At first the Comanche were eager to trade with the new white settlers. In 1825, an American trade expedition met peacefully along the banks of the Brazos River with a Comanche delegation. Prior to Texas becoming an independent republic, a delegate from the United States named Sam Houston met with the Comanche to discuss a peace treaty. It was Houston who went over the wall against the Creek Indians at the 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend and was shot in the leg as a result. The war hero’s negotiations with the Comanche did not initially result in success. But on August 24, 1835, an agreement was reached between the Comanche and the United States of America allowing tribes relocated from land east of the Mississippi to hunt in peace on Comanche lands in Texas. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek tribes are already being relocated. Without this permission from the Comanche, Andrew Jackson’s landmark Act to Preserve Peace on the Frontiers, forever dividing America into Indian and white, would be impossible.
But Texan independence rendered the 1835 agreement useless. And as more settlers moved into the new republic, building their homes near clear water—a rarity in Texas, where sediment clouds most rivers and lakes—and on the pastures best suited for feeding Comanche horses, the tribe chafed at the presence of the newcomers. Rather than be at peace with the whites, the Comanche began raiding their settlements just as they once terrorized the Spanish and French.
So it is that the settlers of Texas live in fear.
Most of these guerrilla actions take place during daylight, but during the blinding full moon of October, when the night sky is bright, Indian raids take on a brand-new form of terror. This “Comanche Moon” period means attacks can come at any time.
Wherever the Comanche raid, whether by night or day, a trail of violence follows. Vengeance-seeking warriors mutilate and murder most of the men, gang-rape the women, and slaughter the infants, if only because babies are difficult to carry while making a quick escape on horseback.
But for young boys and girls captured during these raids, there is a different fate: kidnapping. The Comanche’s wandering ways and long days on horseback make it difficult for their women to carry babies to term. Snatching young girls and boys from other tribes, then raising them as Comanche, keeps the tribal population high.
Now, well aware that women and young children reside within Fort Parker, the Comanche watch as a middle-aged man steps alone from the split-cedar walls of Fort Parker and begins walking through the tall grass to speak with them.
* * *
As cocksure as his father, forty-eight-year-old Benjamin Parker boldly ventures forth to negotiate. His younger brother Silas remains behind with his teenaged sister Rachel Parker Plummer, a married eighteen-year-old with bright-red hair who has chosen not to flee the fort with her baby.
Benjamin Parker’s decision to approach the Comanche is arrogant on the surface, for the Indians clearly have the upper hand. But this selfless maneuver is also incredibly brave: the longer Benjamin can stall, the more time the women and children will have to flee and hide should the white flag be a hoax.
The Comanche remain on their horses as Benjamin walks forward. Looking down at the white settler, they tell him their demands for a cow and directions to water.
Benjamin negotiates in the Comanche language. In his mind, he has no doubt the Indians know their way to the local creek, and giving them a cow is out of the question. If he did that, the Comanche would demand all the cows. Instead, Benjamin offers to provide them with flour and salt. Despite being surrounded by men on horseback, all of whom are armed, Benjamin Parker boldly turns his back on them and walks to the fort, promising to return with these staples.
Fort Parker is now all but deserted. Whether out of foolishness, arrogance, or loyalty, only Benjamin Parker, his sister Rachel, the father-and-son pair of Samuel and Robert Frost, and thirty-two-year-old Silas Parker remain to protect the fortress. Silas Parker’s wife, Lucy, has already fled toward the cornfields with their four children, among them a ten-year-old, blue-eyed daughter named Cynthia Ann.
Benjamin Parker’s arms are full of foodstuffs as he returns to parlay once more. Silas watches from the relative safety of the fort, Rachel at his side.
“I know they will kill him,” whispers Silas to his sister.
He is correct.
* * *
The Comanche are insulted.
They know where to find grapes, walnuts, pecans, and persimmons. In the absence of buffalo, the tribe can easily shoot deer or antelope. What they want is red meat, not the sundries this settler carries in his arms.
