I took the job because it was supposed to be easy.
Who wouldn't want to get paid for wandering around a peaceful
National Forest at night? Sure, there were the usual
duties like checking in on the few campers who dared to stay
overnight, ensuring they followed the rules, and
occasionally dealing with a bear or a curious raccoon, but
overall, it seemed like a gig that would give me plenty of
time to clear my head and think. I never expected that my first
fundamental shift would actually be my last.
Stillwood Forest wasn't large by any means and wasn't very well
known. Nestled in a remote part of the
state, it was the kind of place where locals came to escape the
bustle of everyday life. The forest was dotted with a few
campsites, hiking trails, and a small lake that looked like it
was pulled straight from a postcard.
I had heard rumors about the place, of course, every small
town has its ghost stories and urban legends.
I laughed them off at the time, but now I honestly wish I hadn't
been so quick to dismiss them. It was an absolutely beautiful
crisp night in mid-september when my ordeal began.
The forest was quieter than usual, with only two occupied
campsites. I started my patrol around 1:00
PM, armed with only a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, and
a thermos of coffee. I always thought it was overkill
to carry the radio, but protocol was protocol.
The first site I visited was occupied by a family of four, a
mom, a dad, and two younger kids.
They were roasting marshmallows over a campfire, laughter
echoing through the trees. I checked in with them, briefly
exchanging pleasantries before moving on.
The second site was a bit further away, closer to the
lake. A lone camper, an older
gentleman named Henry I believe, had set up his tent.
He was a regular, known for his love of fishing and solitude.
When I arrived, he was already asleep, the embers of the
campfire dying down. Satisfied that everything was in
order, I returned to the main trail.
It must have been around midnight when I heard it, a low
guttural sound that seemed to come from the forest depths.
At first I thought it was just an animal, maybe a deer or a
bear, but the noise was unlike anything I had honestly ever
heard. It sent a chill down my spine,
raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
I stopped scanning the darkness with my flashlight, but saw
nothing unusual. Shaking off the unease, I
continued my patrol. The sound came again, louder
this time, and closer. It was a mixture of a growl and
a groan, primal and menacing. My heart pounded in my chest as
I turned toward the direction of the noise, my flashlight beam
cutting through the night. Just beyond the edge of light, I
saw movement, a shadow slipping between the trees.
It was tall and humanoid, but distorted.
For a moment, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
Maybe it was a trick of the light, or my imagination running
wild. But then I saw the eyes.
They were glowing, piercing, and seemed to bore into my soul.
They were a sickly yellow, filled with an evil
intelligence. The creature stepped into the
light and my breath caught in my throat.
It stood over 7 feet tall, its skin pale and stretched tightly
over a skeletal frame. Its limbs were long and spindly,
ending in sharp claw like fingers.
Its mouth was twisted into a grin, revealing rows of jagged
teeth. Panic set in and I did the only
thing I could think of. I ran, I bolted down the trail,
my heart hammering in my chest and my lungs burning.
Behind me I could hear the creatures heavy footsteps
gaining on me. I fumble for my walkie-talkie,
desperate to call for help. My hand shook as I pressed the
button and my voice came out in a strangled whisper.
This is Sam, I need help. There's something in the forest,
something wrong. Static crackled through the
radio, followed by my supervisors voice.
Calm down Sam, where are you? Near the lake.
I gasped. It's following me.
I didn't wait for his response. I kept running, the flashlight
beam bouncing wildly with each step.
The path seemed to stretch forever, the trees closing in
around me. The creatures growls grew louder
and more frantic. I glanced over my shoulder at
some point and saw the creature was closer than I ever thought
it could be, its eyes glowing with a predatory hunger.
Up ahead, I saw a faint light. The Ranger station.
A surge of hope propelled me forward.
I burst through the door, slamming it shut behind me and
locking it. My breath came in a ragged gasp
as I leaned against the door, trying to calm my racing heart.
I grabbed my radio again, my voice shaking.
I'm at the station, it's outside.
There was a pause, and Mike's voice came on, sounding laced
with concern. Stay inside, and I'll be on my
way. I sank into my chair, eyes fixed
on the door. Outside, I could hear the
creature moving around, its claws scraping against the
wooden walls. It released a low, menacing
growl that sent shivers down my spine.
I glanced around the room, searching for anything I could
use as a weapon. My eyes fell on a rusty old axe
hanging on the wall. It wasn't much, but it was going
to have to do. Hell, it was better than
absolutely nothing in my bare hands.
Gripping the axe tightly, I positioned myself by the door,
ready to defend myself. Minutes felt like hours as I
waited, the tension in the air thick enough to cut with a
knife. The creature continued to prowl
outside, its growls growing more agitated.
Finally, I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching.
Mike's voice crackled over the radio.
I'm here, stay where you are. The creature was illuminated by
the headlights of Mike's truck, and for a brief moment, I saw
it. It was even more horrifying than
I had realized, its skin glistening in the light, its
eyes burning with rage. Mike stepped out of the truck,
shotgun in hand. Get away from the door.
