Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (18 page)

I gave up my journal late in May of 1864, when shortages of nearly everything plagued our lives and I had not one scrap of paper left to write upon. This was before I learned that Cynthia Ann had died—of a broken heart, most assuredly—at the age of thirty-seven, only a few months after her little Prairie Flower had been taken from her, a sweet child of four or five years.

It was a disappointment to me that I was not able to keep my pledge to her—my "promiss"—that she would one day be united with her son Quanah. Our excuse was always that the war prevented it, but the truth is, I do not know how I would have brought about that meeting. Many stories about Quanah reached us, but it was impossible to separate fact from rumor. We did learn that he had apparently left his father's tribe, the Noconis, and thrown his lot in with the Quahadas, reputedly the most wild and hostile of all the Comanche tribes. And he earned some reputation as a ruthless leader who swept down repeatedly on defenseless frontier settlements. But we also heard that he never allowed his braves to kill the white women and children, out of fear that he might be killing his own mother and sister.

A dozen years ago, Quanah was a notorious war chief. But in the summer of 1874, his fortunes began to change. He attacked white buffalo hunters at the Battle of Adobe Walls and found himself defeated by superior forces. That was the last of the Comanche raids. A few months later, Col. Ranald Mackenzie attacked a Comanche camp in Palo Duro Canyon, and although most of the women and children escaped up the canyon walls and only a few braves died in battle, all of the Indians' belongings were destroyed. Most important, Col. Mackenzie ordered their horses killed, over a thousand of them. Without horses the Comanches were powerless. The survivors of that attack surrendered at Fort Sill, in Indian Territory, and went meekly to live on reservations.

But Quanah held out, and it was not until a year later that he agreed to surrender. The buffalo were disappearing, more soldiers were coming into the area every day, and Quanah must have realized that the old Comanche way of life was over.

I was married and had been living in Ben Wheeler with my husband and children for a dozen years when Quanah, who took his mother's name on the reservation and thereafter became known as Quanah Parker, began to search for his mother. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about this at the time, or I would have tried to contact him to tell him what I know.

Yesterday, among Grandfather's private papers, I found a letter that Quanah Parker had written to Grandfather in 1877, inquiring about Cynthia Ann Parker. It was a curious letter; I think he had written it himself, perhaps with some help from someone better acquainted with English. If such a letter ever reached the Parkers in our part of Texas, I heard nothing of it. Her brother Silas would not have said a word, because of Mary. And although I have cordial relations with Orlena and Ruff O'Quinn, I believe they may not have wished to have dealings with a man they consider a savage. Perhaps Grandfather made the same decision.

Certainly there was a new chapter for Grandfather in other areas of his life. In 1872, when he was a vigorous seventy-nine years old, Grandfather left our home in Birdville, turning it over to my father and Ben. He bought another tract of land near Weatherford, in what is now Parker County—named for him—and built a new double log house there, much like our old one. He even took some of the lilac bushes from around the cabin and planted them at his new home.

And then, to everyone's surprise, he remarried—a handsome young widow, Sallie Gaines, with four children of her own. In short order, he fathered three more children. The youngest, whom he named Abraham, was born on Grandfather's eighty-fourth birthday. Old Isaac lived an apparently happy and productive life until two weeks ago when he fell ill with a fever and died April 14, at the age of ninety.

The rest of us have gone on with our lives as best we can, despite many times of sadness as well as times of joy and hope. For a time after he came home from the war, we worried about Papa's health, but he did recover his strength, and soon the farm was producing again, with help from Jedediah and my brother Ben. Ben never did get around to marrying, although I know the Bigelows' daughter had taken quite a fancy to him. Martha and Jedediah had twin boys and two lively daughters. My brother James helps with the farm and has moved his family into the cabin with Mama and Papa ever since Grandfather built his Weatherford home. Sarah taught school until she married Mr. Edward Liggett.

Mama is still alive but very frail. She has never been the same since Daniel died in infancy.

