Cover from the collection The Black Stranger and Other American Tales (2005).
Background Colour: -White- -NavajoWhite- -Wheat- -Beige- -AntiqueWhite- -LightGray- -Silver- -BurlyWood- -Tan- -Black- -Blue-
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Published in The Black Stranger and Other American Tales, 2005.
Excerpts from letters to August Derleth (circa January 1933) and H. P. Lovecraft (5 December 1935),
selected, arranged and titled by the editor, from copies of original letters provided by Glenn Lord.
Cover from the collection The Black Stranger and Other American Tales (2005).
The Indians of Texas were: the Cenis, who lived in the vicinity of the Neches and the Trinity Rivers, and were first encountered by La Salle in 1686—they soon became extinct; the Adaes, who lived near what is now San Augustine, and who disappeared about 1820; the Carankaways, who lived adjacent to Galveston Bay—a ferocious, cannibalistic race, akin to the Caribs, they were destroyed in a great battle with the Spaniards in 1744; the Jaranamas, Tamiquez, and Anaquas, small clans living on the lower reaches of the San Antonio River; the Coushattis, a branch of the Muskogees, living in the lower valley of the Trinity—they were broken in the battle of Medina; the Alabamas, who lived along the Neches; the Seminoles, who came to Florida with the Cherokees—others later migrated from Florida, and took up their abode near the Border; the Tonkaways, who lived along the Brazos whence they spread to the Guadalupe—they were destroyed on their reservation by the Comanches in 1864; the Lipans, who were a strong and important tribe, in and about Bandera County, until dealt a terrific defeat by Bigfoot Wallace and his rangers, after which the survivors migrated to Mexico; the Apaches, who need no advertisement—I doubt their assumed kinship with the Lipans; the Carrizos, who were of the Pueblo stock, living along the Rio Grande—they were absorbed by the Mexicans; the Tiguas, Pueblos, living near what is now El Paso; the Caddos, who lived mainly in the eastern part of the state—they included the Keechies, Ionies, Wacos, Nacogdoches, Ayish, Tawakana, Towash, Wichitas, Cachatas, Tejas, and Anadarkos; the Kickapoos, who were driven westward by the white drift—many crossed into Mexico; the Cherokees, who emigrated to Texas between 1822 and 1829, were broken in the war of 1839, and moved to reservations in Oklahoma, later; the Delawares, immigrants from the eastern states, and friendly to the white men; the Comanches, the strongest tribe in Texas, and the lords of the western plains—a more ferocious race never trod this continent.
Authorities class the Comanches as members of the Shoshonean race, which also includes the Shoshones, Utes, and Pawnees. But I wouldn’t have cared to tell an old-time Comanche that he was of the same blood as the Utes; a knife in the guts would have been the probable retort. Their legends made them blood-kin with the Apaches, whom ethnologists name Athabascans, along with the Navajoes. Yet the Comanches and Apaches seem to have had many points in common, though much intermarrying might explain that. At any rate the Comanches were the most skillful horse-thieves on the continent, not even excepting the white rustlers that worked between El Paso and New Orleans back in the ’70s.
It would take a large volume to tell the full story of Quanah Parker, and of Cynthia Anne Parker, yes, and of Peta Nocona, the last war-chief of the Comanches. It is the classic tale of the Southwest, which has been rewritten scores of times, fictionized and dramatized. I will tell it as briefly as possible.
In the year of 1833 a band of settlers, about thirty-four in number, headed by John Parker, came from Illinois and formed a colony on the Navasota River, in Limestone County, Texas—then, of course, part of Mexico. In 1836, when the Texans were fighting for their freedom, the Comanches were particularly bold in raiding the scattered settlements, and it was in one of those raids that Fort Parker fell. Seven hundred Comanches and Kiowas literally wiped it off the earth, with most of its inhabitants. A handful escaped, through the heart-shaking valor of Falkenberry and his son Evan, both of whom fell a year afterward on the shores of the Trinity in a battle so savage and bloody that the Comanches who survived it retold it as long as they lived. But there Fort Parker passed into oblivion, and among the women and children taken captive were Cynthia Anne Parker, nine years old, and her brother John, a child of six.
