November 28, 2012 • 24 mins
A Comanche raiding party kidnapped Cynthia Ann when she was 9 years old. She lived with Comanche parents, marrying a war chief and having children. But her family never stopped searching for her. As word of her story spread, her son Quanah rose to power.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chok reboarding. And every now
and then we talked about how we came up with
one of our ideas or what made us feel like
(00:22):
we wanted to cover a certain subject and a lot, yeah,
I guess we do do that a lot. Usually it's
a listeners suggestion, but this one is a little bit different.
And I'm sure you have these two, Deblina, where you
read a book, or watch a movie, or even watch
a TV show and you come away with a podcast idea.
So this is one of those cases. Earlier this summer,
(00:43):
I was watching the nineteen fifty six John Wayne filmed
The Searchers and um, just to give a little background
on it, it's a movie about a man who has
returned to his brother's Texas home a few years after
the Civil War, but soon sees most of his family
killed in a commanche raid and not gonna give away
any spoilers even though this movie is almost sixty years old,
(01:03):
but after the raid, he becomes really obsessed with finding
his kidnap niece, even though it soon becomes clear he'd
rather see her dead than assimilated with her kidnappers. It's
a very disturbing premise. I mean, they're they're numerous disturbing
parts of the movie, but that one in particular is
is upsetting and um. When I started reading about the film,
(01:24):
I realized that some critics had pointed out similarities to
to that story and to the book that it was
based on and the real life eight thirty six kidnapping
of a nine year old Texas girl named Cynthia Ann Parker. Yeah,
and Cynthia Ann's story is particularly remarkable. It's a double
(01:45):
tragedy marked by two captures. But we thought it would
be a great way to look at the Planes Indians
Wars on a more personal level, especially since it opens
the door to the story of her son, Quanta Parker,
the last Comanche chief. So just as cynthia AND's life
centered on displacement and not really fitting in, Quantas is
about excelling in two very different worlds, trying to mediate
(02:08):
between them, and encouraging peace among his people without sacrificing
all of his culture. So it's kind of why we
had to pack it into two episodes. It is, and
in this first episode is going to focus more on
Cynthia and in the background and and how these wars
started in the first place. And then the second episode
is going to focus on their end and on Quanta's life,
(02:30):
um bridging this two worlds. So fortunately that we've spoken
so much in the past year about frontier life and
settlement in Texas and of course Indian territory and what's
now Oklahoma favorite place to leave his favorite place to
define um that I think most listeners probably feel like
they have a good background on this time already. But
(02:50):
just to give you just a little bit of information.
In the eighteen thirties, as Eastern Native American tribes were
being forcibly resettled in the west on lands that were
traditionally controlled by planes, Indians and as Anglo settlers pushed west,
the nomadic planes tribes were feeling hemmed in. I mean,
it still seems like a lot of land, but they
were used to covering huge amounts hunting, and uh, we're
(03:15):
really feeling the stress and their resources at this point.
Some bands ended up assimilating, dying out, or entering reservations,
but others retaliated, carrying out violent raids on settlers to
frighten them back east and and to defend their land.
So in this struggle, which lasted about forty some odd years,
(03:35):
the Comanche were considered the best at this. They were
hard to trace, they were masters on horseback, and they
were seemingly able to survive on nothing and then just
kind of disappear into their vast inhospitable lands called the Commancheria,
and they were just a force to be reckoned with.
They were, Yeah, I mean that that what you just
mentioned of leaning about them disappearing, that was a big
(03:57):
part of it. Um Even when you have the thes
military and bubble, you have the cavalry involved, they just
have a lot of trouble finding them most of the time.
But our story starts with a command she a Kyowa
and a cattle raid on Fort Parker, which was a
family compound and a fort that had been settled in
eighteen thirty by the extended Parker family. And it was
(04:19):
great land, very prime land, right at the headwaters of
the Navasota River in Texas, but also in a dangerous
part of the world. It was way way out on
the frontier, and in May of eighteen thirty six, somebody
didn't take the proper precautions and left the fort door
open when the men went off to to work on
(04:39):
the with the animals and on the property, and the
war party easily entered through that open fort door quickly
killed three Parker family members and two other men, and
UH kidnapped some of the others. Nine year old Cynthia
Anne was with her mother and her six year old
brother John, and a group of women and children who
(05:01):
were trying to flee the fourth through a meadow when
they were stopped by a warrior named Peta Nakana and
Uh and taken from there. So, in addition to Cynthia
and her brother, some of the people from their family
who were kidnapped included Rachel Parker Plumber and her son James.
