Column: Recalling some history of Indian captives in Texas

Wednesday, April 20, 2011  

"In looking for material about vigilante leader Henry Scott, I read that as a boy he was captured by Lipan-Apache raiders and taken deep into Mexico. He escaped to make his way home to Texas. About that time, I watched a rerun of the John Wayne classic, "The Searchers," about a Civil War veteran who tracked down a Comanche tribe that killed his brother's family and captured his niece.

Watching this old movie, I wondered: What motives did hostile tribes have for taking children hostage? Settlers on the Texas frontier had many grievances against Comanches, Kiowas and Lipan-Apaches, but surely nothing so inflamed them as the capturing of children. What were the Indians' motives? To increase the size of the tribes? To learn the customs of their enemies from the captives? Girls and young women were taken as sexual spoils of war. Boys were taken to perform menial tasks, such as herding horses, and they could become warriors in time. Because of the misguided practice of paying ransom, hostages were a valuable commodity. They could be traded or sold.

The most famous captive story in Texas is that of Cynthia Ann Parker and her brother John, who were taken by Comanches in a raid on Parker's Fort, west of Waco, in 1836. John Parker was six when taken. He was ransomed in 1842, but he never could readjust. Cynthia Ann became the wife of a chief and her son Quanah Parker became a famous war chief. Cynthia Ann was retaken, against her wishes, and returned to "civilization." She languished, always trying to return to her Comanche husband, Peta Nocona, and her two children by him, before she died in East Texas. Of all the captive stories, her story is the saddest. She was captured by Comanches and recaptured by the whites 24 years later. Surely they had to know that taking her back, after such a long time, was a great cruelty."

Get the Story:
Murphy Givens: Indian captives and the hoax of ‘Tommy Two Braids' (The Corpus Christi Caller Times 4/20)