They were not held by the same clans. John came to manhood as an Indian, but he never forgot his white blood. The sight of a young Mexican girl, Donna Juana Espinosa, in captivity among the red men, wakened the slumbering heritage of his blood. He escaped from the tribe, carrying her with him, and they were married. He took up his life again with the people of his own race, joined General Bee’s command, fought with characteristic valor through the Civil War, and afterwards became a well-to-do Texas ranchman.
For Cynthia Anne a different fate was reserved. In 1840 a group of traders found her on the Canadian River with Pahauka’s Comanches. They tried to ransom her, but the Indians refused; and then she was seen no more by white men until about 1851. Meanwhile she had grown to womanhood; there were various suitors for her hand, among them Eckitoacup, of whom more later. He was a shrewd fellow, more given to intrigue than to war. But Cynthia Anne became the mate of Peta Nocona, whose fame hung gorily at his scalp-belt, and whose diplomacy was the stroke of a tomahawk. She bore him children, among them a son, Quanah, which means something similar to sweet fragrance. When white men next came into the Comanche camp where Cynthia Anne dwelt, they strove to persuade her to accompany them back to her white relatives. She refused; she had almost forgotten that other life, as she had forgotten her native tongue. Then, in 1860, her Indian life was ended, bloodily, violently, just as her white man’s life had ended.
Peta Nocona, apparently kind to her in his way, and possessing all the finer qualities of the red man, was, nevertheless, an unbridled devil along the frontier. His trail was a red one, and many a settler’s cabin went up in flames, and many a frontiersman went into the long dark scalpless because of him. When retribution came, it was merciless. On the Pease River his Nemesis overtook him, in the shape of Sul Russ, later governor of the State, and his Rangers. The surprize favored the white men. They were among the tipis shooting and slashing before the Comanches realized what was occurring. They broke and scattered, every man for himself.
Peta Nocona caught up his daughter, a girl of fifteen, and rode away with her. Ross was in full pursuit, knowing his prey. The girl was riding behind her father, and Ross’s first shot killed her, and glanced from the shield that hung on Peta Nocona’s back. As she fell she pulled the red man off his horse, but he hit on his feet, cat-like, and drove an arrow into the body of Ross’s horse. The wounded beast began plunging and Peta Nocona began winging his arrows at the rider in blinding speed. Undoubtedly the erratic motions of the wounded horse caused him to miss his first few shafts, and Ross, firing desperately even while fighting for his seat, struck and shattered the Indian’s elbow. Peta Nocona staggered and dropped his bow, and Ross, jerking the trembling horse to a standstill, took good aim and shot his enemy through the body; the Comanche stood as if dazed, then, as another bullet from Ross’s pistol tore through his torso, he reeled to a tree near-by, and grasping it for support, began to chant his death-song. Ross approached him, and ordered him to surrender, but his only reply was a ferocious thrust of his lance, which Ross narrowly avoided. Ross shrugged his shoulders, and turned away, making a gesture to his Mexican servant. The crash of a shotgun marked the finish of the last great warchief of the Comanches.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Kelliheir had ridden down a squaw who was trying to escape on a pony with her papoose. His pistol was cocked and leveled when he saw that she was a white woman. And so Cynthia Anne Parker came again into the lands of her people. The rest is history too obvious to reiterate. She lived with her people, her brother, Colonel Parker, a member of the Legislature, but she was never happy, always mourning for her red mate and children, always seeking to escape back to that wilder life from which she had been brutally torn. In 1864 both she and her baby went into the long dark. And one might question, whether into the Christian Paradise, or the Indian’s Happy Hunting Grounds.
