CrockPot 2014

Captured during a Comanche/Kiowa raid at Ft. Parker, TX on 19 May, 1836, Cynthia Ann Parker remained with the Pahuka band of the Comanches for almost 25 years.

The following is a summary of the tale told by kaylee38 [http://kaylee38.homestead.com/Cynthia.html]:

On December 18, 1860, Texas Rangers attacked a Comanche hunting camp at Mule Creek. During this raid the rangers captured three of the indians and killed Chief Peta Nokoni. One of their captives turned out to be Cynthia Ann who had her infant daughter Topsanah with her. Col. Isaac Parker later identified her and she accompanied him to Birdville on the condition that military interpreter Horace P. Jones would send along her two sons if they were ever found.

On April 8, 1861, the Texas legislature voted to give her a grant of $100 annually for five years along with a league of land and appointed Isaac D. and James W. Parker as her guardians. She was never reconciled to living in the white man's world and made several unsuccessful attempts to flee back to her Comanche family.

After three months at Birdville, her brother Silas Jr. took her and her daughter to his home in Van Zandt County, and shortly thereafter they moved to her sister's home which was near the boundary of Anderson and Houston counties.

Her daughter, Topsanah, died of influenza in early 1863 and her son, Pecos, died of smallpox a few months later. We think that Cynthia Ann died in 1864 but we have heard that the 1870 census has her listed. We have not verified this.

At her death she was buried in the Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County, but in 1910 her son Quanah had her body moved to the Post Oak Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. She was later moved once again to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where she was finally laid to rest next to Quanah.