PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
APRIL 2016
uncanny grasp of things that were and of things that could
be, led his people as they struggled to swallow their pride
and start down a path they never thought they would see
stretched before them — the White Man’s Road.
According to the Handbook of Texas Online: “While
most Quahadas, indeed most Indians, found adjustment to
the reservation life difficult or impossible, Quanah made
the transition with such seeming ease that federal agents,
seeking a way to unite the various Comanche bands,
named him chief. While this action was recognized as
lying outside the jurisdiction of the federal government
and, perhaps more significantly, utterly without precedent
in Comanche tradition, the tribe, essentially leaderless,
acquiesced. It was a fortuitous choice, for over the
next quarter century, Quanah provided his people with
forceful, yet pragmatic, leadership.”
Quanah’s agenda was simple — assimilate without
forfeiting honor. He promoted self-sufficiency and selfreliance, supported construction of schools on reservation
lands. In fact, he urged Indian youths to embrace the
white man’s ways, something he had fought against his
entire life. He saw this as the only way forward that did
not end in more misery for his people.
Other Comanche leaders vied for the position of
principal chief of the Comanches. Quanah was simply
a more attractive candidate to the white authorities:
he’d seen the writing on the wall and spoken in favor
of coming in to the reservation, displaying an acumen
that caused the whites to see him as their best hope for a
successful transition. And Quanah held a very desirable
hole card — he was half white. Once he revealed this to
his old enemy Gen. Ranald S. MacKenzie, the authorities
saw him in an even more favorable light. Not surprisingly,
his rivals immediately credited his white blood for his
swift rise to preeminence. Historian Ernest Wallace
disagreed, writing: “He [Quanah] cooperated intelligently
as a free Comanche — not to be mistaken for a white
man’s Indian.”
Learning of his white side, MacKenzie immediately
tried to contact Quanah’s mother, the famous Comanche
captive Cynthia Ann Parker, only to learn she had died in
1870 in Anderson County, Texas. According to William
T. Hagan, writing in American Indian Leaders: “Two years
later MacKenzie wrote one of Cynthia Ann’s brothers
in Texas, conveying Quanah’s desire to meet his Texas
relatives and his request for a wagon to help him live like
a white man. His letter apparently brought no response.
It was not until Quanah became a celebrity that his
white relatives were interested in acknowledging their
relationship to a former Comanche raider.”
Apparently, Quanah’s surrender sans obeisance and
his sheer usefulness to the whites in controlling the
Comanches and cleaning up the spotty resistance still
sprinkled across the Llano Estacado softened MacKenzie
somewhat; but relatively little is known of their posthostilities relationship. In a 2010 interview with historynet.
com, author S.C. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon),
asked about MacKenzie’s meeting with Quanah and their
subsequent relationship, said: “A historian would like
to have seen into that room. Mackenzie gave [Quanah]
22
etiquette lessons, spent time with him, tried to find his
family, and gave him jobs to do. There was clearly this
relationship. Unfortunately, because of the nature of
Mackenzie, he never said anything. Mackenzie would
have been famous if he had only written the kinds of
reports Custer did. Mackenzie’s reports were, ‘Went into
field…killed Indians…end of report.’ Of course, from
Quanah you get anecdotal accounts, but hardly anything.
It’s just frustrating.”
Quanah’s prodigious influence prevented the spread
of the pan-Native American Ghost Dance among the
Comanche, an outcome that served both U.S. and
Comanche interests. Had the dance caught on the U.S.
Army almost certainly would have taken action to squelch
the unrest, as it did in other areas of the country. White/
Indian relations would have been set back.
The Ghost Dance’s initiator, Wodziwob [Gray Hair],
claimed while in a trance to have visited another world
where he learned an Indian resistance movement soon
would roll back the white tide, restore the Indian to his
former life and return the all-important buffalo to the
plains. The plains would become happy hunting grounds
on Earth. All the Indians had to do was perform certain
round dances at night.
“Not all Indian tribes fell under the influence of the
Ghost Dance. The Comanche Chief Quanah Parker did
not believe Wovoka’s [another Ghost Dance proponent]
promise of invincibility to the white man’s bullets because
he had listened to a similar prophecy sixteen years
[earlier] which was included in the incantations of Esa-tai,
the Wolf Prophet. He had believed Esa-tai in 1874, but
not now, because it was clear to him that the return of the
buffalo and the former way of life was not going to occur
no matter how desperately Wovoka and his disciples
throughout the many tribes hoped for their vision.
Quanah’s counseling against the Ghost Dance prevented
the Comanche from experiencing a similar tragedy as
those at Wounded Knee.” — www.themystica.com.
The tragedy averted? On Dec. 29, 1890, the U.S.
Cavalry killed 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The prevalence
of the Ghost Dance and its accompanying beliefs at
the reservation led to what is commonly known as the
Massacre at Wounded Knee.
Sources:
• Handbook of Texas Online
• The Last Comanche Chief: The Life a nd Times of
Quanah Parker, Bill Neely, 1995, John Wiley and Sons,
Inc.
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the
Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian
Tribe in American History, S.C. Gwynne, Scribner, 2010
• www.themystica.com.
• Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, by Ernest
Wallace, West Texas Museum and Association, 1964.
• Other Internet sources