1839, she bore her third child. March
19, 1839, depleted and dispirited, she
died in Houston, the child following
her in death two days later.
Born March 22, 1819, Rachel died
a few days shy of her 20th birthday.
(Of course some sources list a different birthdate for her. Various “facts”
of the Parkers’ epic saga are rendered
differently by different writers, historians and genealogists.)
According to the Handbook of
Texas Online, “Captive white women
in Texas, as in much of the territory
west of the Mississippi River, were
usually compelled to serve their captors as concubines and menials (the
roles of most Indian women). Their
ordeals frequently led to early deaths,
before or after redemption. The experiences of Rachel Plummer and Sarah
Ann Horn dramatically illustrate the
horrors of female captivity among the
Plains Indians… .”
Unlike her controversial and now
famous cousin Cynthia Ann, who
voluntarily spent 25 years with the
Comanche, Rachel did not assimilate,
perhaps because unlike Cynthia Ann
she’d been taken as a young woman,
not a child. “…my flesh was never
well from bruises and wounds during
my captivity,” Rachel recorded.
As if the whole Parker family affair
was an old melodrama playing out,
in late 1842, Rachel’s first-born son,
James Pratt Plummer, the 18-monthold who’d been snatched with her
from Fort Parker in ’36 — whom
she’d heard beaten for crying out to
her and had supposed dead — was
located and ransomed. He married
twice and fathered four children. In
1862, some 20 years after his return
to white society, James Pratt Plummer, 27, a Confederate soldier fighting i