11/23/2022
1892 - Quanah Parker and his wife Tonasa.
He was Comanche & Anglo American from the Comanche band Noconis who was a Comanche chief, leader in the Native American Church, and the last leader of the powerful Quahadi band before they surrendered their battle of the Great Plains and went to a reservation in Native American Territory. He was the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, a European American, who had been kidnapped at the age of nine and assimilated into the tribe.At approximately age 34, Parker was discovered and forcibly relocated by the Texas Rangers, but spent the remaining 10 years of her life refusing to adjust to life in white society. At least once, she escaped and tried to return to her Comanche family and children, but was again brought back to Texas. She found it difficult to understand her iconic status to the nation, which saw her as having been redeemed from the Comanches. Heartbroken over the loss of her Native American family, she stopped eating and died of influenza in 1871.
Though Quanah encouraged Christianization of Comanche people, he also advocated the syncretic Native American Church alternative, and passionately fought for the legal use of pe**te in the movement's religious practices. He was elected deputy sheriff of Lawton in 1902.