Rachel Parker Plumber was Cynthia Anne's cousin UH. In addition,
(05:22):
Rachel's aunt Elizabeth was also kidnapped and the family was abused,
but they were eventually all of them, including John Parker,
who wasn't returned until the eighteen forties. They were all
eventually ransomed back except for Cynthia Anne. For Cynthia Anne,
and consequently she became something of a legend on the
frontier with her mother and her uncle, and I imagine
(05:44):
her extended family really desperate to find her, with newspapers
romanticizing the idea of her as this beautiful, blonde, blue
eyed captive growing up among the command she really sort
of gets pretty strange, especially as she gets older, the
things written about her um, and according to Jan Reid
in Texas Monthly, she even became kind of a warning
(06:07):
tale for kids, you know, don't wander too far from
home or you might end up like Cynthia Anne. But
by the mid eighteen forties all this speculative stuff turned
into actual sightings. There started to finally be real sightings. Ever,
because we're very sure she was alive at this point.
There hadn't been reports of a child who looked like
(06:28):
her um until the mid eighteen forties, and as it
later turned out, she had just been living a normal
Commanche life. She'd been adopted by Comanche parents and raised
as their daughter. Yeah, not just that. She also went
on to marry her captor, the war chief Peta Nalcina,
and had two sons with him, Kwanta, which means fragrant
(06:51):
or odor. I think it's sort of up for debate
and sometimes even stink. It's um yeah, kind of a
contentious definition. And the second on was Penat, who was
named after Cynthia Anne's favorite childhood snack, and they later
had a daughter named Totsia or prairie flower, and Cynthia
and even had a new name herself. It was Natua,
(07:12):
meaning she carries herself with grace or someone found yeah.
And we actually talked to Dr Kenneth Day for this episode,
who kindly helped us out with some of the command
She pronunciations. He heads up the Learned Command She project,
and we were asking about that one because I just
kept on seeing these wildly different definitions. I mean, clearly
fragrant and odor kind of on the same level. But
(07:35):
she carries herself with grace and someone found something so different.
And he said that a lot of the translations are
like that. It's especially with these names, they're just all
over the map. But um, most importantly about these reports
coming back regarding Cynthia Anne. Uh, we're the accounts of
her from about eighteen forty six to eighteen fifty two,
(07:56):
and that was that her people refused all offers to
ransom her back, and she didn't seem to want to
go anyway, So it was you can't have her, We
want to keep her. She's one of us, and she
won't go and and she won't go. And as snatches
of of all this information came back to the settlers.
Of course, Lucy Parker, Cynthia Ann's mother, was thrilled to
(08:17):
know her daughter was just alive and sent out her
teenage son to to search for her. But not everybody
was very happy with the news that was coming back.
And in fact, to a lot of people, it was
just incomprehensible news. For one thing, that she would um
marry this notorious raider Petunakana and be happy with him.
(08:38):
I mean, people didn't seem to blame her for what
was happening, but they were not happy that she was happy.
That she might actually prefer life as a commanche instead
of life as a as a settler. Yeah, so very
controversial choice, very controversial life. And there were other reports
that kind of hinted at at her life, at Cynthia
(08:59):
Ann's life and life of the Comanche who were still fighting.
By the early eighteen fifties, some commanche bands were settling
on reservations and others resisted pretty successfully, considering the frontier
was creeping back from where it had been in cynthia
and childhood, and according to the sighting, Cynthia and Petaokana
and their family were clearly jumping bands, moving away from
(09:21):
the frontier to maintain a free life and to keep
on fighting. Eventually they joined the Quadis, who were considered
the toughest commanche band out of all of them. But
from eighteen fifty two no further reports were heard from
her and and that's how it stayed until late eighteen
sixty when a Quahati war party led by Knockna entered
(09:43):
TECH five and again the purpose of this raid was
to frighten settlers into abandoning the area, and according to
Gregory Minshno in Wild West, this eighteen sixty raid became
a particularly notable one in Tech for three reasons. One,
it was especially brutal. We're going to go over a
(10:04):
few details on that, but but not into the full list.
The next was that Cynthia Anne came along, and then
the third was that Cynthia Anne was recaptured. I mean,
that's really why, um why this raid in particular gets
discussed so frequently, but the attacks on settlers began November
twenty six at the home of James lanman Um. Mrs
(10:28):
Landman and her six year old son were murdered. One
teenage girl was dragged from a horse then killed. The
raid continued at a pretty fast clip at the Gauge home,
the Sanders Home, where among others, a baby and a
sixty five year old woman were murdered. Then it took
kind of a surprising turn, at least direction wise. The
party moved south to Parker County, which is of course
(10:52):
the same Parker that is Cynthia Anne's family, right, And
we should maybe have put in a little warning here.
It continues to get kind of violent, so if you're
squeamish about this kind of stuff, you may want to
skip ahead a little bit. But just continuing on with
the raid. Some houses were raided and ransacked, and the
inhabitants spared. Others, though, were targeted, like that of Ezra
(11:14):
and Martha Sherman. While the raiders lent Ezra and the
children go, they raped, scalped, and had their horses trample.
