Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Empire of the Summer Moon: Notes

One A NEW KIND OF WAR

1. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 159.
2. Captain George Pettis, Kit Carson’s Fight with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians, pp. 7ff.
3. Cited in C. C. Rister, ed., “Documents Relating to General W. T. Sherman’s Southern Plains Indian Policy 1871–75,” Pandhandle Plains Historical Review 9, 1936.
4. T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches, p. 494.
5. F. E., Green, ed., “Ranald Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–1879,” p. 7; this incident is also known as the Wagon Train Massacre, per Fehrenbach, p. 506 (and occasionally as the Warren Wagon Train Massacre).
6. Carter, pp. 81–82.
7. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, pp. 50–55.
8. Ibid.
9. Cited in Herbert Eugene Bolton, Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains.
10. Thomas W. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 3.
11. Rupert Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 156.
12. Carter, p. 149.
13. Ibid., p. 160.
14. Ibid., p. 161.
15. Ibid., p. 176.

Two A LETHAL PARADISE

1. Quanah Parker interview with Charles Goodnight, undated manuscript, Goodnight Papers, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
2. Marshall DeBruhl, Sam Houston: Sword of San Jacinto, p. 305.
3. Deed of indenture, November 1, 1835, signed by Juan Basquis for sale of half a league of land to Silas Parker; document in Taulman Archive, Center for American History, University of Texas.
4. Joseph Taulman and Araminta Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre and Its Aftermath,” unpublished manuscript, Cynthia Ann Parker vertical files, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, TX, p. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 247.
6. Bill Yenne, Sitting Bull, p. 35.
7. Daniel Parker is given credit for making the first formal proposal to create Ranger companies to protect settlers. His proposal was accepted by the permanent council of the Consultation of 1835, a committee that directed the affairs of the Texas Revolution, of which Parker was a member. See Margaret Schmidt Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and Legend, p. 7; see also Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso 1821–1900, p. 42.
8. Hacker, p. 6.
9. James Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 9.
10. Ibid.
11. Thomas W. Kavanaugh, The Comanches: A History 1706–1875, p. 250; see also Cox, p. 49, and Noah Smithwick’s account in Evolution of a State. He was in the Ranger group.
12. Taulman and Taulman, “The Fort Parker Massacre,” pp. 2–3.
13. Rachel Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative of Twenty-one Months Servitude as a Prisoner among the Comanche Indians, p. 7. See also Rachel Plummer’s other narrative (she wrote two), Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer. General Note: These narratives, plus James Parker’s Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, form the basis of most accounts of the massacre. There is also an affidavit filed by Daniel Parker and other members of the family shortly after the massacre (Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin), and various other accounts by family members including Quanah’s grandson Baldwin Parker’s own family-based account of what happened (also at Center for American History archive). Yet another narrative was pieced together by Joseph and Araminta Taulman and is part of their very large archive at the University of Texas in Austin. There is another eyewitness account from Abram Anglin (in Dewitt Baker, ed., A Texas Scrap Book: Made up of the History, Biography and Miscellany of Texas and Its People [New York: A.S. Barnes, 1875, reprint 1991 Texas State Historical Assn.]). Additionally there are many newspaper accounts, based on interviews with immediate Parker relatives and descendants, including “Story of the White Squaw,” McKinney Democrat Gazette, September 22, 1927; “Early Times in Texas and the History of the Parker Family,” by Ben J. Parker of Elkhart, Texas (manuscript at Center for American History); J. Marvin Nichols, “White Woman Was the Mother of Great Chief,” San Antonio Daily Express, July 25, 1909; Ben J. Parker, “Ben Parker Gives Events of Pioneering,” Palestine Herald, February 15, 1935; for secondary sources it is hard to beat the extensively researched Frontier Blood by Jo Ella Powell Exley.
14. Fehrenbach, Lone Star, p. 291.
15. This and other architectural details have been wonderfully re-created at Old Parker’s Fort in Groesbeck, Texas, built on the site of the original.
16. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 93.
17. Ibid., p. 93.
18. Daniel Parker, notes dated June 18, 1836, Parker Documents, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; see also Hacker, p. 8.
19. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 95.
20. Exley, p. 44.
21. Ibid., p. 94.
22. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative, p. 9.
23. Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 1.
24. John Graves, Hard Scrabble, p. 15.
25. Plummer, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative.
26. Rachel Plummer, Narrative of the Capture (1838), p. 7ff.
27. Ibid

Three WORLDS IN COLLISION

1. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 12.
2. Alfred Thomas, ed., Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, 1777–1787, From the Original Documents in the Archives of Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico, pp. 119ff.
3. Ibid., p. 8; Rupert Richardson, The Comanche Barrier, p. 5.
4. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 133.
5. Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., The Indian Papers of the Southwest, vol. 1, p. 24.
6. M. Lewis, The Lewis and Clark Expedition, p. 30; in Thomas Kavanaugh’s book The Comanches: A History 1706–1875, he notes that the ethnonym “Padouca” could well have been applied to plains-dwelling Apaches (p. 66). The point, either way, is that in a land where many, many tribes were known and identified, the Comanches of this era were not.
7. George Bird Grinnell, “Who Were the Padouca?” American Anthropologist 22 (1920): 248.
8. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, pp. 218–19.
9. Ibid., p. 235.
10. George Catlin, Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, p. 47.
11. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 8.
12. Catlin, pp. 48ff; see also Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians, 33 years’ personal experience among the redmen of the great west.
13. Randolph B. Marcy, Adventure on Red River: A Report on the Exploration of the Red River by Captain Randolph Marcy and Captin G.B. McClellan, p. 5.
14. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, pp. 30–31.
15. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 8.
16. Clark Wissler, The American Indian, pp. 220ff.
17. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 33.
18. Walter Prescott Webb first made this observation in his book The Great Plains (p. 53); it has been repeated by others since.
19. J. Frank Dobie, The Mustangs, pp. 23ff.
20. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 41.
21. Ibid., p. 24.
22. Fehrenbach, Lone Star, p. 31.
23. Dobie, p. 25.
24. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 86.
25. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 35ff.
26. Wissler, p. 220.
27. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 126.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 39.
29. Ibid., p. 35; Dobie, p. 69.
30. Athanase de Mézières, “Report by de Mézières of the Expedition to Cadadachos, Oct. 29, 1770,” in Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, vol. 1, p. 218.
31. Catlin, pp. 65ff; see also Colonel Richard I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians.
32. Dobie, p. 65.
33. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West, pp. 401ff.
34. Dobie, p. 48. He is citing an account by Captain Randolph Marcy.
35. General Thomas James, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, St. Louis, 1916, cited in Dobie, p. 83.
36. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 46.
37. Richard I. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West, pp. 329–30.
38. Ralph E. Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, p. 269.
39. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 63.
40. Marvin Opler, “The Origins of Comanche and Ute,” American Anthropologist 45 (1943): 156.

