The Captives--Cynthia Ann and John Parker.
Of the captives we will briefly trace their subsequent checkered career.
After leaving the fort the two tribes, the Comanches and Kiowas,
remained and traveled together until midnight. They then halted on
an open prairie, staked out their horses, placed their pickets, and
pitched their camp. Bringing all their prisoners together for the first
time, they tied their hands behind them with raw-hide thongs so tightly
as to cut the flesh, tied their feet close together, and threw them
upon their faces. Then the braves, gathering around with their yet
bloody, dripping scalps, commenced their usual war dance. They danced,
screamed, yelled, stamping upon their prisoners, beating them with bows
until their own blood came near strangling them. The remainder of the
night these frail women suffered and had to listen to the cries and
groans of their tender little children.
Mrs. Elizabeth Kellogg soon fell into the hands of the Keechis, from
whom, six months after her capture, she was purchased by a party of
Delawares, who carried her into Nacogdoches and delivered her to Gen.
Houston, who paid them $150.00, the amount they had paid and all they
asked.
On the way thence to Fort Houston, escorted by James W. Parker and
others, a hostile Indian was slightly wounded and temporarily disabled
by a Mr. Smith. Mrs. Kellogg instantly recognized him as the savage who
had scalped the patriarch, Elder John Parker, whereupon, without judge,
jury or court-martial, or even dallying with “Judge Lynch,” he was
involentarily hastened to the “happy hunting grounds” of his fathers.
Mrs. Rachel Plummer remained a captive about eighteen months. Soon
after her capture she was delivered of a child. The crying of her
infant annoyed her captors, and the mother was forced to yield up her
offspring to the merciless fiends,--in whose veins the milk of human
sympathy had never flowed,--to be murdered before her eyes with all the
demoniacal demonstrations of brutality intact in those savages. The
innocent little babe but six weeks old was torn madly from the mother’s
bosom by six giant Indians, one of them clutched the little prattling
innocent by the throat, and like a hungry beast with defenseless prey,
he held it out in his iron grasp until all evidence of life seemed
extinct. Mrs. Plummer’s feeble efforts to save her child were utterly
fruitless. They tossed it high in the air and repeatedly let it fall
on rocks and frozen earth. Supposing the child dead they returned it
to its mother, but discovering traces of lingering life, they again,
by force, tore it angrily from her, tied plaited ropes around its neck
and threw its unprotected body into hedges of prickley pear. They
would repeatedly pull it through these lacerating rushes with demonic
yells. Finally, they tied the rope attached to its neck to the pommel
of a saddle and rode triumphantly around a circuit until it was not
only dead but litterly torn to shreds. All that remained of that once
beautiful babe was then tossed into the lap of its poor, distracted
mother. With an old knife the weeping mother was allowed to dig a grave
and bury her babe.
After this she was given as a servant to a very cruel old squaw, who
treated her in a most bruatl manner. Her son had been carried off by
another party to the far West and she supposed her husband and father
had been killed at the massacre. Her infant was dead, and death to her
would have been a sweet relief. Life was a burden, and driven almost
to desperation, she resolved no longer to submit to the intolerant old
squaw. One day when the two were some distance from, although still
in sight of the camp, her mistress attempted to beat her with a club.
Determined not to submit to this, she wrenched the club from the hands
of the squaw and knocked her down. The Indians, who had witnessed the
whole proceedings from their camp, now came running up, shouting at the
top of their voices. She fully expected to be killed, but they patted
her on the shoulder, crying, “Bueno! bueno!!” (Good! good!!) or well
done! She now fared much better and soon became a great favorite and
was known as the “Fighting Squaw.” She was eventually ransomed through
the agency of some Mexican Santa Fe traders, by a noble-hearted,
American merchant of that place, Mr. William Donahue. She was purchased
in the Rocky Mountains so far north of Santa Fe that seventeen days
were consumed in reaching that place. She was at once made a member of
her benefactor’s family, where she received the kindest of care and
attention. For long she accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Donahue on a visit
to Independence, Missouri, where she had the pleasure of meeting and
embracing her brother-in-law, L. D. Nixon, and by him was escorted back
to her people in Texas.[6]
[6]--During her stay with the Indians, Mrs. Plummer had many
thrilling adventures, which she often related after her
reclamation. In narrating her reminiscences, she said that
in one of her rambles, after she had been with the Indians
some time, she discovered a cave in the mountains, and in
company with the old squaw that guarded her, she explored
it and found a large diamond, but her mistress immediately
demanded it, and she was forced to give it up. She said also
here in these mountains she saw a bush which had thorns on it
resembling fish-hooks which the Indians used to catch fish
with, and she herself has often caught trout with them in the
little mountain streams.