Martha Sherman, who lived four days more to deliver a
stillborn child, Some funded off the attack, like the U
Bank's girls who dressed in boys clothing and took up
really intimidating looking positions at the pike. Yeah, so just
(11:34):
a mix of things, and it seemed to to be
all over the place what happened to the various families,
But all told, the war Party left with more than
three hundred horses, having killed seven white settlers and wounding more.
And just a point on the numbers too. I mean,
it's it's really more about inspiring horror than killing loads
(11:57):
and loads of people. That was the That was what
this type of warfare was about. It was about trying
to completely shock people into leaving and abandoning these lands.
They were trying to to settle um so that the
command she could reclaim their land. Um. We mentioned Simpia
Anne was with the War Party, and while we can't
(12:17):
know exactly what her position was with it, uh and
whether she even recognized Parker County her her childhood home,
Menschel does describe that or does mention that command she
Society didn't consider raids to be men only affairs. He wrote,
Almost everyone in command Shee Society, including women and children,
participated in a raid either logistically or socially, And that
(12:41):
might just mean women helping manage the camps or load
up all of the stolen items, but sometimes there were
even female warriors. James Pollard, one of the men who
had stolen horses, quickly started rounding up a posse to
pursue the raiders. They gave up after two days of
ace because they found that some settlers were already packing
(13:02):
up to leave. Others of them were quote forwarded up
so and I think the possey just they realized they
weren't going to make it, they weren't going to catch
up with them. So a couple of weeks later, to
ranger companies, Ranger Captain Lawrence Ross and twenty one men
from the second Cavalry arrived to join in with their pursuit.
All told, they were about one forty men and Tonko
(13:23):
was scouts who sent out to track Pedanacona, and it
was Charles good Night who found the trail that headed
to the Peace River. And on December nineteenth a recent
camp with the body of one of the stolen children
was found too, and when the rangers in the cavalry
approached the camp, they saw women dismantling it packing up,
(13:43):
and it was mostly women and children at the camp.
Um At that point, the ranger captain charged and the
cavalry circled around the back of the camp. And according
to a good Night, who was pretty horrified by what
happened there, he said that the cavalry atten killed every
woman trying to flee, quote, almost in a pile. Um
(14:05):
Ross in particular, took off after Cynthia Anne. He didn't
recognize her as this long lost nine year old captive.
Of course, she was in her thirties by this point.
Um She grabbed Prairie Flower, her young daughter, wrapped herself
up in a buffalo robe, and hopped onto a horse
riding bare back, you know, full charge ahead and um
(14:26):
but Ross was eventually gaining on her, and before Ross
could shoot, she turned around, exposed prairie Flower and yelled
Americano Americano, and um Ross captured her. He brought her
back to to one of his men and then rode
off to pursue and kill a warrior. And this is
kind of an interesting point. We're going to talk about
(14:47):
it a little more in a minute. But he later
insisted that this warrior was Peta Nakana Um but like
I said, we're going to talk about that more in
a minute. The raid was just a complete massacre. Five
warriors were killed, nine women and children were killed, three
women and children were captured. But the focus was really
on Cynthia Anne. Once they realized that this particular prisoner
(15:10):
up theirs had blue eyes. You know, they were all wondering, Okay,
who is this lady? Um? If you read their accounts,
they pretty much all claimed they were the first one
to recognize her as as white, for one thing, and
then asked Cynthia Anne, or suggest it, um. But Goodnight
has has a point that's a little more of tragic,
or certainly as tragic, and maybe has something to do
(15:33):
with his later friendship with Cynthia Anne's son. But he
seemed to think a little bit about how she was
experiencing this situation at the time. He wrote, we rode
right over her dead companions. I thought then and still think,
how exceedingly cruel it was. Isaac Parker, Cynthia's uncle, who
lived near Fort Worth, was called in to try to
(15:56):
help identify her. According to a neighbor who saw the meeting,
Cynthia and quote sat for a time immovable, lost in
profound meditation, oblivious to everything by which she was surrounded,
ever in a non convulsed as if it were by
some powerful emotion which she struggled to suppress. So Parker
(16:16):
tried to ask her questions in English, but she didn't respond.