Four HIGH LONESOME

1. Rachel Plummer, The Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer, 1839.
2. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 97.
3. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 133.
4. Plummer, p. 96.
5. Ibid., p. 97.
6. Walter P. Webb, The Great Plains, p. 9.
7. Plummer, p. 97.
8. Noah Smithwick, Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days, p. 113.
9. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 122.
10. Plummer, p. 97.
11. Ibid., p. 98.
12. Ibid., p. 107.
13. Ibid., p. 108.
14. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Comanches, 1870–1879, p. 155.
15. The scant historical information about Crazy Horse is discussed in some detail in Larry McMurtry’s brief but excellent study Crazy Horse.
16. See chapter 7 for a fuller explanation of this important phenomenon.
17. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, pp. 77ff.
18. Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America, pp. 222ff.
19. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 194.
20. Ibid.
21. Ramon Jimanez, Caesar Against the Celts, pp. 27ff.
22. Ibid., p. 36.
23. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 59.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Scott Zesch, Captured, p 127.
27. John S. Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, p. 231.
28. Clinton Smith, op. cit., pp. 69ff.
29. Zesch, p. 79.
30. Clinton Smith, p. 69.
31. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 22.
32. Ibid., p. 25.
33. The only exception was when members of the Penateka band joined U.S. Army forces as scouts during the final campaign against the Quahadis in the Texas Panhandle. They were never combatants.
34. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, the Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 7.
35. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 10.
36. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 23.
37. Plummer, p. 113.

Five THE WOLF’S HOWL

1. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 160.
2. Alfred Thomas, ed., Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, from the Original Documents, p. 58: “As early as 1706 Iribarri reported harrowing details of the inter-tribal conflict that indicated the collapse of Apache civilization northeast of the province.”
3. Ibid., p. 58.
4. Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, vol. 1, p. 34.
5. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 10.
6. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 12.
7. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889), p. 239.
8. References to this battle appear in several places. First, in a report [Ynforme] dated September 30, 1784, by then Spanish governor of Texas Domingo Cabello y Robles. Second, in Herbert Bolton’s 1914 compilation of the writings of noted eighteenth-century Indian agent Athanase de Mézières. p. 25.
9. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 138.
10. Richard I. Dodge, Plains of the Great West, p. 414. This account came from Pedro Espinosa, a “Mexican Comanche” warrior.
11. La Vere, pp. 30–31.
12. Almost all of what we know about Comanche-Spanish relations comes from official Spanish documents from the era. Two sources are exceptionally thorough: the reports filed by Don Juan Bautista de Anza, translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas in Forgotten Frontiers, and the intelligent and insightful reports of Spanish Indian agent Athanase de Mézières, compiled in 1914 by Herbert Bolton in Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier 1768–1780. Also helpful and interesting is Ralph Twitchell’s edited multivolume compilation Spanish Archives of New Mexico.
13. Pedro de Rivera Villalón, Diario y derrotero de lo camionado, visto y observado en la visita que lo hizo a los presidios de la Nueva Espana septentrional. Edited by Vito Allesio Robles, Mexico (D.F., Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, 1946), pp. 78–79 (see Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 67).
14. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 23.
15. Thomas, p. 58.
16. Ibid., p. 59.
17. Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Pichardo’s Treatise on the the Limitations of Texas and Louisiana (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1946), vol. 3, p. 323.
18. An excellent account of Serna’s successful 1716 expedition against the Comanches appears in Ralph Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, vol. 2, p. 301.
19. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, pp. 66ff.
20. James T. DeShields, Border Wars of Texas, p. 16.
21. William Edward Dunn, “The Apache Mission on the San Saba River; Its Founding and Failure,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 17 (1914): 380–81.
22. Ibid., p. 382.
23. Frank Dobie offers an interesting look at the rumors of San Saba gold in his book Coronado’s Children.
24. Dunn, p. 387.
25. Ibid., p. 389.
26. Ibid., p. 381.
27. Parrilla to the viceroy, Historia 95 (June 30, 1757), p. 146.
28. Fathers Banos and Ximenes to the Guardian, July 5, 1757, cited in Dunn, p. 401.
29. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 201.
30. Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, p. 66.
31. Ibid.
32. By far the best description of this legendary campaign comes from Anza himself, who was both articulate and thorough in his reports to Mexico City. These original documents have been translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas, editor of Forgotten Frontiers, see pages 119–42. The Anza writings represent one of the great primary sources of historical material on the relations between the Spanish and the Comanches. Most of my account is taken from these reports.
33. Anza’s diary, in Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, p. 136.
34. This estimate came from Sam Houston’s commissioner of Indian affairs George V. Bonnell in an article published in 1838 in the Houston Telegraph and Texas Register. He apparently got the number from the Comanches, which would make it doubtful indeed. Still, it stands as the only estimate from the era, and later numbers, following the cholera and smallpox epidemics, would seem to bear out a number in that range.

