DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker at Pease River Battlefield tells it, here's what happened out on that stretch of Texas plain. Eight miles northeast of where you're rolling right now, in the year 1860, Texas Rangers rode into a fight that would close a chapter stretching back twenty-four years — and open one that Texas has never quite stopped talking about. The battle was called the Battle of Pease River.
The Rangers rode under Captain L. S. Ross — a name worth remembering, because that same man would later become Governor of Texas.
But on this particular day, his business was out here in the wind and the grass. Among those found when the fighting was done were a woman and her young daughter. The woman's name, to the Rangers, was Cynthia Ann Parker.
Her daughter's name was Prairie Flower. And if you know anything about Texas history, you already feel the weight of what comes next. Because Cynthia Ann Parker's story didn't begin in 1860.
It began on May 19, 1836, at a place called Fort Parker, when a raid swept through and took her captive. She was nine years old. She became, by the reckoning of those who chronicled these things, the most celebrated of all Comanche captives.
Traders who encountered her in the years that followed reported something that must have landed hard back in the settlements — she had taken the name Naduah, and she wished to remain among her adopted people. She had built a life there. She married Chief Peta Nocona.
Together they had two sons, Pecos and Quanah Parker. A daughter, Prairie Flower. Roots, however tangled the world outside might judge them, had gone down deep.
And then came the Battle of Pease River, and Captain Ross, and the rescue that wasn't entirely felt as a rescue. Cynthia Ann was returned to her uncle's family. But she was never completely happy.
She tried to escape several times. The life she had been brought back to was not the life she knew as her own. She died in 1864.
There's a long silence built into that ending, if you let it sit. A woman taken at nine, who became someone else entirely, who was brought back to a world that called it a rescue — and who spent the rest of her days trying to return to the place they'd rescued her from. The battlefield is eight miles northeast.
The marker stands here. And Cynthia Ann Parker's story stands somewhere in between, still not easy to hold.
What the marker says
(site located 8 miles northeast) In 1860 at the Battle of Pease River, Indian captive Cynthia Ann Parker and her daughter, Prairie Flower, were rescued by Texas Rangers under Capt. L. S. Ross (later Governor of Texas). Cynthia Ann, most celebrated of all Comanche captives, had been taken at age 9 in a raid on Fort Parker, May 19, 1836. Traders who saw her later said she had taken the name "Naduah" and wished to remain among her adopted people. She married Chief Peta Nocona, by whom she had 2 sons, Pecos and Quanah Parker. Although she was returned to her uncle's family, she was never completely happy and tried to escape several times. She died 1864. (1968)