He finally said, quote, if this is my niece, her
name is Cynthia Anne, at which point she beat her chest,
stood up, pointed to herself and said since Anne. So
she recognized her own name, and unsurprisingly, considering that she
(16:37):
had been gone almost twenty five years from life as
a Texas settler, this was not a happy reunion. You know,
she didn't identify herself and then they all embrace and
live happily ever after. One of the main reasons is
because she likely thought that her husband and sons were
both dead. And this gets back to what I was
talking about in a minute ago. Ross's claimed that he
(16:57):
killed Nakana at Peace River. It was a claim that
he touted for years after We're really incorporated into his
own legend um. And when Cynthia Anne and Nakana's son
Kwana grew up and entered into the public eye, Quanta
always insisted that he and his brother had left with
their father on a hunting trip two days before the attack,
(17:19):
so his father had never been there, The boys had
never been there. His father was clearly not killed, and
he said that his father instead died a few years
after um. Some people, though, dispute that story, thinking that
maybe it was one that Quanta put forward specifically to
try to protect his father's memory. Because Peace River was
(17:40):
clearly seen as a disaster by the Comanche, and Nakana
had been in charge of this this raiding party. It's
often suggested that if Nakana did live on for a
few more years, he kept a remarkably low profile for
somebody who had been so powerful, so um important for
fit long, and obviously so passionate about continuing his commanche
(18:05):
lifestyle well, and and passionate about his family too. I mean,
we should note since Anne was one of several wives,
but by all accounts I've read, they had a very
loving relationship. Um. But one opinion to consider in all
of this is that of a sequin, the author of
Empire of the Summer Moon, who points that Cynthia Anne's
(18:25):
reaction to the situation might tell us more than Quanta. Potentially, Yeah,
she was utterly distraught. She believed and said that her
sons had been there. She really thought that they were dead,
and that was something that she just continued to believe
throughout her entire life. Yeah, according to her neighbors, they
said she gave no indication ever throughout her life that
(18:48):
she thought her sons were still alive. And as for
the rest of the group that was part of this raid,
Charles Goodnight and about ten scouts managed to track the
only two writers who had managed to escape the fight.
They attracked them about a hundred miles to a larger
Comanche camp and though that they were only about ten
and twelve years old, respectively, Peanut and Kwana would have
(19:08):
had good basic survival and hunting skills to have made
this sort of track. It was interesting to read a
little bit about what kind of skills specifically boys that
age would have had and and apparently they would have
had better survival skills than the average Texan boy. Um,
but they wouldn't have been young warriors either. They might
(19:30):
have been allowed to have participated in hunts for small game,
but probably not anything large, certainly not a raiding party
like the one their father had been on. They would
have been expert riders, because as we've already discussed, commanche
were all about horses. UM. So they might have had
enough knowledge to to get by, but clearly they needed
(19:53):
to find a camp of adults quickly too. They they
wouldn't have ever been able to or been allowed to,
just wander away from camp. Um. But we're going to
pick up with more on Kwanta and and more in
Cynthia and next time. Um. Since this is a two
parter episode. It's a pretty sad story with Cynthia and
(20:14):
a mixed bag i'd say with Kwanta, but a pretty
amazing story on his behalf too as a mediator and
somebody who really found a way to excel into cultures. Alright,
So you have some listener mail to share, so yes
we do. And I picked this one because we were
(20:35):
talking about Indian territory again and it reminded me of
an email we got from listener Betsey and her class
about bas Reeves, maybe the last time we talked about
Indian territory in Oklahoma. But she wrote in to say,
dear Dablina and Sarah, a few months ago, I asked
you for help with the sources for your bath Reeves podcast,
(20:55):
and I think Deblina Youth center of a list of
sources I did. She went on to say, the podcast
and the sources led us to an entire unit on
manliness and race to close out my civil War lessons.
My fourth graders absolutely loved discussing the different parts of
Reeves life and deciding if they were manly, unmanly, or
(21:16):
neutral for our final closeout discussion. A few of them
had some real singers and deep thoughts. I wanted to
share them with you. It is easily one of the
times I was most proud of my little one. So
m she She just sent along a few questions that
she had asked her students, and then a few of
their answers. So we're going to read a few of
a few of these fourth grade responses. Um to her question,
(21:39):
do you agree that Bass was quote one of the
bravest men this country has ever known? Her student Jonas
wrote Yes, I agree that he is the manliest man
ever because he tried to build a quote bridge from
slavery and racism to an equal place to live, equal
as everybody is treated the same, while her student Andrew
did not think so. He wrote no, because he was
(22:00):
showing off for the people, like how he uses a gun.
We thought that one was kind of funny. And then
Rain was very impressed and wrote, yes, he was epic
and a master of disguise because he was able to
battle enemy, So there you go. Um. She had another
question too that was was more about this building a
(22:21):
bridge idea, and she wrote, do you agree that one
of the manliest things a man can do is to
build a bridge and legacy for others to follow, And
her student Travon wrote that, uh, he kind of agreed
and disagreed with it. He said, the country should try
to fix slavery by themselves, but it is the whole
country's problem, not just bass Reeves. He can take a
(22:44):
break from being a hero, but if they can't, they
could have some help. And then finally Rain again said, no,
to save someone's life is more manly. So all kinds
of interesting students responses from her students and very fun
too to hear. Phil. Thank you, bet See, thank you
fourth graders, and um, I'm glad you guys enjoyed learning
(23:06):
about bass Reeves so much. Yeah, we love the perspective
that you have to offer, so thanks for that. If
you guys have any thoughts on Bass Reeves, Indian Territory,
or this podcast any others that we've done, feel free
to write to us. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com. You can also look us up on
Facebook and we're on Twitter at miss in History. And
(23:26):
of course we have loads of articles and history and
culture all on our website. You can look up those
by visiting the tabs in these areas on our homepage
at www dot how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
(23:47):
stuff Works dot Com. But the book didn't need
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chok reboarding. And every now
and then we talked about how we came up with
one of our ideas or what made us feel like
(00:22):
we wanted to cover a certain subject and a lot, yeah,
I guess we do do that a lot. Usually it's
a listeners suggestion, but this one is a little bit different.