On the 19th of February, 1838, she reached her father’s house, exactly
twenty-one months from her capture. She had never seen her little son,
James Pratt, since soon after their capture, and knew nothing of his
fate. She wrote, or dictated a thrilling and graphic history of her
capture and the horrors of her captivity, the tortures and hardships
she endured, and all the incidents of her life with her captors, with
observations among the savages.[7] In this book she tells the last she
saw of Cynthia Ann and John Parker. She died on the 19th of February,
1839, just one year after reaching home. As a remarkable coincidence
it may be stated that she was born on the 19th, married on the 19th,
captured on the 19th, released on the 19th, reached Independence on the
19th, arrived at home on the 19th, and died on the 19th of the month.
[7]--This valuable and interesting little book is now _rare_,
_scarce_ and _out_ of _print_. The full title of the volume
is:
“Narration of the Perilous Adventures, miraculous escapes
and sufferings of Rev. Jas. W. Parker, during a frontier
residence in Texas of fifteen years. With an impartial
geographical description of the climate, soil, timber, water,
etc., of Texas.”--To which is appended the narrative of the
capture and subsequent sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer
(his daughter) during a captivity of twenty-one months among
the Comanche Indians, etc. 18 mo, p. p. 95--35, boards.
Louisville, 1844.
Her son, James Pratt Plummer, after six long and weary years of
captivity and suffering, during which time he had lived among many
different tribes and traveled several thousand miles, was ransomed
and taken to Fort Gibson late in 1842, and reached home in February,
1843, in charge of his grand-father. He became a respected citizen of
Anderson county. Both he and his father are now dead.
This still left in captivity Cynthia and John Parker, who, as
subsequently learned, were held by separate bands. The brother and
sister thus separated, gradually forgot the language, manners and
customs of their own people, and became thorough Comanches as the long
years stole slowly away. How long the camera of their young brains
retained impressions of the old home within the fort, and the loved
faces of their pale-faced kindred, no one knows; though it would appear
that the fearful massacre should have stamped an impress indellible
while life continued. But the young mind, as the twig, is inclined by
present circumstances, and often forced in a way wholly foreign to its
native and original bent.
John grew up with the little semi-nude Comanche boys of his own age,
and played at “hunter” and “warrior” with pop-guns made of the elder
stem, or bows and arrows, and often flushed the chaparral for hare and
grouse, or entrapped the finny denizens of the mountain brooks with
the many peculiar and ingenious devices of the wild man for securing
for his repast the toothsome trout which abounds so plentifully in
that elevated and delightful region, so long inhabited by the lordly
Comanches.
When just arrived at manhood, John accompanied a raiding party down
the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Among the captives taken was a young
Mexican girl of great beauty, to whom the young warrior felt his
heart go out. The affection was reciprocated on the part of the fair
Dona Juanita, and the two were soon engaged to be married, so soon as
they should arrive at the Comanche village. Each day as the cavalcade
moved leisurely, but steadily along, the lovers could be seen riding
together, and discussing the anticipated pleasures of connubial life,
when suddenly John was prostrated by a violent attack of small-pox.
