Battle of Pease River - After The Battle of Pease River

After The Battle of Pease River

At first Ross believed the woman he had captured was just another “old and unkempt squaw.” Some accounts say Martinez noticed her blue eyes, a rare trait for a native Comanche, and as the woman was questioned, she pointed at herself and said “me Cynthia.” Thus ended Cynthia Ann Parker’s quarter century among the Comanche, and began a tragic capture among people she didn’t want to be with. Although her family attempted to care for her, they simply did not and could not understand that while she might have been of European descent by birth, her character was utterly and totally Comanche. Ross reported that from the moment he captured her, Cynthia Ann begged to be returned to her people, the Comanche. Despite this, every man connected with the capture tried to take credit for "rescuing" Cynthia Ann. Martinez claimed he identified her by her hair and eyes, as did Killhair. Another version, that of Sul Ross, in his official report on the battle wrote of identifying Cynthia Ann Parker, again quoted in Indian Depredations, by J.W. Wilbarger: 'Why, Tom, this is a white woman, Indians do not have blue eyes.'

In any event, it was Ross who forced Parker to return to white society instead of allowing her to go back to the Indians as she asked upon capture. When he returned to Fort Belknap, Ross sent at once for Isaac Parker, a brother of Silas Parker and uncle to Cynthia Ann, who lived near Weatherford, Texas, but he was unable to positively identify this frail captive as his niece. Alas, though her remembered few words of English finally convinced Parker she was his niece, her travails had only begun. Cynthia Ann was essentially kept captive by her white family to prevent her from returning to the only family she knew, the Comanche. Topasannah died of influenza in 1864, followed shortly by her mother, who starved herself to death. Cynthia Ann already was in mourning for her sons when her daughter died, leaving her without a reason to live. According to her neighbors "She thought her sons were lost on the prairie after she was captured. She would take a knife and slash her breasts until they bled and then put the blood on some tobacco and burn it and cry for hours."

Ironically, of Cynthia Ann’s two sons, both escaped the Battle of Pease River, but one died later before he could be returned to his mother. Charles Goodnight, the famous scout and later rancher, found the sign of two horses who had trotted at a normal trot out of the camp for about a mile, then taken off at a dead run to the nearest large Comanche camp. Goodnight trailed the horses 50 miles to that camp, but as it had more than 1,000 Comanche present, and he had less than a dozen men with him, he abandoned the chase. Later in life, Quanah told Goodnight he was one of those horsemen, and his brother was the other. Though his brother died, Quanah became a famous chieftain among the Comanche's, indeed, he was the last of their war chiefs. Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief, at the end of his life would see his mother and sister’s remains disinterred, and reburied beside him at Fort Sill. In death Cynthia Ann was finally reunited with the son she loved so dearly. Quanah Parker refused to ever visit the site at Pease River where his family was destroyed. John Wesley of Foard County, Texas, in 1880, acquired the land upon which the fight had taken place, along Mule Creek. In 1918 he wrote "I became acquainted with Quanah Parker in 1882 or 1883 and met him quite often in Vernon where he and members of his tribe came to trade. He was very friendly and wanted to know all about his kinfolks in Parker County. He asked me to visit him at Fort Sill and I in return asked him to visit me, but he said he never went to Mule Creek because his father was killed there and his mother and brother (actually it was his sister) were captured and carried off. He said he never wanted to see the place."