It’s a grim tale, a terrible, pathetic tale. It did not make for mercy on either side. The story of Quanah Parker is brighter, as the story of man must nearly always be less fraught with tragedy than that of woman. Quanah escaped that slaughter on the Pease River, a lad of about twelve years of age. His life at first was bitter hard, for he lived only by his own skill and cunning; and it was this fierce training as well as his white blood, that made him superior in physique and craft to his red kinsmen. One doubts if he ever gave his white heritage any thought. Indeed, his portraits give no hint of any but Indian blood.
Doubtless his youth was much like that of all other young Comanches; he fished, hunted, stole horses, pillaged the frontiers of his white kinsmen, indulged in tribal warfare and the brutal “smoking horses” and tortured and took the scalps of his enemies when he could. When he came into young man-hood he loved Weckeah, the daughter of old Yellow Bear. But she had another suitor—Tannap, son of that old Eckitoacup, who had rivaled Peta Nocona in his youth. Eckitoacup was crafty and far-sighted, a red-skinned business man, really, and he was very wealthy. The Comanches measured their wealth by the number of their horses; Eckitoacup possessed no less than a hundred ponies. Quanah had exactly one horse. But he had an advantage no other Comanche possessed; he was half-white, and the great-grandson of grim old John Parker who died in the smoking ruins of his fort among a red heap of Comanche corpses. Quanah went to his friends, wild young braves like himself, and they gave him their ponies. The significance of this can easily be under-rated. They were poor young braves; they owned only one horse apiece. When they gave their mounts to Quanah, it was as if they had freely tendered him their whole fortune, all their worldly goods and hope of future advancement. It was more; a Comanche’s horse was more to him than his bank account is to the average man. His horse meant the difference between life and death. When he gave it up or lost it, there was only one way to get another, and that was to steal it. And to steal meant that first he must borrow, in the savage ritual of “smoking horses” and carry the terrible scars of a raw-hide whip on his back for the rest of his life. For he could not raid the remudas of the settlers or the rival tribes on foot.
So Quanah brought ten horses to Yellow Bear’s wickiup—only to find that Eckitoacup had offered twenty horses to purchase his son a wife. There may be seen less a desire to pamper his worthless son than to avenge on Quanah the defeat he had met at the hands of the young brave’s father. Weckeah was prepared for the bridal party.
But, as has been reiterated, Quanah was half a white man. None of the Indian fatalism was his. In his veins burned the hot blood of those unconquerable white-skinned wanderers who have never known any gods but their own desires. Twenty-one young braves listened to Quanah’s words in amazement, and fell in with his desires. When night fell, shadowy figures stole to Weckeah’s tipi. There was a low rustling of whispering, then she glided from the tent and became herself a shadow among the hurrying shadows. When dawn rose, a fierce yell went up from the camp on the Canadian. Quanah was gone, and with him Weckeah and twenty-one of the most stalwart young braves.
They rode southward, into the mountain country of West Texas. There they pitched their camp and began raiding the ranches of the whites—a dangerous game, a breath-taking, touch-and-go game. But they prospered, and soon owned a great number of mounts. To the outlaw band came other discontented young braves, and the young men slipped back to the main tribe to steal women for themselves. After perhaps a year, the clan had grown from a score-odd to several hundred. A new tribe had come into existence; a new star flashed redly across the frontier; a new chief brandished his scalp-tufted lance and sent his war-whoop shivering across the river-lands.
Then came old Eckitoacup, thirsting for vengeance, with a horde of lean naked riders, painted for war, their lances glimmering in the dust cloud their horses’ hoofs lifted along the horizon. It has been said that Eckitoacup was a business man. His lust for vengeance did not exceed his caution, his concern for his own painted hide. He found Quanah’s clan ready and more than willing to join battle. And he backed down. There was a parley, the pipe of peace was smoked, and Eckitoacup’s injured feelings were soothed with a gift of nineteen fine horses from Quanah’s now enormous herds.