He shouted. I scrambled back as Mike fired a
shot. The creature let out a roar and
lunged at him. Another shot rang out and the
beast staggered but didn't go down.
I watched in horror as it swiped at Mike, knocking him to the
ground. I knew I had to act.
Gripping the axe, I flung the door open and charged at the
creature, screaming at the top of my lungs.
It turned towards me, eyes blazing with hatred.
I swung the axe with all my might, sinking the blade into
its side. The beast let out a blood
curdling scream and ran away into the sprawling forest.
Pain shot through my body as I fell to the ground.
It did end up getting me a good swipe on my knee.
For just a moment, everything fell silent.
The creature released one final shuddering scream as it ran off
into the forest. We did report the incident to
the authorities in higher ups, but the creature's body, if it
had died, was never found and I never heard anything else about
it. All that remained were deep
gouges in the ground and a lingering sense of dread.
They chalked it up to a bear attack, but we knew the truth.
To this day, I don't know what that creature was or where it
came from. I quit my job the next day and I
couldn't bring myself to set foot in that forest ever again.
The memory of those glowing eyes and twisted grin haunts my
dreams. Rhode Island might be the
smallest state in the US, but don't let its size fool you.
It's a treasure trove of history and mystery.
As a kid growing up here, I've always felt like the past
whispers to you, especially on the windswept nights of autumn
when shadows stretch long and deep.
My best friend Jamie and I share an insatiable curiosity for the
paranormal. The tales of hauntings and ghost
sightings were our favorite subjects, especially the ones
surrounding the notorious Tower Hill Rd. in Cumberland.
It was late October, and the chill in the air was a constant
reminder that Halloween was just around the corner.
Jamie and I had been planning this for weeks.
We were going to drive down Tower Hill Rd. at dusk.
The road had a creepy reputation.
Locals whispered about supernatural sightings and
unsettling events, talking of a ghost child walking a dog, and
even older stories of Native American spirits unsettled by
the violence of the French and Indian War.
These stories fueled our anticipation as we prepared for
the journey, wondering if we'd encounter these spirits
ourselves. Are you sure about this?
Jamie asked, her voice a mix of excitement and nerves as she
tossed an extra flashlight into the back seat of my old car.
Absolutely. I replied, trying to sound more
confident than I felt. The truth was, a part of me
doubted we would see anything truly supernatural, but another
part, a bigger part, hoped we would.
As we set out, the sun was just dipping below the horizon,
casting an orange glow that quickly surrendered to the
creeping dusk. The closer we got to Tower
Department, the more palpable our anticipation grew.
I could feel the atmosphere change as we turned onto the
road. The air grew thick, as if trying
to make each breath a labor, and a profound silence enveloped us,
replacing the usual evening chorus of crickets and rustling
leaves. This feels weird.
Jamie murmured, rolling down the window slightly.
She was right. Even the usual sounds of nature
seem to avoid this place. An anxious feeling gnawed at my
insides, making me hyper aware of every rustle and Creek around
us. We drove slowly, our headlights
cutting through the darkness, illuminating the winding road
ahead. The dense woods on either side
of the road seemed to close in around us.
The trees were twisted and gnarled like the gnashing teeth
of some giant beast. Their shadows danced in the dim
light, creating ominous shapes that move just beyond clear
sight. Did you see that?
I whispered, more to myself than to Jamie.
As I thought. I saw movement at the edge of
the light, but when I tried to focus, whatever it was had
vanished. Jamie didn't respond, her eyes
wide as she scanned the dark woods.
I knew she was feeling it too, the eerie sense that we were not
alone, that the stories might be more than just stories.
Every shadow seemed to flicker with potential movement, every
sound a whisper from the unseen. The deeper we drove into Tower
Hill Rd. the more the reality of our adventure began to sink in.
We were following in the footsteps of countless others,
drawn here by tales of the supernatural, searching for a
glimpse into the unknown. But as the shadows grew deeper
and the night colder, I had to wonder.
Were we the watchers or the watched?
As the road curved, the wood seemed to press closer, and I
felt a shiver run down my spine. What were we hoping to find on
Tower Hill Rd. And more importantly, what might
find us? As we continued our journey down
the notorious Tower Hill Rd. the atmosphere thickened around us,
pressing in with an almost tangible weight.
The deeper we drove into the shadows, the more intense the
eerie sensation became. Jamie and I had barely spoken
since we passed the halfway marker, our attention fixed on
the dense, dark woods that enveloped the road like a cloak.
Suddenly, Jamie's hand gripped the dashboard tightly.
There it is. She whispered urgently, pointing
towards a massive, ancient tree that loomed ahead.
Its branches stretched outward like skeletal arms, gnarled and
twisting against the backdrop of the night sky.
It was the kind of tree that looked like it had stories to
tell. Stories of the long, dark nights
and the things that whispered in the shadows as our headlights
bathed the tree in pale light. Jamie screamed, a sharp,
piercing sound that shattered the heavy silence.