Six BLOOD AND SMOKE

1. It must be noted that General Custer, too, wrote poetry, though Lamar’s doggerel was better than Custer’s doggerel.
2. Noah Smithwick, Evolution of a State, p. 138.
3. James Parker, Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, p. 14.
4. Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, p. 23.
5. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 106 (citing congressional records).
6. Utley, p. 24.
7. “Messages of the President, Submitted to both Houses,” December 21, 1838, Lamar Papers, Doc., 948, p. 11.
8. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 310.
9. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 55.
10. Ibid., p. 310.
11. Donaly E. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, pp. 17–18.
12. La Vere, p. 64.
13. Ibid., p. 20.
14. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900, p. 43.
15. Other accounts give different numbers, as usual. John Henry Brown writes that there were fifty-five whites, forty-two Lipans, and twelve Tonkawas. Since Smithwick was actually there, his would seem to be the more credible account.
16. Smithwick, p. 135.
17. Ibid.
18. Cox, p. 69.
19. Ibid.
20. J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, p. 145.
21. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 75.
22. Ibid. See contemporary accounts of this whole episode in John Holmes Jenkins, ed., Recollections of Early Texas: Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins, and in Noah Smithwick’s Evolution of a State. Colonel John Moore’s report to his superiors concerning the engagement is contained in the Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas, vol. 3, pp. 108ff.
23. Cox, p. 75; details on the location of the wound from Charles A. Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, p. 232.
24. Shelby Foote, The Civil War, vol. 1, pp. 336ff.
25. Dorman Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, vol. 1, p. 105.
26. Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick, p. 31.
27. Ibid.
28. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 326.
29. Ibid.
30. See Smithwick’s account of his three months with Spirit Talker in Evolution of a State, pp. 107ff.
31. Ibid., p. 134.
32. William Preston Johnston, Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston, p. 117.
33. Maverick, p. 35.
34. Brice, p. 24.
35. Maverick, p. 32.
36. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 328.
37. Maverick, p. 36.
38. This account was given in a report from Captain George Howard to Colonel Fisher dated April 6, 1840; it is also mentioned in the memoirs of ranger John Salmon “Rip” Ford.
39. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 51.
40. Ibid.; see also Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1989), p. 18.
41. Thomas Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 264.
42. Ibid.

Seven DREAM VISIONS AND APOCALYPSE

1. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 36.
2. Scott Zesch, The Captured, p. 34.
3. Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, May 30, 1838.
4. La Vere, p. 28.
5. Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches p. 5.
6. Ibid., p. 20.
7. Ibid., p. 9.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., endnotes, p. 51.
10. The number of Indians varies according to who is giving the account. A citizen of Victoria, John Linn, who witnessed the attack, estimated six hundred warriors in the raiding party. Ranger Ben McCulloch estimated a thousand Indians. An account in a local newspaper estimated two hundred. I am inclined to believe both McCulloch and Linn, meaning that there were in fact six hundred warriors and the rest were women, boys, and older men. McCulloch, one of the best trackers ever to come out of Texas, cut their trail and would have been quite accurate in assessing the number of horses and riders.
11. John Holmes Jenkins III, ed., Recollections of Early Texas: The Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1958), p. 62.
12. John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas, p. 340.
13. Donaly E. Brice, Great Comanche Raid, p. 30.
14. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 80.
15. Jenkins, p. 68.
16. Ibid., p. 80.
17. Linn, pp. 341–42.
18. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 76.
19. Jenkins, p. 64.
20. Brown, p. 81.
21. Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick, p. 29.
22. Linn, p. 347.
23. Victor M. Rose, The Life and Services of General Ben McCulloch, p. 64 (citing verbatim account of John Henry Brown).
24. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, p. 62.
25. Jenkins, p. 68.
26. Linn, p. 343.
27. Schilz and Schilz, p. 23.
28. Brazos, Life of Robert Hall, pp. 52–53.
29. Schilz and Schilz, p. 24.
30. J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, p. 185.

Eight WHITE SQUAW

1. Eugene E. White, Experiences of a Special Indian Agent, p. 262.
2. James T. DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture, pp. 23–24.
3. Clarksville Northern Standard, May 25, 1846.
4. Daniel J. Gielo and Scott Zesch, eds., “Every day Seemed to Be a Holiday: The Captivity of Bianca Babb,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 107 (July 2003): 36.
5. T. A. Babb, In the Bosom of the Comanches, p. 34.
6. Scott Zesch, The Captured, p. 45.
7. Babb, p. 22.
8. Gielo and Zesch, p. 56.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 57.
11. Zesch, p. 75.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 81.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 85.
16. Babb, p. 58.
17. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 61; and Thomas Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 296. Note that Buffalo Hump, Little Wolf, and Santa Anna were all powerful chiefs, and some considered them more powerful than Old Owl or Pah-hah-yuco. My research has shown that, assuming the Wallace/Hoebel model of social organization is right, they would fall more into the traditional category of “war chiefs.”
18. Kavanaugh, p. 266.
19. Ibid., p. 297.
20. Clarksville Northern Standard, May 25, 1846.
21. Ibid.
22. Letter: P. M. Butler and M. G. Lewis to the Hon. W. Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 8, 1848, House Executive Documents No. 1, 30th Congress, Second Session, p. 578.
23. DeShields, The Story of Her Capture, p. 30.
24. Butler, and Lewis, p. 578.
25. Joyde Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches, p. 24, and Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, 1816–1925, vol. 1, p. 266.
26. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 57.
27. Ibid., p. 72.
28. DeShields, p. 28.
29. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 349.
30. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 120.
31. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, pp. 169–70.
32. Ramon Powers and James N. Leiker, “Cholera Among the Plains Indians,” Western Historical Quarterly 29 (Fall 1998): 319.
33. Ibid., p. 321.
34. Ibid., pp. 322–23.
35. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 78.
36. Letter: Horace Capron to Robert Howard, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 30, 1852, letters received, M234, Roll 858, Texas Agency (cited in Schilz and Schilz, p. 38).
37. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 60.
38. Letter: Robert S. Neighbors to the Hon. W. Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 18, 1847, 30th Congress, First Session, Senate Committee Report 171.
39. Kavanaugh, p. 265.
40. Chief Baldwin Parker, The Life of Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, through J. Evetts Haley, August 29, 1930, manuscript, Center for American History, University of Texas, p. 9.
41. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 291 (note).
42. Ibid., p. 139.
43. Ibid., p. 138.
44. DeShields, p. 32.
45. Bill Neeley, The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker, p. 52; also, Cynthia Ann later picked up another nickname: “Preloch.” It was not uncommon for Indians to have several names.
46. Randolph Marcy, Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana in the Year 1852, p. 37.

