Parker County Today October 2015 | Page 37

flag they said they wanted only a safe
place to camp and some beef. The
settlers didn’t buy the ruse and were
promptly overrun. Five were killed,
five were taken. It is here that things
get murky.
Two story lines have developed concerning the captivity
of John Richard Parker. The first
chronicles how in 1842, after six
years of searching, whites found
and ransomed him from the Indians.
He would have been 12 or so at
the time. According to this narrative, some years after his return, his
grieving mother prevailed upon him
to go and retrieve the sister who’d
been taken with him — Cynthia Ann
Parker.
Capt. Randolph Marcy, in the
Texas/Oklahoma area to locate the
headwaters of the Red River, issued
an official report in 1852, that seems
to confirm this action.
Marcy wrote: “The brother of the
woman, who had been ransomed
by a trader and brought home to his
relatives, was sent back by his mother
for the purpose of endeavoring upon
his sister to leave the Indians and
return to her family; but he stated
to me that on his arrival she refused
to listen to the proposition, saying
that her husband, children, and all
that she held most dear, were with
the Indians, and there she should
remain.”
In A Fate Worse Than Death:
Indian Captivities in the West, 18301885, Susan Michno argues it was
not John Parker that Marcy spoke
with.
“Who was the white ‘brother’
who spoke with Marcy?” she asks.
“It was not John Parker who was
ransomed by a trader and taken
home to Texas. Was it her [Cynthia
Ann’s] cousin, James Pratt Plummer,
who talked to Marcy? There is no
record of Plummer ever going west to
look for his cousin.”
According to Michno, hard
facts concerning the fate of John
Richard Parker are hard to come
by. Following her retrieval in 1860,
Cynthia Ann could shed but little
light upon the matter, saying as far

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