And I'm sure you have these two, Deblina, where you
read a book, or watch a movie, or even watch
a TV show and you come away with a podcast idea.
So this is one of those cases. Earlier this summer,
(00:43):
I was watching the nineteen fifty six John Wayne filmed
The Searchers and um, just to give a little background
on it, it's a movie about a man who has
returned to his brother's Texas home a few years after
the Civil War, but soon sees most of his family
killed in a commanche raid and not gonna give away
any spoilers even though this movie is almost sixty years old,
(01:03):
but after the raid, he becomes really obsessed with finding
his kidnap niece, even though it soon becomes clear he'd
rather see her dead than assimilated with her kidnappers. It's
a very disturbing premise. I mean, they're they're numerous disturbing
parts of the movie, but that one in particular is
is upsetting and um. When I started reading about the film,
(01:24):
I realized that some critics had pointed out similarities to
to that story and to the book that it was
based on and the real life eight thirty six kidnapping
of a nine year old Texas girl named Cynthia Ann Parker. Yeah,
and Cynthia Ann's story is particularly remarkable. It's a double
(01:45):
tragedy marked by two captures. But we thought it would
be a great way to look at the Planes Indians
Wars on a more personal level, especially since it opens
the door to the story of her son, Quanta Parker,
the last Comanche chief. So just as cynthia AND's life
centered on displacement and not really fitting in, Quantas is
about excelling in two very different worlds, trying to mediate
(02:08):
between them, and encouraging peace among his people without sacrificing
all of his culture. So it's kind of why we
had to pack it into two episodes. It is, and
in this first episode is going to focus more on
Cynthia and in the background and and how these wars
started in the first place. And then the second episode
is going to focus on their end and on Quanta's life,
(02:30):
um bridging this two worlds. So fortunately that we've spoken
so much in the past year about frontier life and
settlement in Texas and of course Indian territory and what's
now Oklahoma favorite place to leave his favorite place to
define um that I think most listeners probably feel like
they have a good background on this time already. But
(02:50):
just to give you just a little bit of information.
In the eighteen thirties, as Eastern Native American tribes were
being forcibly resettled in the west on lands that were
traditionally controlled by planes, Indians and as Anglo settlers pushed west,
the nomadic planes tribes were feeling hemmed in. I mean,
it still seems like a lot of land, but they
were used to covering huge amounts hunting, and uh, we're
(03:15):
really feeling the stress and their resources at this point.
Some bands ended up assimilating, dying out, or entering reservations,
but others retaliated, carrying out violent raids on settlers to
frighten them back east and and to defend their land.
So in this struggle, which lasted about forty some odd years,
(03:35):
the Comanche were considered the best at this. They were
hard to trace, they were masters on horseback, and they
were seemingly able to survive on nothing and then just
kind of disappear into their vast inhospitable lands called the Commancheria,
and they were just a force to be reckoned with.
They were, Yeah, I mean that that what you just
mentioned of leaning about them disappearing, that was a big
(03:57):
part of it. Um Even when you have the thes
military and bubble, you have the cavalry involved, they just
have a lot of trouble finding them most of the time.
But our story starts with a command she a Kyowa
and a cattle raid on Fort Parker, which was a
family compound and a fort that had been settled in
eighteen thirty by the extended Parker family. And it was
(04:19):
great land, very prime land, right at the headwaters of
the Navasota River in Texas, but also in a dangerous
part of the world. It was way way out on
the frontier, and in May of eighteen thirty six, somebody
didn't take the proper precautions and left the fort door
open when the men went off to to work on
(04:39):
the with the animals and on the property, and the
war party easily entered through that open fort door quickly
killed three Parker family members and two other men, and
UH kidnapped some of the others. Nine year old Cynthia
Anne was with her mother and her six year old
brother John, and a group of women and children who
(05:01):
were trying to flee the fourth through a meadow when
they were stopped by a warrior named Peta Nakana and
Uh and taken from there. So, in addition to Cynthia
and her brother, some of the people from their family
who were kidnapped included Rachel Parker Plumber and her son James.
Rachel Parker Plumber was Cynthia Anne's cousin UH. In addition,
(05:22):
Rachel's aunt Elizabeth was also kidnapped and the family was abused,
but they were eventually all of them, including John Parker,
who wasn't returned until the eighteen forties. They were all
eventually ransomed back except for Cynthia Anne. For Cynthia Anne,
and consequently she became something of a legend on the
frontier with her mother and her uncle, and I imagine
(05:44):
her extended family really desperate to find her, with newspapers
romanticizing the idea of her as this beautiful, blonde, blue
eyed captive growing up among the command she really sort
of gets pretty strange, especially as she gets older, the
things written about her um, and according to Jan Reid
in Texas Monthly, she even became kind of a warning
(06:07):
tale for kids, you know, don't wander too far from
home or you might end up like Cynthia Anne. But
by the mid eighteen forties all this speculative stuff turned
into actual sightings. There started to finally be real sightings. Ever,
because we're very sure she was alive at this point.
