LITR 4231 Early American Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Elizabeth Sorensen

Cynthia Ann Parker 

The story of Cynthia Ann Parker was one of the most famous captivity stories in Texas history. Since she was captured so young, she never became literate, so her story was written and told by others. Parker was born sometime between 1824 and 1825 in Crawford County, Illinois. When she was around nine years old, the Parker family moved to Central Texas and built Fort Parker near the Navasota River. During a raid, Comanche Indians captured Cynthia Ann and four other settlers from the fort who were all divided among varying tribes. Often times, captured settlers became slaves of the Indian captors; however, this was not the case with Cynthia. She was adopted by a Comanche family, named Naduah, and became thoroughly Comanche.

Parker eventually married a Comanche warrior named Peta Nocona who later became chief of the Comanche tribe they belonged to. By all accounts, the two were happily married. Peta was so pleased with Parker that he refused to take any other wives, which was a common practice among Indian chiefs, and remained monogamous with Cynthia Ann. The couple had three children, two boys and a girl, named Quanah Parker, Pecos, and Topsannah. 

          White settlers frequently traded with various Indian tribes. A trader name Williams reported seeing a girl with blue eyes camped with the Comanche Indians in Northern Texas near the Canadian River. Williams offered to trade for her and also attempted to give ransom money for her, but the Comanche elders refused to release her. It is not known for sure whether or not she wanted to leave her new way of life at this time; however, Williams was allowed to speak to her, but she stared at the ground and refused to answer his questions.

          Since her husband was a warrior, he was frequently engaged in warfare with Anglo settlers. He eventually attracted the attention of the Texas Rangers. In December 1860, a Ranger force attacked Nocona’s village and captured several Indians including Cynthia and her daughter. She was identified by Col. Isaac Parker as his niece. She was forced against her will to go with her uncle to live with him in Birdville. Cynthia made several unsuccessful attempts to flee the Anglo community she was forced to live in to go back to her Comanche village where her husband and two sons were.

 According to Quanah Parker, Cynthia’s husband died of grief over the loss of his wife and daughter four years after she was captured. Her other son Pecos had died during his youth from smallpox. In 1863, Parker’s only connection to her old life, her daughter, died of influenza. Alone and depressed, Cynthia Ann Parker died of self-imposed starvation a few years later at her sister’s home in East Texas. After her death, she was buried in Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County. In 1910, her son Quanah moved her body to the Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. In 1957 her body and that of Quanah's were reinterred in the Fort Sill Post Cemetery at Lawton, Oklahoma.

Even though there was no actual captivity narrative describing Cynthia Ann Parker, we are still left with plenty of information that gave us most famous captivity story in Texas history. She is a fascinating character among our history not only for her capture but for her bravery and determination depicted through second-hand accounts of her life.

Sources

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa18

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cynthia-ann-parker-is-kidnapped

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txnavarr/biographies/p/parker_cynthia_ann.htm