Nine CHASING THE WIND

1. James W. Parker, Defence of James W. Parker Against Slanderous Accusations, p. 4.
2. Ibid., p. 5.
3. James W. Parker, The Rachel Plummer Narrative, entire.
4. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, pp. 35–36.
5. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 224.
6. J. Evetts Haley, “The Comanchero Trade,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 38 (January 1935): 38.
7. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 117.
8. Ibid., p. 123.
9. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 84.
10. Ibid., p. 87.
11. Rachel Plummer, Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Rachel Plummer, pp. 116–17.
12. James Parker, The Rachel Plummer Narrative, p. 27.
13. Letter: James Parker to M. B. Lamar, March 17, 1839, in Charles Gulick, ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 2, p. 494.
14. Ibid.
15. Exley, p. 104. Note that Exley is the sole source on the third child, citing a letter from L. T. M. Plummer to “Dear Nephews” from a private collection.
16. Randolph B. Marcy, Adventure on Red River, p. 169.
17. Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863, vol. 4, pp. 180–81.
18. Exley, p. 177 (citing Confederate records).

Ten DEATH’S INNOCENT FACE

1. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 78.
2. This idea is mentioned in Webb’s The Texas Rangers, but it appeared originally in J. W. Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Texas, originally published in 1889.
3. Walter Prescott, Webb, The Great Plains, p. 167.
4. Ibid.
5. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians, pp. 418–20.
6. Ibid.
7. Evan Connell, Son of the Morning Star, p. 57.
8. Colonel Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 421.
9. Panhandle Plains Historical Museum exhibit.
10. Colonel Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 421.
11. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 35.
12. Ibid.
13. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 298.
14. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 257.
15. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 146.
16. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, pp. 47–50.
17. Clinton L. Smith, The Boy Captives, pp. 52–53.
18. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900, p. 42.
19. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 46.
20. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 300.
21. Z. N. Morrell, Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness, p. 86.
22. Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick, p. 29.
23. Major John Caperton, Sketch of Colonel John C. Hays, The Texas Rangers, Incidents in Mexico, p. 11.
24. Ibid., p. 32.
25. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 258.
26. Captain Nathan Brookshire, Report in Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas, vol. 3, pp. 110–11.
27. J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, pp. 368ff.
28. Colonel Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 522.
29. James Kimmins Greer, Colonel Jack Hays: Frontier Leader and California Builder, p. 35.
30. Wilbarger, p. 74.
31. The photo referred to is in Greer’s biography of Hays.
32. Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 67.
33. Caperton, p. 5.
34. Colonel John S. Ford, John C. Hays In Texas, p. 5.
35. Caperton, p. 13.
36. Greer, p. 26.
37. Cox, p. 78.
38. Victor Rose, The Life and Services of Ben McCulloch, p. 42.
39. Caperton, p. 9.
40. Ibid., p. 10.
41. Webb, The Texas Rangers, p 81.
42. Ibid., p. 84.
43. Rose, p. 84.
44. Cox, p. 87 (citing James Nichols Wilson, Now Your Hear My Horn: Journal of James Wilson Nichols [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967], pp. 122–23).
45. Ibid.
46. Wilbarger, p. 73.
47. Caperton, pp. 18–19.
48. Charles Adams Gulick, ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, pp. 234–35.
49. Wilbarger, p. 72.
50. Cox, pp. 82–83; see also Gulick, p. 232.
51. Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 71.
52. Ibid., p. 120.
53. Gulick, p. 234.
54. John E. Parsons, Sam Colt’s Own Record of Transactions with Captain Walker and Eli Whitney, Jr., in 1847, p. 8.
55. Ibid., p. 9.
56. Cox, p. 93; see also Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, p. 10.
57. Ford, pp. 18ff. Note that this account comes from Hays himself. He gave it to the Houston Star, where it appeared on June 23, 1844, and was later picked up by other papers, including the Clarksville Northern Standard.
58. Ford, p. 20.
59. Ibid., p. 21.
60. Parsons, p. 10.
61. Ibid., p 8.
62. Ibid., p. 10.
63. Ibid., p. 16.
64. Ibid., p. 46.
65. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 303.
66. Cox, p. 113.

