34
use his skills as a drover to trail Texas
beef to rebel forces fighting in the
south and east. They were right to
hold such fears, as after they allowed
him to return home Loving did supply
the Confederacy with much-needed
beef. Loving gained permission to
return home after friends Lucien
Maxwell and Kit Carson interceded
for him, persuading Union officials to
let him go. One can only surmise that
they had to endure a few warranted
“I told you so’s.”
The war drew the men of Texas
into the ranks of the Confederate
Army, taking most of them to fight
and perhaps die on far off battlefields,
leaving women and children, the
elderly, and what men remained to
face an increasingly deadly threat on
the frontier, the far eastern stretches
of Comancheria, a considerable
swath of real estate covering eastern
New Mexico, West Texas (including
the Panhandle and plains running
up to the Western Cross Timbers),
the Edwards Plateau, the Oklahoma
Panhandle and Wichita Mountain
area, southeastern Colorado and
southwestern Kansas. For the first half
of the 19th century, the Comanche,
called the “Lords of the Plains,” held
sway over this area. Their power
began to erode in the crush of
Manifest Destiny as settlers and the
army with their “soldier forts” pushed
into the region.
But as Texas men left to fight for
the south, federal authorities aban-
doned forts along the frontier, choos-
ing to bolster their fighting forces in
the south and east rather than protect
secessionist settlers on the fringes of
“civilization.” In the ensuing vacuum
Comanche and Kiowa raiding parties
stepped-up the terror, attacking
isolated farms dotting the frontier of
North Texas.
Goodnight became embroiled in
the running war between marauding
Indians and the Texans left to fend
for themselves, ultimately becom-
ing a frontier scout, notably, with J.J.
Cureton’s rangers. Goodnight spoke
freely with biographer Haley about
his scouting days, his words clearly
conveying a sense of confidence his
abilities.
“‘It was the scout’s business to
guide the company under all condi-
Cynthia Ann Parker and daughter, Topusana
(Prairie Flower), in 1861
tions,’” Haley quoted and wrote. “‘Thus, above all things, the scout and
plainsman had to have a sense — an instinct — for direction. He had to have
the faculty of never needing a compass. With the point of destination fixed
in his mind, a thorough plainsman could go to it as directly in darkness as in
daylight, on a calm, cloudy day as well as in bright sunshine with the wind
blowing steadily from one quarter. Few men have this instinct. Yet in the few
it is to be trusted as absolutely as the homing instinct of a wild goose. A man
with such an instinct relies on what is in his mind more than he does on stars
or winds or the sun or landscape features. I never had a compass in my life.
I was never lost. In all my frontier experience, I knew but one man who had
keener senses than I had. He was a Tonkawa Indian and his eyesight would
carry farther than mine.’”
Goodnight’s adventures as a scout could fill a hefty tome, but perhaps
his most fascinating scouting episode involved the recovery of one of the
most famous white captives carried off by Indians — Cynthia Ann Parker.
Goodnight, scouting with Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross,
is said to have picked up the trail of the Comanche band Cynthia Ann had
assimilated into. (The rangers were completely unaware of her presence.) They
were nomads drifting across the sometimes open sometimes broken country
west of the Cross Timbers out to the Staked Plain of the Panhandle. Mother of
famed Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, Cynthia Ann had been stolen from
Fort Parker, a private fort built in 1834-35 by Silas M. and James W. Parker
near the headwaters of the Navasota River in Limestone County near present-
day Groesbeck. A party of mainly Quohada Comanches numbering between
500 and 700 warriors arrived at the fort on the morning of May 19, 1836.