My own life has been well blessed. I married George Shipley in November 1864, when I was sixteen years old. George was twenty-eight and already had children, and I found myself raising two rambunctious sons before my own babies started to come. The war had affected him deeply. He declined to work in Mr. Cates's salt mine and became a circuit-riding preacher. Such a life is at times quite taxing for all of us.

There are many times at the end of the day, when I am sitting on my porch with a dish of peas in my lap to shell or mending to be done, and I remember Cynthia Ann. She was thirty-four when she came to us, nearly my present age, and perhaps only now can I truly understand how she must have felt, pulled away from her family and friends, forced to live among such utterly strange people as we surely seemed to her. Already she and her little Prairie Flower have become legends, and her son Quanah may well take his place in history, too.

Signed,
Lucy Parker Shipley

When history becomes legend, the facts are often lost, changed, or confused. This is what happened in the case of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured by Comanches at Parker's Fort, Texas, on May 19, 1836, and recaptured by Texas Rangers and U.S. cavalry troops near the Pease River on December 18, 1860.

Besides those important dates, historians are sure of only a handful of details regarding Cynthia Ann's life: They know that she had an Indian husband, Peta Nocona, and three children, one of whom, Quanah, was to become a great leader of the Comanches. They also know that after her recapture, Cynthia Ann and her daughter, Topsannah, lived for a time with her uncle, Isaac D. Parker, in Tarrant County, and were taken to Austin to visit the Texas State Legislature in the spring of 1861. They are sure that she later went to live with a brother, Silas, and after that a sister, Orlena. It is historically true that Isaac Parker for whom Parker County was named died on April 14, 1883 at the age of 90.

Beyond these and a few other meager facts, we are left with contradictions or total blanks.

Most sources state with reasonable certainty that Topsannah died December 15, 1863. But there are a few other sources that suggest that she was taken from Cynthia Ann. One man even came forward years later claiming to be Topsannah's son.

Furthermore, no one is sure exactly when Cynthia Ann Parker died. Some writers claim she died in 1864; one historian has found census records proving that she was still alive in 1870. At least three other dates have been stated without proof.

No one knows what her experiences were during her nearly twenty-five years with the Comanches. Some writers claim the People named her Naduah; others say she was called Preloch. It's not known when her famous son, Chief Quanah Parker, was actually born; estimates run from the early 1840s to more than a decade later. He might have been a teenager, a young brave, when his mother was captured at Pease River, or he might still have been a young boy at the time.

Was his father, Peta Nocona, killed at Pease River, as Sul Ross claimed? Or was he somewhere else that fateful day, as others have written? There are as many versions of the Pease River Massacre as there are writers to record them.

This jumble of facts and contradictions presents a challenge for the storyteller. I have taken the key facts of the history of Cynthia Ann Parker and used them as a framework on which to fashion the story of her life, as it could have been. Lucy Parker, her brothers and sisters, and her journal are my fictional inventions. This fictional Lucy, however, would have been pleased to know that after Quanah Parker's death in 1911, Cynthia Ann and Prairie Flower were eventually buried by his side in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Carolyn Meyer

Useful Sources

DeShields, James T.
Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture.
Reprint. Dallas, TX: Chama Press, 1991.

Fehrenbach, T. R.
Comanches: The Destruction of a People.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

Gonzalez, Catherine Troxell.
Cynthia Ann Parker: Indian Captive.
Stories for Young Americans Series. Austin, TX: Panda Books, Eakin Press, 1980.

Hacker, Margaret Schmidt.
Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and Legend.
Southwestern Studies, No. 92. El Paso, TX: Texas Western Press, The University of Texas at El Paso, 1990.

Holman, David.
Buckskin and Homespun: frontier Clothing in Texas, 1820–1870.
Austin, TX: Wind River Press, 1979.

Matthews, Sallie Reynolds.
Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle.
1936. Reprint. College Station, TX: A & M University Press, 1982.

Noyes, Stanley,
Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751–1845.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, to be published 1993.

Wallace, Ernest and E. Adamson Hoebel.
The Comanches: Lord of the South Plains.
1952. Reprint. Civilization of the American Indian Series, No. 34. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.