Eleven WAR TO THE KNIFE

1. A. B. Mason, “The White Captive,” Civilian and Gazette, 1860 (reprint of story in The White Man).
2. Jonathan Hamilton Baker, Diary of Jonathan Hamilton Baker of Palo Pinto County, Texas, Part 1, 1858–1860, p. 210.
3. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 158.
4. G. A. Holland, The History of Parker County and the Double Log Cabin (Weatherford, Tex.: The Herald Publishing Company, 1937), pp. 18, 46.
5. Ibid., p. 46.
6. Hilory G. Bedford, Texas Indian Troubles, pp. 70–71.
7. Ibid.
8. Judith Ann Benner, Sul Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Educator, p. 38.
9. Ibid., pp. 38ff.
10. J. P. Earle, A History of Clay County and Northwest Texas, Written by J. P. Earle, one of the first pioneers, p. 76.
11. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 164.
12. The White Man, September 13, 1860.
13. Cox, p. 162.
14. J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, p. 49.
15. Charles Goodnight, Indian Recollections, pp. 15ff.
16. Marshall Doyle, A Cry Unheard: The Story of Indian Attacks in and Around Parker County, Texas, 1858–1872, pp. 18–19.
17. Ibid., p. 33.
18. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, 1849–1875, p. 17.
19. Ibid., p. 13.
20. Ibid.
21. Exley, p. 169.
22. Ibid.
23. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 142.
24. Ibid., p 147.
25. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 400.
26. Ibid., p. 401.
27. John S. Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, p. 222.
28. Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p 18.
29. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 402.
30. Ernest Wallace, and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 296.
31. Larry McMurtry, Crazy Horse, p. 77, citing Alex Shoumatoff.
32. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 297.
33. Ibid., p. 299.
34. Randolph Marcy, The Prairie Traveler, p. 218.
35. Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p. 25.
36. Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 169; Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p. 24.
37. Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 144.
38. Ford, p. 224.
39. Ibid., pp. 223ff.
40. Ibid., pp. 231–32.
41. Cox, p. 146.
42. Ford, p. 233.
43. James DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker, the Story of Her Capture, p. 40.
44. Ford, p. 233.
45. Cox, p. 147.
46. Ford, p. 233.
47. Ibid., p. 235.
48. Cited from Cox, p. 145.
49. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 19.
50. Benner, pp. 29ff.
51. Ibid., p. 32.
52. Ibid.
53. Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p. 24.

Twelve WHITE QUEEN OF THE COMANCHES

1. Jonathan Hamilton Baker, Diary of Jonathan Hamilton Baker, pp. 191–92.
2. J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, p. 52.
3. Ibid., pp. 50–51.
4. Ibid., pp. 51–52.
5. Cited in Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 148.
6. Baker, pp. 202ff.
7. B. F. Gholson, Recollections of B. F. Gholson, p. 24.
8. Marshall Doyle, A Cry Unheard, p. 35; see also Haley, p. 53.
9. Judith Ann Benner, Sul Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Educator, p. 52.
10. Charles Goodnight, Charles Goodnight’s Indian Recollections, p. 22.
11. Gholson, p. 28.
12. YA-A-H-HOO: Warwhoop of the Comanches, narrative in Elizabeth Ross Clarke archives, Center for American History, University of Texas in Austin, p. 66.
13. Hilory G. Bedford, Texas Indian Troubles, p. 73; the account also appears in J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas.
14. Ibid., p. 58.
15. Gholson, p. 30.
16. Ibid., p. 34.
17. Baker, p. 204.
18. The Galveston Civilian, February 5, 1861.
19. Ibid.
20. Gholson, p. 40.
21. Ibid., p. 44.
22. Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863, vol. 4, pp. 60–61.
23. Lawrence T. Jones, “Cynthia Ann Parker and Pease Ross, The Forgotten Photographs,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January 1991, p. 379.
24. Bedford, p. 75.
25. Eugene E. White, Experiences of a Special Indian Agent, p. 271; letter written by Sul Ross while governor.
26. H. B. Rogers, The Recollections of H. B. Rogers, as told to J. A. Rickard (appended to Gholson manuscript), p. 66.
27. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 175.
28. Lawrence T. Jones, “Cynthia Ann Parker and Pease Ross,” p. 379.
29. Exley, pp. 170–71, citing an account by Medora Robinson Turner.
30. Clarksville Northern Standard, April 6, 1861.
31. Letter: K. J. Pearson, to John D. Floyd, February 3, 1861, Fort Sill Archives.
32. Margaret Schmidt Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and Legend, p. 32.
33. Stephen B. Oates, “Texas Under the Secessionists,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 167 (October 1963): 167.
34. Ibid., p. 168.
35. James T. DeShields, The Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker, p. 71.
36. Clarksville Northern Standard, April 6, 1861.
37. Jones, “Cynthia Ann Parker and Pease Ross,” p. 380.
38. Exley, p. 175.
39. Coho Smith, Cohographs, p. 69. All of the material relating to the Smith-Parker meetings is derived from Smith’s own account.
40. Jan Isbelle Fortune, “The Recapture and Return of Cynthia Ann Parker,” Groesbeck Journal, May 15, 1936, p. 1.
41. Exley, p. 176, citing an article written by Parker family member Tom Champion.
42. Jones, “Cynthia Ann Parker and Pease Ross,” p 190.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Hacker, p. 35.
46. Ibid.
47. Exley, p. 178, citing Champion account.
48. Letter: T. J. Cates to the Edgewood Enterprise, June 1918.
49. Exley, p. 179.
50. Disinterment Permit, Texas State Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, dated August 25, 1865.
51. Paul Wellman, “Cynthia Ann Parker,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 12, no. 2 (1934): 163.