The cavalcade could not tarry, and so it was decided that the poor
fellow should be left all alone in the vast _Llano Esticado_ to die
or recover as fate decreed. But the little Aztec beauty refused to
leave her lover, insisting on her captors allowing her to remain and
take care of him. To this the Indians reluctantly consented. With
Juanita to nurse and cheer him up, John lingered, lived, and ultimately
recovered, when, with as little ceremony, perhaps, as consummated
the nuptials of the first pair in Eden, they assumed the matrimonial
relation; and Dona Juanita’s predilections for the customs and comforts
of civilization were sufficiently strong to induce her lord to abandon
the wild and nomadic life of a savage for the comforts to be found
in a straw-thatched _Jackal_. “They settled,” says Mr. Thrall, the
historian of Texas, “on a stock ranch in the far West.” When the civil
war broke out John Parker joined a Mexican company in the Confederate
service, and was noted for his gallantry and daring. He, however,
refused to leave the soil of Texas, and would, under no circumstances,
cross the Sabine into Louisiana. He was still living on his ranch
across the Rio Grande a few years ago, but up to that time had never
visited any of his relatives in Texas.
Of Cynthia Ann Parker (we will anticipate the thread of the narrative).
Four long years have elapsed since she was cruelly torn from a mother’s
embrace and carried into captivity. During this time no tidings have
been recieved of her. Many efforts have been made to ascertain her
whereabouts, or fate, but without success; when in 1840, Col. Len.
Williams, an old and honored Texian, Mr. ---- Stoat, a trader, and a
Delaware Indian guide, named “Jack Harry,” packed mules with goods and
engaged in an expedition of private traffic with the Indians.
On the Canadian river they fell in with Pa-ha-u-ka’s band of Comanches,
with whom they were peaceably conversant. And with this tribe was
Cynthia Ann Parker, who from the day of her capture had never seen a
white person. She was then about fourteen years of age and had been
with the Indians nearly five years.
Col. Williams found the Indian into whose family she had been adopted,
and proposed to redeem her, but the Comanche told him all the goods
he had would not ransom her, and at the same time “the fierceness of
his countenance,” says Col. Williams, “warned me of the danger of
further mention of the subject.” But old Pa-ha-u-ka prevailed upon him
to let them see her. She came and sat down by the root of a tree, and
while their presence was doubtless a happy event to the poor stricken
captive, who in her doleful captivity had endured everything but death,
she refused to speak a word. As she sat there, musing, perhaps, of
distant relatives and friends, and the bereavements at the beginning
and progress of her distress, they employed every persuasive art to
evoke some expression. They told her of her playmates and relatives,
and asked what message she would send them, but she had doubtless been
commanded to silence, and with no hope or prospect of return was afraid
to appear sad or dejected, and by a stocial effort in order to prevent
future bad treatment, put the best face possible on the matter. But the
anxiety of her mind was betrayed by the perceptible quiver of her lips,
showing that she was not insensible to the common feelings of humanity.
As the years rolled by Cynthia Ann speedily developed the charms of
womanhood, as with the dusky maidens of her companionship she performed
the menial offices of drudgery to which savage custom consigns
women,--or practiced those little arts of coquetry maternal to the
female heart, whether she be a belle of Madison Square, attired in the
most elaborate toilet from the _elite_ bazars of Paris, or the half
naked savage with matted locks and claw-like nails.
Doubtless the heart of more than one warrior was pierced by the
Ulyssean darts from her laughing eyes, or charmed by the silvery ripple
of her joyous laughter, and laid at her feet the game taken after a
long and arduous chase among the Antelope Hills.
Among the number whom her budding charms brought to her shrine was Peta
Nocona, a Comanche war chief, in prowess and renown the peer of the
famous and redoubtable “Big Foot,” who fell in a desperately contested
hand-to-hand encounter with the veteran ranger and Indian fighter,
Captain S. P. Ross, now living at Waco, and whose wonderful exploits
and deeds of daring furnished themes for song and story at the war
dance, the council, and the camp-fire.
Cynthia Ann,--stranger now to every word of her mother tongue save
her own name--became the bride of Pata Nocona, performing for her
imperious lord all the slavish offices which savageism and Indian
custom assigns as the duty of a wife. She bore him children, and we
are assured _loved_ him with a species of fierce passion, and wifely
devotion; “for some fifteen years after her capture,” says Victor M.