But though Quanah’s red brothers were no match for him in force or craft, he could not for ever compete on equal terms with his white kin. His continual raids on the horse-herds had the Texans fighting mad. And in those days, when Texans lost their temper, blood was spilt in appalling quantities. The soldiers stationed along the frontier were more or less useless, but the Rangers were riding, and the settlers were notching their sights on their own hook. The crack of the rifle answered the twang of the bow-string, the bowie knife dipped as deeply in red paint as the tomahawk; raid was met by fierce counter-raid, and the white men, who in early days had barely held their own in their tenacious grasp on the land, were moving like a juggernaut westward, crushing all in their path.
Quanah pulled up stakes and drifted back up the long trail to the Canadian River again. Of his desperate defensive wars and eventual and inevitable defeat, there is little point in telling. He came at last to live in a valley of the Wichita Mountains, in a two-storied frame house, “the White House of the Comanches,” with thirty rooms and all the comforts of civilization. Of his thousands of acres of land, some two hundred and fifty were put into cultivation; his horses numbered a hundred, and of “whoahaws” he had a thousand—nor is it recorded that his more needy kinsmen ever lacked for beef. He was one of the six chiefs in the parade at the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt—the others were Little Plume, the Blackfoot, American Horse and Hollow Horn Bear, both Sioux, Geronimo, the Apache, and Buckskin Charlie, the Ute. He was a personal friend of Teddy’s. He educated his children at Chilocco and at Carlisle. Among the Indians he wore moccasins and buckskins, among the whites he wore the most genteel garments of civilization—so-called. When he died, I do not know, but in 1905 he was living in his big white man’s house, in the Wichita valley, with his wives Weckeah, To-ah nook, Too-pay, and Too-nice. And many a swashbuckler of the middle ages has enjoyed a reputation for a dramatic career with less reason than Quanah Parker might boast.
The Parker family played an important part in the settlement and developing of Texas. Colonel Isaac Parker, in particular, Cynthia Anne’s uncle, was prominent in the politics of the Republic, and later a Senator when the State carried out its folly of coming into the Union. Parker County, in which I was born, was named for him, in memory of the times he spent in that then wild country, searching for his kidnapped niece. Nor is Quanah forgotten; the county-seat of Hardeman County is named for him.
Such cross-breeds between whites and Comanches were comparatively rare, owing to the savage feud which existed between the races until the eventual defeat of the latter. The lad who delivers my evening paper has a strong strain of Comanche blood in him, which shows itself in his broad head, and bony, faintly hawk-like features. But such cases are rare. Most of the Indian blood that mixed with the white strain in the Southwest was that of the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickisaws and Osages. Of these the most dominant by far was the Cherokee, a race noways inferior to any on the continent, white, red or brown. I have relatives in Oklahoma who possess Cherokee blood in plenty.
The Palo Duro is considered by some historians to have been the cradle of the Comanche race. At least it is certain that it was the homeland of the tribe for some centuries. Others consider that the tribe originated and developed somewhere on the plains of the Middle West, and drifted south to the Palo Duro as late as 1700. This is probably erroneous, for it is pretty certain that Coronado found Comanches living in the Palo Duro in 1541. It is possible that the theory of southward drift in 1700 is a confusion with an eastward and southward movement that did occur about that date, but which originated from the Palo Duro, where the Comanches had been living since drifting down from the north centuries before. There was an expansion movement on the part of the Comanches in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Before that time Apaches had occupied western and central Texas, and these were swept southward and westward, with their Lipan kin, before the onslaught of the conquering Comanches, who were soon destroying Spanish outposts along the San Saba, Concho and Llano Rivers, harrying the outskirts of San Antonio, and raiding deep into Mexico itself. Spanish development of the country north of the Rio Grande was checked and hindered, and there is a possibility that the Latins might eventually have been driven south of the Rio Grande entirely, but for the intervention of the Anglo-Saxon colonists. These drove the Comanches implacably northward and westward, shattering their power in battle after battle, until the last remnant of the once proud and merciless nation was cornered and captured in the ancient cradle of their race, and banished permanently to a reservation in the Territory.