Parker, Quanah - One of the most warlike chiefs of the Comanche.  He was born in 1845, son of the leader of the Kwahadi, the most savage division of the tribe, and a white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker.

As a girl of twelve, Cynthia Ann had been captured in 1835 in a raid on Parker's Fort, on the Navasota River in east Texas.  Many years later she was rescued and brought back to Texas, but both she and an infant daughter she had with her died, the mother being unable to adapt herself to the ways of her people, and mourning her husband and other children.

Quanah Parker became chief of the Comanche after the death of his father and in 1874, at the head of  seven hundred warriors of allied tribes, attacked Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle in an attempt to drive out the white buffalo hunters.  Although he was defeated in this battle, the war continued along the whole of the south border of Kansas.

When United States troops entered the conflict, Quanah Parker kept his band out on the Staked Plain in Texas for two years, but finally surrendered.

From that time on he became a powerful influence in leading his people along the "white man's road."  He encouraged education, house building, and agriculture.  He died at his home near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on February 12, 1911.

This last chief of the Comanche was buried on the bank of Cache Creek at Lawton, Oklahoma, beside the grave of his white mother.  A monument, authorized under an act of Congress, was erected over his grave in 1926.  In 1956 the United States decided to take over the land to extend the firing range at Fort Sill.  A year later the bodies of both Quanah Parker and his mother were removed to the historic military cemetery at Fort Sill.

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