(1853?-1911)
Comanche political and religious leader
Quanah was the only Comanche ever recognized by the U.S. government with the title "The Chief of the Comanche Indians." The son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white captive who was taken by the Comanches in a raid on the Texas frontier in 1836, and Nocona, a Comanche warrior who died in the 1860s, Quanah (the name means "odor" or "fragrance") had two siblings: a sister, who was with their mother when she was recaptured in 1861 (both mother and daughter died within a few years), and a brother, who died before reaching manhood.
Very little is known about Quanah's prereservation life, a topic he rarely discussed with non-Indians. But by 1875 he had acquired sufficient stature to speak in band councils. In that year his band, the Quahadas, accepted defeat, and the white man who negotiated the surrender described Quanah as "a young man of much influence with his people." Quanah could have earned such stature only in the Comanche way: by distinguishing himself as a hunter and fighter. It was, however, as a political leader on the reservation that the Comanches shared with the Kiowas and Kiowa Apaches that he earned his place in history.
After the 1875 surrender, Quanah made clear his intention of walking the white man's road. He was very conscious of being of mixed blood and was eager to succeed in his changing environment without surrendering all that was traditionally Comanche. He quickly earned the approval of the reservation's Federal Indian agent who made him a band chief. That agent's successors also recognized the value of supporting a chief willing to lead his people into a new life, appointing him to a judgeship on the reservation's Court of Indian Offenses. While acting as a middleman, Quanah kept many of his people's ways, wearing long hair and engaging in polygamy. In fact, he had a total of eight wives, five of them at one time, and this despite government efforts to enforce monogamy among his band. Although local agents attempted to defend him, federal authorities ultimately removed Quanah from his judgeship because of his refusal to conform to the government's expectations.
Agents were also willing to ignore the fact that this usually reliable ally of theirs was a leader in the growing peyote cult. Indeed, Quanah was the principal road man (peyote ceremony leader) among the Comanches and had a major role in the diffusion of the cult across the South Plains.
Quanah's native intelligence and leadership abilities attracted the attention of Texas cattlemen wishing to lease grazing land on the reservation. The Comanches, who occupied the portion of the reservation closest to Texas, were the most likely to be wooed by the neighboring cattlemen. Most Kiowa and Kiowa Apache chiefs opposed leasing the land, as did the government, although nearly two-thirds of the 3-million-acre reservation was underutilized. Quanah became the leading Indian advocate of leasing, speaking on its behalf in reservation councils and in Washington, D.C., which he visited from time to time. He reasoned, correctly, that Indians would benefit from the income from the pasture leases.
Quanah and other chiefs were paid by the cattlemen for their support of leasing and for the protection that they could provide vulnerable herds. Quanah's compensation was the largest, and the lessees helped him build Star House, his impressive ten-room home. They also presented him with a diamond brooch and an ivory-handled revolver, and provided junkets to Fort Worth and hunting trips to West Texas.
While most Comanches failed to take advantage of what economic opportunities there were, Quanah showed remarkable aptitude in following the example of the enterprising white men with whom he dealt. He monopolized some forty-thousand acres of the reservation, pasturing a herd of several hundred horses and cattle there and renting out the rest to white stockmen. He also sold cattle to the government, for use in providing the beef component in Indian rations.
When the government began a campaign in the early 1890s to change the system by which the Indians held property—from one of common ownership to a system of allotment in severalty—Quanah sought to delay the process. He argued that the Indians needed at least another decade to prepare themselves for the responsibilities of private ownership. Nevertheless, in 1892 the Jerome Commission coerced the three tribes on the reservation into accepting an agreement providing for allotment and the sale of the remaining land, about two-thirds of the reservation, to the United States. During the negotiations Quanah was the only chief to demonstrate any bargaining ability. He asked searching questions about terms and pressed the evasive commissioners for answers. Quanah realized, however, that the most the Indians could hope for was to get the best terms possible and then delay the agreement's implementation. With the aid of eastern friends of the Indians and cattlemen trying to retain their leases, Quanah and his allies were able to postpone ratification of the agreement until 1900, and then on terms slightly more acceptable to the Indians.
When Congress finally acted, Quanah found his position drastically altered. He lost his income from the cattlemen and from the thousands of acres of communally held land that he had exploited. His own 160-acre allotment was only marginally productive, and the Federal Indian agent had to find Quanah a low-paying agency position to enable him to discharge his respon-sibilities as chief.
Although Quanah was plagued with financial problems in his final years, his celebrity continued to grow. Communities in Oklahoma and Texas were happy to have him lead their parades mounted on a fine horse and wearing a feathered war bonnet. Visitors to the area, including Britain's ambassador, James Bryce, sought out the chief. Quanah also testified on behalf of the peyote cult before state committees. And in 190 he was one of five chiefs chosen to ride in Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade. When the president later visited Oklahoma, he singled out Quanah for special attention. Meanwhile, the chief had finally been able to establish contact with his white relatives in Texas, and he secured federal funds to move the remains of his mother to Oklahoma. Quanah spoke at her interment, advising his people to "follow after white way, get education, know work, make living."
The Indian agents continued to depend heavily on Quanah. To the end, he demonstrated the qualities that had led a federal investigator to declare, "Quanah would have been a leader and a governor in any circle where fate might have cast him."
When he died in 1911 two of his wives, To-nar-cy and To-pay, were with him; he was survived by sixteen of his twenty-four children. His funeral was the largest ever witnessed in the part of Oklahoma in which he had lived.
See also
Comanche.
Margaret Schmidt Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990); William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
William T. Hagan
University of Oklahoma