Yet the Comanche remain patient, allowing Benjamin Parker to make that two-hundred-yard walk from the fort. Only then do they surround him, their horses almost touching the defenseless settler.
There is no hand signal, no nod of the head. In the Comanche world, the lance is a symbol of leadership. So it is that the warrior in charge of this small band—for the Comanche do not travel as a single tribe but as compact fighting units—suddenly thrusts his lance clean through Benjamin Parker. In an instant, every man surrounding Parker does the same.
Yet Benjamin Parker is still alive as blows from the Comanche battle-axes then rain down on his head and arrows are shot into his torso from just three feet away. Finally, Parker is scalped.
Giving great war cries, the Comanche then gallop into the fort to kill its remaining inhabitants. Others Indians gallop around the back to stop anyone from escaping. Rachel Parker Plummer has belatedly rushed out the back of the fort, just an instant before her brother Silas is murdered and scalped. She carries her infant son, James, in her arms. But her escape is short-lived. The Comanche knock her to the ground, steal the child, and drag her by the hair back into the fort.
Three-quarters of a mile from the fortress, the Comanche catch up to John and Granny Parker, along with Granny’s widowed daughter. All three are stripped of their clothing. John Parker is beaten with tomahawks. Granny is forced to watch as her husband’s genitals are cut off and he is scalped. The two women are then raped by several men. Daughter Elizabeth Kellogg is deemed young enough to kidnap and is thrown onto the back of a horse. Granny, however, is left to die on the Texas prairie, a Comanche knife thrust deep into her breast.
In the nearby cornfields, the four children of Silas Parker huddle quietly with their mother, Lucy. Their father is being scalped at this very moment, though they cannot possibly know he is suffering this fate.
Thundering hooves mark the arrival of the Comanche, who plunge headlong into the cornfield, knowing they have nothing to fear. The panic and terror build for Lucy Parker and her children. Captivity is imminent as the horses thrash through the tall green stalks, cutting off all avenue of escape. Down in a nearby riverbed, a group of women and children, along with the men who spent the day working in the fields, remain hidden from the Comanche, never to be discovered.
Waneda Parker, the daughter of Quanah Parker, the chief of the Comanche Indians
The same is not true for Lucy Parker and her children.
Soon enough, the Comanche have them. Being taken captive by the Comanche is harrowing. It begins with beatings to intimidate the victim, followed by whippings, and often the removal of clothing to make the prisoner feel vulnerable.
Back inside the fort, the Comanche are shooting cattle, scavenging for plunder in the small cabins where the Parker families once lived, and then setting fire to the buildings. It is here that Lucy Parker and her four children are taken. She is wounded and left to die. Amazingly, in the chaos, two of her children manage to escape once again and flee safely to the riverbed.
Their siblings will not be as lucky. The Comanche take five prisoners today. Rachel Parker Plummer is outside the fort as Lucy Parker and her children are brought back, being stripped and whipped by Indian women. Rachel will be placed naked upon a horse, her wrists tied in front of her, ankles bound beneath the animal’s belly, and forced to ride hours in the hot Texas sun, before spending a night of depravity so vile she will never speak of it again. This abuse will continue well in
to her captivity. “My own soul becomes sick at the dreadful thought,” Rachel will later write, adding that “anyone who said that a good woman died before being violated had not been forced to run naked tied by a rope to a horse for a day or two in the sun.”
As Rachel Parker Plummer is defiled, again and again through the long night as warriors dance around a campfire, her agony will be made worse by the terrified sobbing of her young son, James. “I could hear his cries,” she will also write, “but could offer him no relief.”
The final two prisoners will become legends: ten-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker and her two-year-old brother, John. Their wrists and ankles are bound by their kidnappers as they begin a new phase of life.