There hadn't been reports of a child who looked like
(06:28):
her um until the mid eighteen forties, and as it
later turned out, she had just been living a normal
Commanche life. She'd been adopted by Comanche parents and raised
as their daughter. Yeah, not just that. She also went
on to marry her captor, the war chief Peta Nalcina,
and had two sons with him, Kwanta, which means fragrant
(06:51):
or odor. I think it's sort of up for debate
and sometimes even stink. It's um yeah, kind of a
contentious definition. And the second on was Penat, who was
named after Cynthia Anne's favorite childhood snack, and they later
had a daughter named Totsia or prairie flower, and Cynthia
and even had a new name herself. It was Natua,
(07:12):
meaning she carries herself with grace or someone found yeah.
And we actually talked to Dr Kenneth Day for this episode,
who kindly helped us out with some of the command
She pronunciations. He heads up the Learned Command She project,
and we were asking about that one because I just
kept on seeing these wildly different definitions. I mean, clearly
fragrant and odor kind of on the same level. But
(07:35):
she carries herself with grace and someone found something so different.
And he said that a lot of the translations are
like that. It's especially with these names, they're just all
over the map. But um, most importantly about these reports
coming back regarding Cynthia Anne. Uh, we're the accounts of
her from about eighteen forty six to eighteen fifty two,
(07:56):
and that was that her people refused all offers to
ransom her back, and she didn't seem to want to
go anyway, So it was you can't have her, We
want to keep her. She's one of us, and she
won't go and and she won't go. And as snatches
of of all this information came back to the settlers.
Of course, Lucy Parker, Cynthia Ann's mother, was thrilled to
(08:17):
know her daughter was just alive and sent out her
teenage son to to search for her. But not everybody
was very happy with the news that was coming back.
And in fact, to a lot of people, it was
just incomprehensible news. For one thing, that she would um
marry this notorious raider Petunakana and be happy with him.
(08:38):
I mean, people didn't seem to blame her for what
was happening, but they were not happy that she was happy.
That she might actually prefer life as a commanche instead
of life as a as a settler. Yeah, so very
controversial choice, very controversial life. And there were other reports
that kind of hinted at at her life, at Cynthia
(08:59):
Ann's life and life of the Comanche who were still fighting.
By the early eighteen fifties, some commanche bands were settling
on reservations and others resisted pretty successfully, considering the frontier
was creeping back from where it had been in cynthia
and childhood, and according to the sighting, Cynthia and Petaokana
and their family were clearly jumping bands, moving away from
(09:21):
the frontier to maintain a free life and to keep
on fighting. Eventually they joined the Quadis, who were considered
the toughest commanche band out of all of them. But
from eighteen fifty two no further reports were heard from
her and and that's how it stayed until late eighteen
sixty when a Quahati war party led by Knockna entered
(09:43):
TECH five and again the purpose of this raid was
to frighten settlers into abandoning the area, and according to
Gregory Minshno in Wild West, this eighteen sixty raid became
a particularly notable one in Tech for three reasons. One,
it was especially brutal. We're going to go over a
(10:04):
few details on that, but but not into the full list.
The next was that Cynthia Anne came along, and then
the third was that Cynthia Anne was recaptured. I mean,
that's really why, um why this raid in particular gets
discussed so frequently, but the attacks on settlers began November
twenty six at the home of James lanman Um. Mrs
(10:28):
Landman and her six year old son were murdered. One
teenage girl was dragged from a horse then killed. The
raid continued at a pretty fast clip at the Gauge home,
the Sanders Home, where among others, a baby and a
sixty five year old woman were murdered. Then it took
kind of a surprising turn, at least direction wise. The
party moved south to Parker County, which is of course
(10:52):
the same Parker that is Cynthia Anne's family, right, And
we should maybe have put in a little warning here.
It continues to get kind of violent, so if you're
squeamish about this kind of stuff, you may want to
skip ahead a little bit. But just continuing on with
the raid. Some houses were raided and ransacked, and the
inhabitants spared. Others, though, were targeted, like that of Ezra
(11:14):
and Martha Sherman. While the raiders lent Ezra and the
children go, they raped, scalped, and had their horses trample.
Martha Sherman, who lived four days more to deliver a
stillborn child, Some funded off the attack, like the U
Bank's girls who dressed in boys clothing and took up
really intimidating looking positions at the pike. Yeah, so just
(11:34):
a mix of things, and it seemed to to be
all over the place what happened to the various families,
But all told, the war Party left with more than
three hundred horses, having killed seven white settlers and wounding more.