Thirteen THE RISE OF QUANAH

1. This was Cynthia Ann’s own account of what had happened. See Judith Ann Benner, Sul Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Educator, p. 56.
2. Robert H. Williams, “The Case for Peta Nocona,” In Texana, Vol 10, 1972, p. 55. Williams makes a superbly argued case for what is fairly obvious anyway, that Quanah’s later insistence that he and his father were out hunting during the attack is simply untrue. Quanah did it to protect his father’s reputation, and he did not even attempt to set the record straight until 1898, almost forty years after the event. He did it most famously in a speech in Dallas in 1910 shortly before his death. Williams also points out that the two riders who left the battlefield had to be Quanah and his brother.
3. J. Evetts Haley, ed., Charles Goodnight’s Indian Recollections, pp. 25–26.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, pp. 183–84; citing untitled manuscript of J. A. Dickson.
7. Ibid., p. 186.
8. Ibid., pp. 199ff.
9. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 81.
10. Charles Goodnight, The Making of a Scout, manuscript in Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Archives.
11. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 178ff.
12. Ibid., p. 183.
13. “Quanah Parker in Adobe Walls Battle,” Borger News Herald, date unknown, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Archives, based on interview with J. A. Dickson.
14. Elizabeth Ross Clarke, YA-A-H-HOO: Warwhoop of the Comanches, manuscript at Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, p. 73.
15. Exley, p. 184, citing untitled Dickson ms.
16. Chief Baldwin Parker, Life of Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, through J. Evetts Haley, August 29, 1930, manuscript at Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin.
17. Exley, Dickson ms.
18. Randolph Marcy, Adventure on Red River: A Report on the Exploration of the Red River by Captain Randolph Marcy and Captain G. B. McClellan, p. 159.
19. Scott Zesch, The Captured, pp. 68–76.
20. Thomas W. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 372; Zoe A. Tilghman, Quanah, Eagle of the Comanches, pp. 68ff.
21. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 481.
22. Tilghman, pp. 68ff.
23. Exley, p. 204, citing untitled Dickson ms.
24. Kavanaugh, The Comanches, p. 473.
25. Olive King Dixon, Fearless and Effective Foe: He Spared Women and Children, Always, manuscript, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin.
26. Eugene E. White, Experiences of a Special Indian Agent, pp. 276ff. White’s account is taken from his conversations with Quanah in later years.
27. The ultimate source of this story is Quanah, but his accounts, passed down to us through three different sources—Eugene White, Olive King Dixon (via Goodnight and Baldwin Parker), and Ella Cox Lutz, Quanah’s granddaughter—agree in all important aspects.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 136–37.
29. White, p. 284.
30. Ibid., p. 286.
31. Dixon, manuscript.

Fourteen UNCIVIL WARS

1. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p. 238.
2. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 169.
3. Ibid., p. 178.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 450.
7. Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians, pp. 150ff.
8. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p, 449.
9. Debo, p. 152; also La Vere, p 171.
10. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 459.
11. Wallace, p. 244; R. N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 142.
12. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 35.
13. Hampton Sides, Blood and Thunder, p. 308.
14. Thelma S. Guild and Harvey L. Carter, Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes, pp. 231ff.
15. Sides, p. 368.
16. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 398.
17. Letter to commanding officer, Fort Bascom, September 27, 1864; Official Records of the War of Rebellion, series 1, vol. 41, pt. 3, pp. 429–30.
18. Captain George Pettis, Kit Carson’s Fight with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians (Providence Press Company, Sidney S. Rider [copyright], 1878), p. 3.
19. Mildred Mayhall, The Kiowas, p. 161.
20. Pettis, p. 5.
21. David A. Norris, “Confederate Gunners Affectionately Called Their Hard Working Little Mountain Howitzers ‘Bull Pups,’” America’s Civil War, September 1995, pp. 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, and 90.
22. Pettis, p. 9.
23. Ibid.
24. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 395.
25. Ibid., p. 16.
26. Ibid.
27. 39th U.S. Congress; Second Session, Senate report 156, pp. 53, 74.
28. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, p. 86.
29. 39th U.S. Congress; Second Session, Senate report 156, pp. 73, 96.
30. Sides, p. 379.
31. Ibid.
32. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 461.

Fifteen PEACE, AND OTHER HORRORS

1. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 157.
2. Ibid.
3. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 484.
4. Abstracted from the Army Navy Journal 15, no. 52 (August 31, 1878); cited in Charles M. Robinson, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, p. 57.
5. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 411.
6. Richardson, p. 151.
7. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 412.
8. Alfred A. Taylor, account in Chronicles of Oklahoma, II, pp. 102–103.
9. Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs Laws and Treaties (Washington, D.C., 1903), vol. II, pp. 977ff.
10. Henry M. Stanley, “A British Journalist Reports the Medicine Lodge Councils of 1867,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 33 (Spring 1967): 282.
11. Ibid., 33:283.
12. Douglas C. Jones, The Treaty at Medicine Lodge, pp. 101ff.
13. Stanley, pp. 249–320.
14. Kappler, pp. 977ff.
15. Ibid., p. 982.
16. Richardson, p. 237, note 25.
17. Quanah Parker to Captain Hugh Lenox Scott, 1898, H. L. Scott Material, W. S. Nye Collection, Fort Sill Archives.
18. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, pp. 183–84.
19. Leavenworth to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 23, 1868, 40th Congress, Second Session, Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 60:2.
20. Richardson, p. 161.
21. Lawrence Schmeckebier, The Office of Indian Affairs, Its History, Activities and Organization, p. 48; Richardson, p. 164
22. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 485.

Sixteen THE ANTI-CUSTER

1. Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, p. 10, citing Morris Schaff, Old West Point, pp. 42–43.
2. Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star, p. 108.
3. Captain Joseph Dorst, “Ranald Slidell Mackenzie,” Twentieth Annual Reunion of the Association Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, June 12, 1889, p. 7.
4. F. E. Green, ed., “Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–79,” Museum Journal 10 (1966): 13ff.
5. U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York: Charles A. Webster and Co., 1885), p. 541.
6. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 9.
7. Dorst, p. 7.
8. Connell, pp. 128–29.
9. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 63ff.
10. Ibid., p. 67.
11. Ibid., p 69.
12. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 196, citing untitled Dickson manuscript, p. 37.
13. Tatum’s second annual report, August 12, 1870, 41st Congress, Third Session, House Ex. Doc. no. 1, vol. 1, 724–729, cited in Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 171.
14. Letter: Ranald S. Mackenzie to William T. Sherman, June 15, 1871.
15. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 167.
16. Charles H. Sommer, Quanah Parker, Last Chief of the Comanches, p. 43.
17. There is some disagreement about this among historians. Leading Comanche historian Ernest Wallace believes that the command was Quanah’s, as does Quanah’s principal biographer, Bill Neeley. Evidence to the contrary comes mainly from interviews conducted many years later, and cited extensively in Jo Ella Powell Exley’s Frontier Blood, with the Comanche warrior Cohayyah, who said that Parra-o-coom (Bull Bear) was the leader at that time. There does not seem to be any disagreement that Quanah led the night raid or that he led the attack on Heyl and Carter.
18. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 170.
19. Ibid., p. 173.
20. Ibid., p. 175. Carter notes that the Comanches were “poorly armed with muzzle-loading rifles and pistols, lances and bows.”
21. Ibid.
22. Colonel Richard Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 489.
23. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Society.
24. Carter, op. cit., p. 187.
25. Ibid., p. 187.
26. Ibid., p. 188.
27. Arthur Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society; cited in Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, p. 143.
28. Ibid., p. 189.
29. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie, p. 54.
30. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 194.

