Loading your reading…

Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Parker's Fort; of Her Quarter of a Century Spent Among the Comanches, as the Wife of the War Chief, Peta Nocona; and of Her Recapture at the Battle of Pease River, by Captain L. S. Ross, of the Texian RangersDeShields, James T.

History

Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Parker's Fort; of Her Quarter of a Century Spent Among the Comanches, as the Wife of the War Chief, Peta Nocona; and of Her Recapture at the Battle of Pease River, by Captain L. S. Ross, of the Texian Rangers

Name: Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Parker's Fort; of Her Quarter of a Century Spent Among the Comanches, as the Wife of the War Chief, Peta Nocona; and of Her Recapture at the Battle of Pease River, by Captain L. S. Ross, of the Texian Rangers
Author: DeShields, James T.

DeShields, James T.

Comanche Indians -- History; Indian captivities -- Texas; Parker, Cynthia Ann, 1827?-1864; Parker, Quanah, 1845?-1911; Ross, Lawrence Sullivan, 1838-1898

In submitting our little work--the first efforts of the youthful
author--we assure the reader that while there are, doubtless, many
defects and imperfections, he is not reading fiction, but facts which
form only a part of the tragic and romantic history of the Lone Star
State.

                                         JAMES T. DeSHIELDS,

  BELTON, Texas, May 19, 1886.




CONTENTS.

                                                  Page.
  PREFACE                                            5

  CHAPTER I.
  THE PARKER FORT MASSACRE, ETC.                  9-21

  CHAPTER II.
  THE CAPTIVES--CYNTHIA ANN AND JOHN PARKER      22-35

  CHAPTER III.
  THE BATTLE OF “ANTELOPE HILLS”                 36-46

  CHAPTER IV.
  GENL. L. S. ROSS.--BATTLE OF THE WICHITA       47-57

  CHAPTER V.
  BATTLE OF PEASE RIVER.--RECAPTURE OF CYNTHIA
        ANN PARKER                               58-68

  CHAPTER VI.
  CYNTHIA ANN PARKER.--QUANAH PARKER             69-80




CYNTHIA ANN PARKER.

CHAPTER I.

The Parker Fort Massacre, Etc.


Contemporary with, and among the earliest of the daring and hardy
pioneers that penetrated the eastern portion of the Mexican province
of Texas, were the “Parker family,” who immigrated from Cole county,
Illinois, in the fall of the year 1833, settling on the west side of
the Navasota creek, near the site of the present town of Groesbeck, in
Limestone county, one or two of the family coming a little earlier and
some a little later.

The elder John Parker was a native of Virginia, resided for a time
in Elbert county, Georgia, but chiefly reared his family in Bedford
county, Tennessee, whence in 1818 he removed to Illinois.

The family, with perhaps one or two exceptions, belonged to one branch
of the primitive Baptist church, commonly designated as “two seed,” or
“hard shell” Baptists.

In the spring of 1834 the colonist erected Parker’s Fort,[1] a kind of
wooden barricade, or wall around their cabins, which served as a means
of better protecting themselves against the numerous predatory bands of
Indians into that, then, sparsely settled section.

  [1] The reader will understand by this term, not only a place
      of defense, but the residence of a small number of families
      belonging to the same neighborhood. As the Indian mode of
      warfare was an indiscriminate slaughter of all ages, and both
      sexes, it was as requisite to provide for the safety of the
      women and children as for that of the men.

      Dodridge’s faithful pen picture of early pioneer forts, will
      perhaps give the reader a glimps of old Fort Parker in the
      dark and bloody period of its existence. He says:

Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Parker's Fort; of Her Quarter of a Century Spent Among the Comanches, as the Wife of the War Chief, Peta Nocona; and of Her Recapture at the Battle of Pease River, by Captain L. S. Ross, of the Texian Rangers

No reviews yet