And just a point on the numbers too. I mean,
it's it's really more about inspiring horror than killing loads
(11:57):
and loads of people. That was the That was what
this type of warfare was about. It was about trying
to completely shock people into leaving and abandoning these lands.
They were trying to to settle um so that the
command she could reclaim their land. Um. We mentioned Simpia
Anne was with the War Party, and while we can't
(12:17):
know exactly what her position was with it, uh and
whether she even recognized Parker County her her childhood home,
Menschel does describe that or does mention that command she
Society didn't consider raids to be men only affairs. He wrote,
Almost everyone in command Shee Society, including women and children,
participated in a raid either logistically or socially, And that
(12:41):
might just mean women helping manage the camps or load
up all of the stolen items, but sometimes there were
even female warriors. James Pollard, one of the men who
had stolen horses, quickly started rounding up a posse to
pursue the raiders. They gave up after two days of
ace because they found that some settlers were already packing
(13:02):
up to leave. Others of them were quote forwarded up
so and I think the possey just they realized they
weren't going to make it, they weren't going to catch
up with them. So a couple of weeks later, to
ranger companies, Ranger Captain Lawrence Ross and twenty one men
from the second Cavalry arrived to join in with their pursuit.
All told, they were about one forty men and Tonko
(13:23):
was scouts who sent out to track Pedanacona, and it
was Charles good Night who found the trail that headed
to the Peace River. And on December nineteenth a recent
camp with the body of one of the stolen children
was found too, and when the rangers in the cavalry
approached the camp, they saw women dismantling it packing up,
(13:43):
and it was mostly women and children at the camp.
Um At that point, the ranger captain charged and the
cavalry circled around the back of the camp. And according
to a good Night, who was pretty horrified by what
happened there, he said that the cavalry atten killed every
woman trying to flee, quote, almost in a pile. Um
(14:05):
Ross in particular, took off after Cynthia Anne. He didn't
recognize her as this long lost nine year old captive.
Of course, she was in her thirties by this point.
Um She grabbed Prairie Flower, her young daughter, wrapped herself
up in a buffalo robe, and hopped onto a horse
riding bare back, you know, full charge ahead and um
(14:26):
but Ross was eventually gaining on her, and before Ross
could shoot, she turned around, exposed prairie Flower and yelled
Americano Americano, and um Ross captured her. He brought her
back to to one of his men and then rode
off to pursue and kill a warrior. And this is
kind of an interesting point. We're going to talk about
(14:47):
it a little more in a minute. But he later
insisted that this warrior was Peta Nakana Um but like
I said, we're going to talk about that more in
a minute. The raid was just a complete massacre. Five
warriors were killed, nine women and children were killed, three
women and children were captured. But the focus was really
on Cynthia Anne. Once they realized that this particular prisoner
(15:10):
up theirs had blue eyes. You know, they were all wondering, Okay,
who is this lady? Um? If you read their accounts,
they pretty much all claimed they were the first one
to recognize her as as white, for one thing, and
then asked Cynthia Anne, or suggest it, um. But Goodnight
has has a point that's a little more of tragic,
or certainly as tragic, and maybe has something to do
(15:33):
with his later friendship with Cynthia Anne's son. But he
seemed to think a little bit about how she was
experiencing this situation at the time. He wrote, we rode
right over her dead companions. I thought then and still think,
how exceedingly cruel it was. Isaac Parker, Cynthia's uncle, who
lived near Fort Worth, was called in to try to
(15:56):
help identify her. According to a neighbor who saw the meeting,
Cynthia and quote sat for a time immovable, lost in
profound meditation, oblivious to everything by which she was surrounded,
ever in a non convulsed as if it were by
some powerful emotion which she struggled to suppress. So Parker
(16:16):
tried to ask her questions in English, but she didn't respond.