Seventeen MACKENZIE UNBOUND

1. Letter: Charles Howard to President Grant, cited in T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 515.
2. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 219.
3. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, pp. 252–53.
4. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 74.
5. W. A. Thompson, “Scouting with Mackenzie,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 10 (1897): 431.
6. Clinton Smith, The Boy Captives, p. 134.
7. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 194; Scott Zesch, The Captured, p. 159.
8. Mackenzie’s Official Report, October 12, 1872, “1872, Sept. 29, Attack on Comanche Village,” To The Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Texas.
9. Ibid.
10. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, pp. 185–86; Lehmann also notes that Batsena had been using a Spencer carbine, which suggests that the Comanches were finally beginning to trade for some of these weapons. By 1874 they would have many more of them.
11. R. G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 84.
12. Mackenzie’s Official Report, October 12, 1872.
13. Carter, Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 84.
14. Smith, The Boy Captives, p. 13.7
15. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, pp. 419ff.

Eighteen THE HIDE MEN AND THE MESSIAH

1. Thomas W. Kavanagh, The Comanches, pp. 474ff.
2. Rupert N. Richardson, “The Comanche Indians and the Fight at Adobe Walls,” Panhandle Plains Historical Review (Canyon, Texas) 4 (1931): 25.
3. Quanah’s feathered headdress is on display at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.
4. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 150.
5. T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison, Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the Trading Post, p. 3.
6. Colonel William F. Cody, The Adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody, p. viii.
7. Baker and Harrison, p 29; T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 523.
8. Baker and Harrison, p. 4
9. James L. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 22.
10. Ibid., p. 26.
11. Ibid., p. 8.
12. Francis Parkman, The California and Oregon Trails, p. 251.
13. Baker and Harrison, p. 25.
14. Ibid., p. 41.
15. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 523.
16. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 188.
17. Thomas Battey, Life and Adventures of a Quaker Among the Indians, p. 239; and Baker and Harrison, p. 39.
18. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 51.
19. Ernest Wallace, Ranald Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 119.
20. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 445; Haley, The Buffalo War, note on p. 232.
21. Letter: Agent J. M. Haworth to Enoch Hoag, May 5, 1874.
22. Battey, p. 302.
23. This was Coggia’s Comet.
24. Zoe Tilghman, Quanah Parker, Eagle of the Comanches, pp. 82–84.
25. Battey, p. 303.
26. Baker and Harrison, p. 44.
27. Quanah interview with Captain Hugh Lennox Scott, 1897, Fort Sill Archives.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 320.
29. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 57.
30. Letter: Agent J. M. Haworth to Enoch Hoag, June 8, 1874.
31. Quanah interview with Scott.
32. W. S. Nye Collection, “Iseeo Account,” pp. 58–60, Fort Sill Archives.
33. Quanah interview with Scott.
34. Olive King Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 167.
35. “Quanah Parker in Adobe Walls Battle,” Borger News Herald, date unknown, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Archives.
36. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 73.
37. Baker and Harrison, pp. 75ff.
38. Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 186.
39. Baker and Harrison, p. 66.
40. Ibid., pp. 64–66; Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, pp. 162ff.
41. Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 181.
42. Robert G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 98.
43. Quanah interview with Scott.
44. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 194.
45. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, pp. 256–57.

Nineteen THE RED RIVER WAR

1. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, pp. 472–74. These are rough estimates. The precise number of Comanches is not known, mainly because it was impossible to tell, on a historical basis, which Indians were on or off the reservation by measuring the number of rations drawn. The best estimate for ration-drawing Indians was 2,643, made in March 1874 by Agent Haworth. Clearly many of those were Comanches who later went back into the wild. Kavanagh analyzes the various estimates of Indian populations from censuses taken in November 1869, December 1870, and March 1874. We know that roughly 650 Comanches were in Quanah’s, Black Beard’s, and Shaking Hand’s bands; that is not counting the Comanches who surrendered in unknown numbers after Palo Duro Canyon.
2. When all the tribes in the southern plains surrendered, the number of adult males was little more than seven hundred; this is my estimate based on that and on the ratio of fighting men to total population in the surrendered tribes; see Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 200.
3. Letter: C. C. Augur to Mackenzie, August 28, 1874, in F. E. Green, ed., “Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–79,” Museum Journal, West Texas Museum Association (Lubbock, Texas), 10 (1966): 80ff.
4. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 124.
5. Nelson Miles to AAG, Dept. of Missouri, September 1, 1874; Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence, p. 87.
6. James L. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 193.
7. J. T. Marshall, The Miles Expedition of 1874–5, p. 39.
8. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, pp. 125–26.
9. Ibid., p. 131.
10. Augur to Mackenzie, August 28, 1874; Mackenzie Official Correspondence, p. 81.
11. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 484.
12. “Mackenzie’s Expedition through the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon as described by a special correspondent of the New York Herald,” October 16, 1874, Museum Journal 10 (1966): 114.
13. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 485.
14. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 136.
15. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 488.
16. John Charlton’s account in Captain Robert G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 39.
17. Charlton in Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 107, and Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 140.
18. Charlton in Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 108.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 109.
21. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 139.
22. “Journal of Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Messenger to the Quahada Comanches,” Red River Valley Historical Review 3, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 227.
23. Ibid., p. 229.
24. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 255, citing untitled Dickson manuscript.
25. “Journal of Mackenzie’s Messenger,” p. 237.
26. Ibid., p. 237.
27. Wayne Parker, Quanah Parker, Last Chief of the Kwahadi Obeys the Great Spirit, manuscript.
28. Ibid., p. 239.
29. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 229.
30. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 15.
31. Ibid.