It is May 19, 1836. Cynthia Ann and baby John Parker, once the children of white settlers, are being sized up for adoption into the Comanche tribe. Within days they will be hundreds of miles from Fort Parker and all vestiges of white society. The search for the young children, however, will never end.
And one day, Cynthia Ann and John Parker will finally be found.
Chapter Seven
APRIL 23, 1838
CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS
DAY
Ralph Waldo Emerson is angry.
Two thousand miles from the Texas prairie, the lanky thirty-four-year-old philosopher sits alone in his first-floor study, penning a letter to President Martin Van Buren. Emerson firmly believes in the power of the individual to determine his own fate, and that all men are created equal. But even as he writes, the U.S. Army is marching to Georgia to strip the Cherokee nation of lands they have inhabited for centuries. Emerson finds these policies immoral. The tribe will be placed under arrest en masse and imprisoned in internment camps. Then, under armed guard, the Indians will be force-marched a thousand miles west to forge a new life in lands north of Texas.
Taking pains to hide his disgust, an irate Emerson tells President Van Buren why this is wrong.
“The newspapers now inform us that, in December, 1835, a treaty contracting for the exchange of all the Cherokee territory was pretended to be made by an agent on the part of the United States with some persons appearing on the part of the Cherokees; that the fact afterwards transpired that these deputies did by no means represent the will of the nation; and that, out of 18,000 souls composing the [Cherokee] nation, 15,668 have protested against the so-called treaty. It now appears that the government of the United States chooses to hold the Cherokees to this sham treaty, and are proceeding to execute the same. Almost the entire Cherokee Nation stand up and say, ‘This is not our act. Behold us. Here are we. Do not mistake that handful of deserters for us;’ and the American President and the Cabinet, the Senate and the House of Representatives, neither hear these men nor see them, and are contracting to put this active nation into carts and boats, and to drag them over mountains and rivers to a wilderness at a vast distance beyond the Mississippi.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson makes his living writing about social justice. He will become a mentor to Henry David Thoreau and other New England philosophers. But Emerson knows he is fighting a losing battle with the federal government. The 1829 discovery of gold in Georgia sent thousands of speculators flooding into that state, trespassing on Cherokee lands. As the white population swelled, the newcomers pressured the state legislature to remove the Cherokee. Georgia responded by passing laws stripping the tribe of their farms, then held lotteries granting those properties to the new white arrivals. When a delegation of Cherokee tribal leadership traveled to Washington to protest, U.S. officials took advantage of their absence to convince a handful of tribal dissidents to sign a new treaty exchanging all their land in the east for land west of the Mississippi. This Treaty of New Echota, named after the Cherokee nation’s capital in Georgia, was overwhelmingly opposed by the rest of the tribe. Yet the U.S. Senate ratified the accord in May 1836, setting in motion the removal of every single Cherokee living in Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.1
Ralph Waldo Emerson knows the depth of the Indian Removal corruption and desperately seeks to make Martin Van Buren sympathetic to the Cherokee. He writes of “a general expression of despondency, of disbelief” among America’s citizens about this “barbarous” policy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, photographed in London, 1873
Led by the powerful voice of former president John Quincy Adams, many residents in the Northeast are coming down hard against Cherokee removal. Southern states, meanwhile, insist the policy is necessary. The result is a growing divide between north and south.
Emerson’s full letter is six pages long. At a time in history when the nation is at a crossroads about treatment of all Native Americans, Emerson makes a plea that the president do the right thing, setting a precedent for generations to come.
“I write thus, sir,” Emerson concludes, “to pray with one voice more that you, whose hands are strong with the delegated power of fifteen millions of men, will avert with that might the terrific injury which threatens the Cherokee tribe.
“With great respect, sir, I am your fellow citizen.”
* * *
It is unclear whether Martin Van Buren ever read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s letter. But in truth it was a waste of good ink and paper, for Van Buren is wholeheartedly behind the Indian removal. The fifty-four-year-old New Yorker will serve just one term in office. The time from 1837 to 1841 is a period when America is mired in a great economic depression. Van Buren refuses to utilize federal intervention to stop this financial crisis, ensuring that it will continue for five more years, spike unemployment rates to 25 percent, and doom his presidency.