Rose, “a party of white hunters, including some friends of her family,
visited the Comanche encampment on the upper Canadian, and recognizing
Cynthia Ann probably through the medium of her name alone, sounded her
in a secret manner as to the disagreeableness of a return to her people
and the haunts of civilization. She shook her head in a sorrowful
negative, and pointed to her little, naked barbarians sporting at her
feet, and to the great greasy, lazy buck sleeping in the shade near at
hand, the locks of a score of scalps dangling at his belt, and whose
first utterance upon arousing would be a stern command to his meek,
pale-faced wife. Though in truth, exposure to sun and air had browned
the complexion of Cynthia Ann almost as intensely as were those of the
native daughters of the plains and forest.
She retained but the vaguest remembrance of her people--as dim and
flitting as the phantoms of a dream; she was accustomed now to the wild
life she led, and found in its repulsive features charms which “upper
tendom” would have proven totally deficient in:--“I am happily wedded,”
she said to these visitors. “I love my husband, who is good and kind,
and my little ones, who, too, are his, and I cannot forsake them!”
* * * * *
What were the incidents in the savage life of these children which in
after times became the land marks in the train of memory, and which
with civilized creatures serves as incentives to reminiscence?
“Doubtless,” says Mr. Rose, “Cynthia Ann arrayed herself in the calico
borne from the sacking of Linville, and fled with the discomfited
Comanches up the Gaudaloupe and Colorado, at the ruthless march of John
H. Moore, Ben McCulloch and their hardy rangers. They must have been
present at the battle of Antelope Hills, on the Canadian, when Col.
John S. Ford, “Old Rip” and Captain S. P. Ross encountered the whole
force of the Comanches, in 1858; perhaps John Parker was an actor in
that celebrated battle; and again at the Wichita.”
“Their’s must have been a hard and unsatisfactory life--the Comanches
are veritable Ishmaelites, their hands being raised against all men,
and every man’s hand against them. Literally, “eternal vigilance was
the price of liberty” with them, and of life itself. Every night the
dreaded surprise was sought to be guarded against; and every copse was
scanned for the anticipated ambuscade while upon the march. Did they
flount the blood-drabbled scalps of helpless whites in fiendish glee,
and assist at the cruel torture of the unfortunate prisoners that
fell into their hands? Alas! forgetful of their race and tongue, they
were thorough savages, and acted in all particulars just as their
Indian comrades did. Memory was stored but with the hardships and the
cruelties of the life about them; and the stolid indifference of mere
animal existence furnishes no finely wrought springs for the rebound of
reminiscence.”
* * * * *
The year 1846, one decade from the fall of Parker’s Fort, witnessed
the end of the Texian Republic, in whose councils Isaac Parker served
as a senator, and the blending of the _Lone Star_ with the gallaxy
of the great constellation of the American Union;--during which time
many efforts were made to ascertain definitely the whereabouts of
the captives, as an indispensable requisite to their reclamation;
sometimes by solitary scouts and spies, sometimes through the medium
of negotiation; and sometimes by waging direct war against their
captors,--but all to no avail.
* * * * *
Another decade passes away, and the year 1856 arrives. The hardy
pioneers have pushed the frontier of civilization far to the north and
west, driving the Indian and the buffalo before them. The scene of
Parker’s Fort is now in the heart of a dense population; farms, towns,
churches, and school houses lie along the path by which the Indians
marched from their camp at the “water-hole” in that bloody May of
1836. Isaac Parker is now a Representative in the Legislature of the
State of Texas. It is now twenty years since the battle of San Jacinto;
twenty years since John and Cynthia Ann were borne into a captivity
worse than death; the last gun of the Mexican war rung out its last
report over the conquered capital of Mexico ten long years ago; but
John and Cynthia Ann Parker have sent no tokens to their so long
anxious friends that they even live: Alas! time even blunts the edge of
anxiety, and sets bounds alike to the anguish of man, as well as to his
hopes.
The punishment of Prometheas is not of this world!