Twenty FORWARD, IN DEFEAT

1. Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, pp. 186–88.
2. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, pp. 20–21, Mackenzie to Pope, letter, September 5, 1875.
3. Bill Neeley, The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker, p. 144.
4. Letter: Ranald S. Mackenzie to Isaac Parker, September 5, 1877 (Fort Sill Letter Book).
5. Charles Goodnight, “Pioneer Outlines Sketch of Quanah Parker’s Life,” Amarillo Sunday News and Globe, August 6, 1928.
6. Accounts of both actions are in letters from J. M. Haworth to William Nicholson, August 26, 1877, Kiowa Agency Microform, National Archives; and Colonel J. W. Davidson to Asst. Adjutant General, October 29, 1878, House Executive Document, 45th Congress, Third Session, p. 555.
7. John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo, pp. 249ff.
8. Neeley, p. 153.
9. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, pp. 186–87.
10. Scott Zesch, The Captured, pp. 220–21, citing Haworth and Mackenzie correspondence.
11. Lehmann, pp. 187–88.
12. Ibid., p. 232.
13. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 26.
14. Wellington Brink, “Quanah and the Leopard Coat Man,” Farm and Ranch, April 17, 1926.
15. Harley True Burton, “History of the JA Ranch,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (October 1927).
16. Brink.
17. Burton.
18. Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 212.
19. Lillian Gunter, “Sketch of the Life of Julian Gunter,” manuscript made for Panhandle Plains Historical Association, 1923, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum archives.
20. G. W. Roberson to J. Evetts Haley, June 30, 1926, manuscript in Panhandle Plains Historical Museum archives.
21. Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, p. 30.
22. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 31.
23. Council Meeting of May 23, 1884, Kiowas, 17:46, Oklahoma Historical Society.
24. H. P. Jones to Philemon Hunt, interview, June 21, 1883, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma Historical Society; George Fox to Philemon Hunt, October 13, 1884, Kiowa Agency files.
25. Quanah Parker to Charles Adams, interview, May 13, 1890, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma History Center.
26. James T. DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture, pp. 78–79.
27. Hugh Lennox Scott, Some Memories of a Soldier, p. 151.
28. Hobart Democrat-Chief (Oklahoma), August 4, 1925, interview with Knox Beall who said that Grantham was adopted and also Quanah’s business adviser.
29. Commissioner T. J. Morgan to Agent Adams, interview, December 18, 1890, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma Historical Society.
30. Profile of Charlie Hart by Evelyn Fleming, manuscript, Quanah Parker papers, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum.
31. Knox Beall to R. B. Thomas, interview, November 5, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma; Beall to Bessie Thomas, April 15, 1938.
32. Lehmann, pp. 233–34.
33. Dick Banks to Bessie Smith, interview, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma.
34. Robert B. Thomas, undated manuscript, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma; also Beall to Thomas, November 5, 1937.
35. Anna Gomez to Ophelia D. Vestal, interview, December 13, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
36. Letter: Bob Linger to Quanah, March 9, 1909, in Neeley Archive at Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
37. Star House still exists, in somewhat deteriorated condition, in Cache, Oklahoma. My tour of it included the dining room, which, based on photographs from the early twentieth century, is substantially as it was. The only way to tour it is by inquiring at the old trading post in Cache.
38. Gomez to Vestal, interview, December 13, 1937.
39. Memoirs of Mrs. Cora Miller Kirkpatrick, in Mrs. J. W. Pierce manuscript, Quanah Parker collection, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
40. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 170.
41. Ibid., p. 172.
42. Ibid., p. 190.

Twenty-one THIS WAS A MAN

1. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 65.
2. September 26, 1892, Hearing at Fort Sill, Comanches, Apaches, Kiowas, Quanah Parker Collection, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
3. William T. Hagan, United States-Comanche Relations, p. 287.
4. Knox Beall to R. B. Thomas, interview, November 5, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
5. Robert Thomas, document in Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma.
6. Mrs. J. L. Dupree to Jasper Mead, interview, March 17, 1938; Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
7. George W. Briggs to Eunice M. Mayer, interview, June 17, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
8. Robert G. Carter, Tragedies of Canon Blanco, pp. 79–80.
9. “Quanah Route Day Draws Large Crowds,” Dallas Morning News, October 25, 1910.
10. Robert Thomas document, in Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma.
11. T. R. Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of the American Hunter, p. 100.
12. Bill Neeley, The Last Comanche Chief, p. 220, citing 1985 Neeley interview with Anona Birdsong Dean.
13. Letter: T. R. Roosevelt to Francis Leupp, April 14, 1905, Indian Office Letters Rec’d.
14. Unidentified newspaper story about the school board in Quanah Parker Collection, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
15. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, pp. 332ff.
16. Hobart Democrat-Chief (Oklahoma), August 4, 1925.
17. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 113.
18. Frank Cummins Lockwood, The Apaches, p. 326; Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 129.

Twenty-two RESTING HERE UNTIL DAY BREAKS

1. “Quanah Route Day Draws Large Crowd,” Dallas Morning News, October 25, 1910.
2. Ibid.
3. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 124.