Yet Van Buren has no such qualms about utilizing the power of the U.S. government to enforce Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy. Old Hickory was an inspiration to the portly Van Buren, whose bald forehead is framed by thick tufts of white hair. During Jackson’s time in office, Van Buren served first as secretary of state and then vice president. His admiration for Old Hickory transcends mere loyalty, venturing into the realm of worship.
“No man ever entered upon the execution of an official duty with purer motives, firmer purpose or better qualifications for its performance,” Van Buren once wrote glowingly of Jackson. The new president is aware that there is popular opposition to the Cherokee plight, but he considers Indian Removal “the settled policy of the country” and ignores any suggestion that it be discontinued.
Or, as Martin Van Buren makes clear in his annual Message to Congress: “A mixed occupancy of the same territory by the white and red man is incompatible with the safety or happiness of either.”
So it is that on May 26, 1838, under the supervision of U.S. Army general Winfield Scott, four thousand members of the Georgia State Militia descend upon New Echota to arrest any and all members of the Cherokee nation.
The “Trail of Tears” has begun—and in a most violent fashion.
* * *
General Winfield Scott tells himself he is just obeying orders. Though personally not in favor of the Indian Removal policy, Scott allows members of the militia under his command to evict entire Cherokee families from their homes. The fifty-one-year-old Scott’s order that the militia treat the Cherokee with “every possible kindness” goes unheeded. Children scream as they are torn from their mothers’ arms, the soldiers bawl commands at gunpoint, and innocent Cherokee families are prodded toward internment centers at the tip of a bayonet. Those who defy the military order are beaten with fists and rifle butts, as the soldiers ignore their commander’s order.
The date is May 28, 1838. This moment has been coming for three years, ever since the ratification of the Treaty of New Echota. So it is fitting that this surprise morning raid marking the beginning of military intervention takes place in the town of the same name.
General Scott has taken great pains to assure the Cherokee leadership that the men under his command will be gentle. “If, in the ranks, a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee man, wom
an or child, it is hereby made the special duty of the nearest good officer or man … to seize or consign the guilty wretch to the severest penalty of the laws,” Scott previously promised the Cherokee leaders.
But the Georgia militia are rabble. Scott is powerless to stop the mostly illiterate soldiers from abusing the Cherokee nation. These men have long despised the Cherokee culture and coveted their vast acres of prime farmland. Even now, as they root out the tribe from their homes, the militia steal Indian cattle and loot before setting their houses ablaze.
“The work of capture commenced,” the New-Yorker (a short-lived predecessor to the New-York Tribune) will report. “And continued with unfeeling rigor, until the entire rightful and legitimate of the country were divested of house and home, and reduced to a state of abject poverty. In most cases, the humane injunctions of the commanding general were disregarded.
“The captors sometimes drove the people with whooping and hallowing, like cattle, through a river, allowing them no time even to take off their shoes and stockings. Many, when arrested, were not so much as permitted to gather up their clothes … the horses brought by some of them were demanded by the Commissioner of Indian property, to be given up for the purpose of being sold. The owners refusing to give them up—men, women, children, and horses were driven promiscuously into one large pen, and the horses taken out by force, and cried to the highest bidder.”
The Cherokee masses arrive at a hastily erected stockade with the few worldly possessions they have been able to carry and just the clothes on their backs. There they will remain throughout the long summer. More than 350 will die from dysentery and cholera before the long march west begins on a cold, drizzling October morning. The Cherokee will travel on foot and in wagon trains, “loaded like cattle or sheep,” in the words of Private John G. Burnett of the U.S. Army. They will soon endure one of the coldest winters in memory, a season so frigid that streams will freeze over with six inches of ice.
Killing Crazy Horse Page 7
