"My Dear General—In response to your request, I herewith inclose you my recollections, after a lapse of thirty years, of the events to which you refer. . . . On December 18, 1860, while marching up Pease River, I had suspicions that Indians were in the vicinity by reason of the great number of buffalo which came running toward us from the north, and while my command moved to the low ground I visited neighboring high points to make discoveries. To my surprise I found myself within two hundred yards of a large Comanche village, located on a small stream winding around the base of a hill. A cold, piercing wind from the north was blowing, bearing with it clouds of dust, and my presence was thus unobserved and the surprise complete.
"In making disposition for the attack the sergeant and his twenty men were sent at a gallop behind a chain of sand hills to cut off their retreat, while, with my forty men, I charged. The attack was so sudden that a large number were killed before they could prepare for defense. They fled precipitately, right into the arms of the sergeant and his twenty. Here they met with a warm reception, and finding themselves completely encompassed, every one fled his own way and was hotly pursued and hard pressed. The chief, a warrior of great repute, named Peta Nocona, with an Indian girl about fifteen years of age mounted on his horse behind him, and Cynthia Anne Parker, his squaw, with a girl child about two years old in her arms, and mounted on a fleet young pony, fled together. Lieut. Tom Kelliheir and I pursued them, and after running about a mile, Kelliheir ran up by the side of Cynthia Anne's horse, and supposing her to be a man, was in the act of shooting her when she held up her child and stopped. {FN} I kept on alone at the top of my horse's speed, after the chief, and about half a mile further, when in about twenty yards of him, I fired my pistol, striking the girl, whom I supposed to be a man, as she rode like one, and only her head was visible above the buffalo robe with which she was wrapped—near the heart, killing her instantly. And the same ball would have killed both but for the shield of the chief, which hung down, covering his back. When the girl fell from the horse, dead, she pulled the chief off also, but he caught on his feet, and, before steadying himself, my horse, running at full speed, was nearly upon him, when he sped an arrow, which struck my horse and caused him to pitch or 'buck,' and it was with the greatest difficulty I could keep my saddle, meantime narrowly escaping several arrows coming in quick succession from the chief's bow. Being at such disadvantage, he undoubtedly would have killed me, but for a random shot from my pistol while I was clinging with my left hand to the pommel of my saddle, which broke his right arm at the elbow, completely disabling him. My horse then becoming more quiet, I shot the chief twice through the body; whereupon he deliberately walked to a small tree near by, the only one in sight, and leaning against it with one arm around it for support, began to sing a weird, wild song—the death song of the savage. There was a plaintive melody in it which, under the dramatic circumstances, filled my heart with sorrow. At this time my Mexican servant, who had once been a captive with the Comanches and spoke their language as fluently as his mother tongue, came up in company with others of my men. Through him I summoned the chief to surrender, but he promptly treated every overture with contempt, and emphasized his refusal with a savage attempt to thrust me through with his lance, which he still held in his left hand. I could only look upon him with pity and admiration, for, deplorable as was his situation with no possible chance of escape, his band utterly destroyed, his wife and child captives in his sight, he was undaunted by the fate that awaited him, and as he preferred death to life, I directed the Mexican to end his misery by a charge of buckshot from the gun which he carried, and the brave savage, who had been so long the scourge and terror of the Texas frontier, passed into the land of the shadows and rested with his fathers. Taking up his accoutrements, which I subsequently delivered to Gen. Sam Houston, as Governor of Texas and commander-in-chief of her soldiery, to be deposited in the State archives at Austin, we rode back to the captive woman, whose identity was then unknown, and found Lieutenant Kelliheir, who was guarding her and her child, bitterly reproaching himself for having run his pet horse so hard after an old squaw. She was very dirty and far from attractive, in her scanty garments, as well as her person, but as soon as I looked her in the face, I said: 'Why, Tom, this is a white woman; Indians do not have blue eyes.' On our way to the captured Indian village, where our men were assembling with the spoils we had captured, I discovered an Indian boy about nine years old, secreted in the tall grass. Expecting to be killed, he began to cry, but I made him mount behind me and carried him along, taking him to my home at Waco, where he became an obedient member of my family. When, in after years, I tried to induce him to return to his people, he refused to go, and died in McLennan County about four years ago."
{FN} Another account says she threw back her robe, held her child in front of her and exclaimed in broken Spanish, "Americano! Americano!"
"When camped for the night, Cynthia Anne, our then unknown captive, kept crying, and thinking it was caused by fear of death at our hands, I had the Mexican tell her in the Comanche language, that we recognized her as one of our own people and would not harm her. She replied that two of her sons, in addition to the infant daughter, were with her when the fight began, and she was distressed by the fear that they had been killed. It so happened, however, that both escaped, and one of them—Quanah—is now the chief of the Comanche tribe, and the beautiful city of Quanah, now the county seat of Hardeman County, is named in his honor. The other son died some years ago on the plains. Through my Mexican interpreter I then asked her to give me the history of her life with the Indians, and the circumstances attending her capture by them, which she promptly did in a very intelligent manner, and as the facts detailed by her corresponded with the massacre at Parker's Fort in 1836, I was impressed with the belief that she was Cynthia Anne Parker.
"Returning to my post, I sent her and her child to the ladies at Camp Cooper, where she received the attention her sex and situation demanded, and at the same time I dispatched a messenger to Col. Isaac Parker, her uncle, near Weatherford, Parker County, named as his memorial, for he was many years a distinguished Senator in the Congress of the Republic, and in the Legislature of the State after annexation. When Colonel Parker came to my post I sent the messenger with him to Camp Cooper, in the capacity of interpreter, and her identity was soon discovered to Colonel Parker's entire satisfaction. She had been a captive just twenty-four years and seven months, and was in her thirty-fourth year when recovered. I remain, my dear general,
"Sincerely your friend. L. S. Ross."
A few more incidents of her subsequent life are told by General Alford. Said he: "Cynthia Anne and her infant barbarian were taken to Austin, the capital of the State; the immortal Sam Houston was Governor, the Secession Convention was in session. She was taken to the magnificent Statehouse, where this august body was holding grave discussion as to the policy of withdrawing from the Union. Comprehending not one word of her mother tongue, she concluded it was a council of mighty chiefs, assembled for the trial of her life, and in great alarm tried to make her escape. Her brother, Col. Dan Parker, who resided near Parker's Bluff, in Anderson County, was a member of the Legislature from that county, and a colleague of this writer, who then represented the Eleventh Senatorial District. Colonel Parker took his unhappy sister to his comfortable home, and essayed by the kind offices of tenderness and affection to restore her to the comforts and enjoyments of civilized life, to which she had been so long a stranger. But as thorough an Indian in manner and looks as if she had been a native born, she sought every opportunity to escape and rejoin her dusky companions, and had to be constantly and closely watched."
"The civil strife then being waged between the North and South, between fathers, sons and brothers, necessitated the primitive arts of spinning and weaving, in which she soon became an adept, and gradually her mother tongue came back, and with it occasional incidents of her childhood. But the ruling passion of her bosom seemed to be the maternal instinct, and she cherished the hope that when the cruel war was over she would at least succeed in reclaiming her two sons, who were still with the Comanches. But the Great Spirit had written otherwise, and Cynthia Anne and Little Prairie Flower were called in 1864 to the Spirit Land, and peacefully sleep side by side under the great oak trees on her brother's plantation near Palestine.