36
est and thickest untanned hide of a
buffalo’s neck. They filled between
the hide with paper.’”
Decades later, far removed
from the savagery of the frontier,
Goodnight recounted the 1860
encounter on Mule Creek, a tributary
of the Pease River in far North Texas,
to his biographer:
“‘The fight, which lasted only a
few minutes, continued on the plain
until all the Indians were killed.
Ross had a hand-to-hand fight with
the chief and killed him. One of the
squaws was riding a good iron-gray
horse, and in spite of the fact that she
had an infant in her arms, kept up
with the six or eight bucks. I under-
stand that Ross ordered one of his
rangers, Tom Kelliher, to take charge
of her, fearing, I suppose, that the
regulars would come upon her, as
they had the others, and kill her. To
the credit of the old Texas Rangers,
not one of them shot a squaw that
day. The sergeant in charge of the
military squad probably did not know
them from bucks and probably did
not care.’
“‘After the fight all returned to a
cottonwood grove along the river to
camp, taking with us the squaw and
her infant in arms. We rode right over
her dead companions. I thought then
and still think how exceedingly cruel
this was.’”
Doubtless, Cynthia Ann Parker
was horrified as her callous new
captors led her across the broken
bodies of those she’d counted as
neighbors, family and friends. During
the quarter century she’d been among
the Indians her English had faded to
near nothing, and for all intents and
purposes she’d become a Comanche.
That day not only horror and fear but
grief overwhelmed her.
“‘The squaw was in terrible
grief,’” Goodnight continued.
“‘Through sympathy for her, thinking
that her distress would be the same
as that of our women under similar
circumstances, I thought I would try
to console her and make her under-
stand that she would not be hurt.
When I got nearer I noticed that she
had blue eyes and light hair, which
had been cut short. It was a little
difficult to distinguish her blonde
features, as her face and hands were
Lucien Maxwell
extremely dirty from handling so much meat.’”
Goodnight’s discovery startled his company and rumors that she might be
the Parker girl who’d been taken so many years before spread like wildfire.
“‘Her grief was distressing and intense, and I shall never forget the impres-
sion it made on me,’” Goodnight told Haley. “‘I think here [Sul] Ross got the
impression that he had killed her husband, Nocona, as she was saying a great
deal about Nocona, meaning, however, that she was in the Nocona band of
indians, a word which, as I understand, means to go, ramble, and not make
friends.’”
Ross apparently thought he’d killed Chief Peta Nocona — Cynthia Ann’s
husband and the father of the famous Comanche chief Quanah Parker — at
the Pease River battle. Though history reports this is true, in his Goodnight
biography, Haley wrote: “Ross seems to have always believed that he killed
Nocona, and history has so recorded since. He did kill a chief whose name
was No-bah, but Nocona died a long time afterwards while hunting plums on
the Canadian.”
Perhaps this is one of those instances when history becomes a multiple
choice question. Contradicting Haley, the Texas State Historical Association
website asserts: “Many years later, Quanah [Nocona’s son] raised doubts
about the identity of the chief killed at the Pease River, perhaps because of a
Comanche belief that ill repute disturbs the peace of the dead. But the prepon-
derance of evidence supports the contention that Peta Nocona was the chief
killed at the Pease. Ross’s Mexican interpreter, for instance, who said Nocona
had taken him as a slave when he was a child, identified the chief. Cynthia