He finally said, quote, if this is my niece, her
name is Cynthia Anne, at which point she beat her chest,
stood up, pointed to herself and said since Anne. So
she recognized her own name, and unsurprisingly, considering that she
(16:37):
had been gone almost twenty five years from life as
a Texas settler, this was not a happy reunion. You know,
she didn't identify herself and then they all embrace and
live happily ever after. One of the main reasons is
because she likely thought that her husband and sons were
both dead. And this gets back to what I was
talking about in a minute ago. Ross's claimed that he
(16:57):
killed Nakana at Peace River. It was a claim that
he touted for years after We're really incorporated into his
own legend um. And when Cynthia Anne and Nakana's son
Kwana grew up and entered into the public eye, Quanta
always insisted that he and his brother had left with
their father on a hunting trip two days before the attack,
(17:19):
so his father had never been there, The boys had
never been there. His father was clearly not killed, and
he said that his father instead died a few years
after um. Some people, though, dispute that story, thinking that
maybe it was one that Quanta put forward specifically to
try to protect his father's memory. Because Peace River was
(17:40):
clearly seen as a disaster by the Comanche, and Nakana
had been in charge of this this raiding party. It's
often suggested that if Nakana did live on for a
few more years, he kept a remarkably low profile for
somebody who had been so powerful, so um important for
fit long, and obviously so passionate about continuing his commanche
(18:05):
lifestyle well, and and passionate about his family too. I mean,
we should note since Anne was one of several wives,
but by all accounts I've read, they had a very
loving relationship. Um. But one opinion to consider in all
of this is that of a sequin, the author of
Empire of the Summer Moon, who points that Cynthia Anne's
(18:25):
reaction to the situation might tell us more than Quanta. Potentially, Yeah,
she was utterly distraught. She believed and said that her
sons had been there. She really thought that they were dead,
and that was something that she just continued to believe
throughout her entire life. Yeah, according to her neighbors, they
said she gave no indication ever throughout her life that
(18:48):
she thought her sons were still alive. And as for
the rest of the group that was part of this raid,
Charles Goodnight and about ten scouts managed to track the
only two writers who had managed to escape the fight.
They attracked them about a hundred miles to a larger
Comanche camp and though that they were only about ten
and twelve years old, respectively, Peanut and Kwana would have
(19:08):
had good basic survival and hunting skills to have made
this sort of track. It was interesting to read a
little bit about what kind of skills specifically boys that
age would have had and and apparently they would have
had better survival skills than the average Texan boy. Um,
but they wouldn't have been young warriors either. They might
(19:30):
have been allowed to have participated in hunts for small game,
but probably not anything large, certainly not a raiding party
like the one their father had been on. They would
have been expert riders, because as we've already discussed, commanche
were all about horses. UM. So they might have had
enough knowledge to to get by, but clearly they needed
(19:53):
to find a camp of adults quickly too. They they
wouldn't have ever been able to or been allowed to,
just wander away from camp. Um. But we're going to
pick up with more on Kwanta and and more in
Cynthia and next time. Um. Since this is a two
parter episode. It's a pretty sad story with Cynthia and
(20:14):
a mixed bag i'd say with Kwanta, but a pretty
amazing story on his behalf too as a mediator and
somebody who really found a way to excel into cultures. Alright,
So you have some listener mail to share, so yes
we do. And I picked this one because we were
(20:35):
talking about Indian territory again and it reminded me of
an email we got from listener Betsey and her class
about bas Reeves, maybe the last time we talked about
Indian territory in Oklahoma. But she wrote in to say,
dear Dablina and Sarah, a few months ago, I asked
you for help with the sources for your bath Reeves podcast,
(20:55):
and I think Deblina Youth center of a list of
sources I did. She went on to say, the podcast
and the sources led us to an entire unit on
manliness and race to close out my civil War lessons.
My fourth graders absolutely loved discussing the different parts of
Reeves life and deciding if they were manly, unmanly, or
(21:16):
neutral for our final closeout discussion. A few of them
had some real singers and deep thoughts. I wanted to
share them with you. It is easily one of the
times I was most proud of my little one. So
m she She just sent along a few questions that
she had asked her students, and then a few of
their answers. So we're going to read a few of
a few of these fourth grade responses. Um to her question,
(21:39):
do you agree that Bass was quote one of the
bravest men this country has ever known? Her student Jonas
wrote Yes, I agree that he is the manliest man
ever because he tried to build a quote bridge from
slavery and racism to an equal place to live, equal
as everybody is treated the same, while her student Andrew
did not think so. He wrote no, because he was
(22:00):
showing off for the people, like how he uses a gun.
We thought that one was kind of funny. And then
Rain was very impressed and wrote, yes, he was epic
and a master of disguise because he was able to
battle enemy, So there you go. Um. She had another
question too that was was more about this building a
(22:21):
bridge idea, and she wrote, do you agree that one
of the manliest things a man can do is to
build a bridge and legacy for others to follow, And
her student Travon wrote that, uh, he kind of agreed
and disagreed with it. He said, the country should try
to fix slavery by themselves, but it is the whole
country's problem, not just bass Reeves. He can take a
(22:44):
break from being a hero, but if they can't, they
could have some help. And then finally Rain again said, no,
to save someone's life is more manly. So all kinds
of interesting students responses from her students and very fun
too to hear. Phil. Thank you, bet See, thank you
fourth graders, and um, I'm glad you guys enjoyed learning
(23:06):
about bass Reeves so much. Yeah, we love the perspective
that you have to offer, so thanks for that. If
you guys have any thoughts on Bass Reeves, Indian Territory,
or this podcast any others that we've done, feel free
to write to us. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com. You can also look us up on
Facebook and we're on Twitter at miss in History. And
(23:26):
of course we have loads of articles and history and
culture all on our website. You can look up those
by visiting the tabs in these areas on our homepage
at www dot how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
(23:47):
stuff Works dot Com. But the book didn't need
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