Rachel Plummer - Captivity Among The Comanche

Captivity Among The Comanche

Plummer's book is considered an invaluable glimpse into the culture and mindset of the Comanche as a people before disease and war destroyed them. She not only recounted her feelings about her captivity, but detailed the life, lifestyle, and much as she could, the mindset of the Comanche. She detailed the roles men, women, children, and slaves, played in that society, and why. In her account of her life among the Comanche, Rachel wrote that six weeks after giving birth to a healthy son, the warriors decided she was slowed too much by childcare, and threw her son down on the ground. When he stopped moving, they left her to bury him. When she revived him, they returned and tied the infant to a rope, and dragged him through cactuses until the frail, tiny body was literally torn to pieces.

In the meantime, her father, James Parker, was searching frantically for her. Rachel wrote that she had never seen open space the size of the Great Plains, and her travels with the Comanche took her to what her father later thought was Colorado in the northernmost part of the Comancheria. She attended a giant meeting of all divisions and bands of the Comanche, their allies the Kiowa and the Kiowa Apache, while the tribes considered whether to drive the Texans completely from the Comancheria, and conquer Mexico. There were thousands of Indians present, and Rachel Plummer wrote she had never seen so many people, nor imagined there to be so many Indians. Her accounts of her travels, and the untamed land she saw, remains one of the best descriptions of the early west in existence.

Ironically, Rachel's lot among the Comanche improved dramatically in the month before her ransom. The women charged with her supervision routinely beat and tormented her. One day, Rachel simply snapped, and began fiercely beating the younger of the two women who she was a slave to. She expected to be killed at any moment, writing “at any second I expected a spear in the back, but instead, the warriors seemed amused, and gathered and watched us fight.” Rachel's long captivity might have sapped her physical strength, but it had left her with a surfeit of rage and hate which enabled her to easily defeat the younger woman, and nearly beat her to death. After the fight was over, Rachel was astonished that no one helped the young Comanche woman, and she herself finally helped her to the lodge, and dressed her wounds. This did not however assuage the anger of the older woman, who tried to burn Rachel alive. Rachel ended up beating her nearly to death as well, after burning her. At that point, the tribal council intervened, and heard out all three women, and first, ordered Rachel to repair the lodge, which had been broken in the second fight as settlement for the fights. Realizing with astonishment she was being treated as an equal and full Comanche, Rachel spoke to the Council and told them she refused the judgment unless the other two women assisted her in the repair, since she had started neither fight, and since she was being judged as a Comanche, not a slave, should be more fairly treated. The Council agreed, and ordered the three to repair the lodge.

Rachel was stunned that she was treated as an equal by the council, which later, she understood came with her demonstration of the one quality which elevated anyone in the eyes of the Comanche - courage. Later, one of the Chiefs of the band she was with told her:

”You are brave to fight. Good to fallen enemy. You are directed by the Great Spirit. Indians do not have pity on a fallen enemy. By our law, it is clear. It is contrary to our law to show foul play. She began with you, and you had a right to kill her. Your noble spirit forbad you. When Indians fight, the conqueror gives or takes the life of his or her antagonist, and they seldom spare them.”

Plummer found her lot much improved by these encounters, as she was correct that nothing she could have done could have earned her more respect than standing her ground and fighting. She noted in her book "they respected bravery more than anything, I learned. I wish I had known it sooner." She wrote how that affected her quite simply: “After that, I took up for myself, and fared much the better for it.”

Of course, the knowledge that her courage changed her status dramatically led to her possible conviction that had she shown such elan from the onset, her child would be alive. That haunted her. What she did not know at this point, was that her captivity was coming to an end. Her father's desperate efforts to find her had finally begun to pay off. He had located Comancheros who were willing to go and trade for her, and his instructions were to ransom her at any cost. The Comanches were camped north of Santa Fe when they were approached by Comancheros who wanted to ransom Rachel in accordance with the instructions of her father. She wrote in her book of the agony of believing that the traders had not offered enough to buy her freedom - and her not knowing that in fact, they were simply trying to get the best bargain, because her father had told them to pay any price, no matter how high, to rescue her. She was sold to them on June 19, 1837. Her rescue had been arranged by Colonel and Mrs. William Donaho, acting for the Parker family, and to whom she was delivered in Santa Fe after a journey of 17 days. Two weeks after her arrival, the Donahos, fearing trouble as the native population of Santa Fe was in virtual rebellion, fled some 800 miles (1,300 km) to Independence, Missouri, with Rachel with them. Three months later, Rachel's brother-in-law, Lorenzo D. Nixon, escorted her back to Texas, since her father was still out in the Comancherio searching for her. She was reunited with her husband on February 19, 1838, nearly two years after the Fort Parker Massacre. She was gaunt to the point of near starvation, covered with scars and sores, and in very poor health.