited by Vito Allesio Robles, Mexico (D.F., Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, 1946), pp. 78–79 (see Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 67).
14. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 23.
15. Thomas, p. 58.
16. Ibid., p. 59.
17. Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Pichardo’s Treatise on the the Limitations of Texas and Louisiana (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1946), vol. 3, p. 323.
18. An excellent account of Serna’s successful 1716 expedition against the Comanches appears in Ralph Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, vol. 2, p. 301.
19. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, pp. 66ff.
20. James T. DeShields, Border Wars of Texas, p. 16.
21. William Edward Dunn, “The Apache Mission on the San Saba River; Its Founding and Failure,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 17 (1914): 380–81.
22. Ibid., p. 382.
23. Frank Dobie offers an interesting look at the rumors of San Saba gold in his book Coronado’s Children.
24. Dunn, p. 387.
25. Ibid., p. 389.
26. Ibid., p. 381.
27. Parrilla to the viceroy, Historia 95 (June 30, 1757), p. 146.
28. Fathers Banos and Ximenes to the Guardian, July 5, 1757, cited in Dunn, p. 401.
29. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 201.
30. Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, p. 66.
31. Ibid.
32. By far the best description of this legendary campaign comes from Anza himself, who was both articulate and thorough in his reports to Mexico City. These original documents have been translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas, editor of Forgotten Frontiers, see pages 119–42. The Anza writings represent one of the great primary sources of historical material on the relations between the Spanish and the Comanches. Most of my account is taken from these reports.
33. Anza’s diary, in Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, p. 136.
34. This estimate came from Sam Houston’s commissioner of Indian affairs George V. Bonnell in an article published in 1838 in the Houston Telegraph and Texas Register. He apparently got the number from the Comanches, which would make it doubtful indeed. Still, it stands as the only estimate from the era, and later numbers, following the cholera and smallpox epidemics, would seem to bear out a number in that range.
Six BLOOD AND SMOKE
1. It must be noted that General Custer, too, wrote poetry, though Lamar’s doggerel was better than Custer’s doggerel.
2. Noah Smithwick, Evolution of a State, p. 138.
3. James Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 14.
4. Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, p. 23.
5. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 106 (citing congressional records).
6. Utley, p. 24.
7. “Messages of the President, Submitted to both Houses,” December 21, 1838, Lamar Papers, Doc., 948, p. 11.
8. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 310.
9. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 55.
10. Ibid., p. 310.
11. Donaly E. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, pp. 17–18.
12. La Vere, p. 64.
13. Ibid., p. 20.
14. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900, p. 43.
15. Other accounts give different numbers, as usual. John Henry Brown writes that there were fifty-five whites, forty-two Lipans, and twelve Tonkawas. Since Smithwick was actually there, his would seem to be the more credible account.
16. Smithwick, p. 135.
17. Ibid.
18. Cox, p. 69.
19. Ibid.
20. J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, p. 145.
21. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 75.
22. Ibid. See contemporary accounts of this whole episode in John Holmes Jenkins, ed., Recollections of Early Texas: Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins, and in Noah Smithwick’s Evolution of a State. Colonel John Moore’s report to his superiors concerning the engagement is contained in the Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas, vol. 3, pp. 108ff.
23. Cox, p. 75; details on the location of the wound from Charles A. Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, p. 232.
24. Shelby Foote, The Civil War, vol. 1, pp. 336ff.
25. Dorman Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, vol. 1, p. 105.
26. Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick, p. 31.
27. Ibid.
28. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 326.
29. Ibid.
30. See Smithwick’s account of his three months with Spirit Talker in Evolution of a State, pp. 107ff.
31. Ibid., p. 134.
32. William Preston Johnston, Life of General Albert Sidney Johns
ton, p. 117.
33. Maverick, p. 35.
34. Brice, p. 24.
35. Maverick, p. 32.
36. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 328.
37. Maverick, p. 36.
38. This account was given in a report from Captain George Howard to Colonel Fisher dated April 6, 1840; it is also mentioned in the memoirs of ranger John Salmon “Rip” Ford.
39. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 51.
40. Ibid.; see also Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1989), p. 18.
41. Thomas Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 264.
42. Ibid.
Seven DREAM VISIONS AND APOCALYPSE
1. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 36.
2. Scott Zesch, The Captured, p. 34.
3. Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, May 30, 1838.
4. La Vere, p. 28.
5. Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches p. 5.
6. Ibid., p. 20.
7. Ibid., p. 9.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., endnotes, p. 51.
10. The number of Indians varies according to who is giving the account. A citizen of Victoria, John Linn, who witnessed the attack, estimated six hundred warriors in the raiding party. Ranger Ben McCulloch estimated a thousand Indians. An account in a local newspaper estimated two hundred. I am inclined to believe both McCulloch and Linn, meaning that there were in fact six hundred warriors and the rest were women, boys, and older men. McCulloch, one of the best trackers ever to come out of Texas, cut their trail and would have been quite accurate in assessing the number of horses and riders.
11. John Holmes Jenkins III, ed., Recollections of Early Texas: The Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1958), p. 62.
12. John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas, p. 340.
13. Donaly E. Brice, Great Comanche Raid, p. 30.
14. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 80.
15. Jenkins, p. 68.
16. Ibid., p. 80.
17. Linn, pp. 341–42.
18. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 76.
19. Jenkins, p. 64.
20. Brown, p. 81.
21. Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick, p. 29.