Sunshine on the Prairie

The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker

Jack C Ramsay

• Publisher: Wild Horse Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781681790541
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

SUNSHINE ON THE PRAIRIE is the story of CYNTHIA ANN PARKER, captured by a band of Comanches as a nine-year-old while living in Fort Parker with her family. It was 24 years before she was "re-captured" by her "white family". This is the intriguing story of why she did not want to be rescued from her Comanche family. During her 24-year captivity, she had become a wife to Nocona, the most feared of the Comanche war chiefs and the mother of Quanah, last and most famous of the Comanche war chiefs. Cynthia Ann adopted completely the lifestyle and culture of the Comanches. She endured their hardships and she also learned to love the freedom of the pristine wilderness. Using exhaustive research, the author follows Cynthia's footprints over the prairie with a sensitivity rare among non-native Americans.

Notes

I. MAY 19, 1836

1. One of the accounts of the raid on Fort Parker reported that the “ever faithful dog” of the Silas Parkers attacked an Indian horse. (Scarlett Kidd Bryant, Under the Parker Tree, 20) The details of the events of May 19, 1836, reported here are based on Bryant’s record, which cites twelve Parker family authorities and the following contemporary accounts: Rachel Plummer’s Narrative; the J. W. Parker Manuscript, in the Lamar Papers, Manuscript 2166 in the Texas State Archives; and Malcolm McLean’s Papers Concerning Robertson’s Colony in Texas, Volume X: 156.

2. The time sequence used in this account is based on Rachel Plummer’s eyewitness description of the events of May 19, 1836 (Rachel Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, 6 ff.), upon her statement that her mistreatment lasted for half an hour and on the Parker family belief that the raiders appeared at the fort at 8:00 A.M.

3. Plummer, op. cit., 6. Plummer’s original record of her experiences as a captive was completed in September 1838, soon after her return to white civilization. She produced an enlarged edition of her original work, which she prepared for publication in December 1839. The 1839 version is available today as an appendix to James W. Parker’s The Rachel Plummer Narrative.

4. Bryant reported that the men were both scalped and “mutilated.” (Bryant, op. cit. 19) David Nevins’ study of the conflict between white settlement and the natives of the plains reported that “Indians maimed the bodies of enemies in the belief that the slain men’s spirits would then be identically crippled in the afterlife.” (David Nevins, The Old West: The Soldiers, 17)

5. Plummer, op. cit., 6.

6. Rachel Plummer’s 1839 edition of the account of her sufferings stated that for her “to undertake to narrate their [the Indians’] barbarous treatment would only add to my present distress.” (James W. Parker, op. cit., 94) Later accounts discretely reported that the “women were molested.” (Bryant, op. cit., 19)

7. McLean, op. cit., Volume X: 156.

8. The J. W. Parker Manuscript, The Lamar Papers, MS Number 2166, Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.

9. Loc. cit.

10. Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Tragedies of Canyon Blanco, 8.

11. The Mack Boswell typescript in the Quanah Papers, Archives of Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

12. Plummer, op. cit., 6, 7.

13. J. W. Parker, op. cit., footnote to page 94.

14. Plummer, op. cit., 6, 7.

15. The J. W. Parker Manuscript, The Lamar Papers, MS Number 2166, Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.

16. Bryant, op. cit., 20.

17. Plummer, op. cit., 6.

18. hoc. cit.

19. The J. W. Parker Manuscript, The Lamar papers, MS Number 2166, Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.

20. Loc. cit.

21. Bryant, op. cit., 22.

22. Loc. cit.

23. Plummer, op. cit., 7.

II. A PROMISED LAND

1. Samuel Hessler, “Daniel Parker, 1781–1844 and the Establishment of the Pilgrim Church, 1833, the First Baptist Church in Texas,” 13. (Typescript)

2. A typescript in the Quanah Papers in the Archives of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, stated that the winter of 1833–34 was a period of extreme inclemency.

3. Hessler, op. cit., 13.

4. Bryant, op. cit., 11.

5. One account placed the exploratory journey of the Parker brothers to Texas at a date early in 1831. However, the 1833 date for this trek would agree with other available information. (Hessler, op. cit., 11)

6. Bryant, op. cit., 11. The “Two-Seeds-in-the-Spirit” doctrine was an interpretation of Calvinism that held to the belief that the earthly generation of mankind produced two “seeds,” a good one from God and a bad one from the devil. No change in this line of spiritual inheritance was believed to be possible.

7. Hessler, op. cit., 8.

8. A typescript in the Quanah Papers, Archives of Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

9. This statement was recorded in a document among miscellaneous papers and clippings in the Quanah Papers, Archives of Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

10. Hessler, op. cit., 3.

11. Manuscript letter signed by Daniel Parker, Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Box 186, 1821.

12. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend was also known by the Indian name “Tohopeka.” Houston was wounded in the battle by a Creek arrow that had to be removed from his thigh.

13. Bryant, op. cit., 9.

14. Ibid., 4.

15. Hessler, op. cit., 4.

16. Ibid., 11.

17. Mirabeau Lamar described Texas in these words in his journal which he wrote about his trip to the Mexican province in 1835. (Phillip Graham, “Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar’s First Trip to Texas,” Southwest Review, Volume 21, Number 4, 371)

18. Hessler, op. cit., 11.

19. Ibid., 12.

20. The Texas State Historical Commission marker near Palestine, Texas. Bryant’s account stated that the full name of the ...