I saw someone, or something. She gasped, her eyes wide with
fear. She described a figure, dark and
indistinct, standing near the base of the tree, watching us
with what she swore were glowing eyes.
My heart pounded in my chest as a chill ran down my spine.
Laughing it off was my first instinct, a nervous chuckle
escaping me that sounded hollow even to my own ears.
It's probably just a trick of the light, Jamie.
I said, though my voice lacked conviction.
We drove past the tree slowly, the feeling of being watched
intensifying. Every instinct in me scream to
turn the car around and leave this haunted Rd.
But curiosity and perhaps a bit of stubbornness urged us
forward. The shadows seem to dance around
us, playing tricks on our eyes as we peered into the woods.
At times, it felt as if the night itself was alive, moving
and watching. Jamie was silent, her knuckles
white as she gripped her seat. She kept glancing back at the
tree, convinced that whatever she had seen was following us.
Can you hear that? Jamie's voice broke the silence,
her tone tinged with fear. It was then that I heard it too,
a low, mournful howl that seemed to resonate through the still
air. It was quickly followed by the
faint, ghostly laughter of a child.
The sounds were fleeting, disappearing as quickly as they
had come, leaving us in an even deeper silence that seemed to
echo with their echoes. The temperature in the car
dropped, and I could see my breath fogging up the
windshield. Jamie and I exchanged a look, a
mix of fear and fascination. What were these sounds?
Were they the spirits the locals had spoken of, or was our
imagination getting the better of us?
As we neared the end of Tower Hill Rd., the oppressive
atmosphere suddenly lifted, as if we were passing through an
invisible barrier. We emerged from the shadowy Rd.
both of us trembling slightly, overwhelmed by relief, yet still
haunted by what we had experienced.
We pulled over to the side of the road, needing a moment to
collect ourselves and process the journey.
Had we really encountered the paranormal?
Or had the night and the stories played tricks on our minds?
Looking back, Tower Hill Rd. was more than just a stretch of
pavement through the Rhode Island countryside.
It was a journey into the unknown, where the past and the
supernatural intertwined in the most unsettling of ways.
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Now back to the stories. Perhaps one of the most
significant events in U.S. history took place way back in
March of 1840. It ignited 30 years of brutal,
unrelenting guerrilla warfare in America's southeast, and the
subsequent effect on the national psyche lies somewhere
between immeasurable and astronomical.
It is a tale of desperation, hope, greed and revenge, all
steeped in the incomprehensible man made horrors of the Old
West. This is the story of the great
Comanche raid in early 1840. Times were tough for the tribe
of Native Americans known as the Comanche.
Several years of war with their rival the Apache, as well as a
catastrophic outbreak of smallpox had severely weakened
the numerous Comanche war bands. Another year of fighting might
see their people wiped from the earth, so instead they sued for
peace. 3 Comanche emissaries rode out to the newly Texan city
of San Antonio to meet with city officials, and we're told that
if the Comanche returned a dozen Anglo American captives
unharmed, then peace would be forthcoming.
The emissaries agreed to return with captives in just over three
weeks, but it was a promise they couldn't keep.
Throughout their history, the Comanche were never a single
unified people, despite being united by language.
There were at least 12 different subdivisions of the tribe
operating almost entirely independent of one another, as
well as up to 35 independent war bands with shifting loyalties to
the larger groups. On top of that, the Comanche
differed from their fellow Native Americans in that there
was no official power structure within their war bands.
If a young Comanche warrior was skilled and charismatic enough,
he could defy the wishes of his tribal elders and lead a raid
against just about whoever he wanted.
The Comanche were prolific Raiders.
The word Comanche is taken from a Ute word meaning he who
attacks me all the time. And it was through this culture
of war and raiding that they acquired so many prisoners in
the 1st place. Yet their division presented the
peace emissaries with a huge problem.
Because the Anglo American captives were spread out among
the different groups and war bands, convincing each to give
them up proved impossible. Relinquishing a captive meant
losing a valuable source of slave labor, meaning their
captives wanted ample compensation in exchange for
their release. In the end, the emissaries were
only able to negotiate the release of a single American
prisoner within the allotted time frame.
On March 19th, the day of the Texans deadline, a Comanche
delegation of 12 Chiefs and 53 Warriors returned to San
Antonio. They had come dressed for the
occasion. Some wore long braids woven with
coyote fur and decorated with brightly colored feathers.
Others wore huge Buffalo horn headdresses with their faces
painted a garish, sanguine red. It made for a magnificent sight,
but it was one the residents of San Antonio found terrifyingly
intimidating. When the Comanche met with Texan
officials, one of the warriors dismounted and then dragged a
filthy, frail young girl from the back of his horse. 16 year
old Matilda Lockhart had been captured 2 years earlier while
working at her cousin's farm, and her return was supposed to
be a cause for celebration. But when the emaciated,
mutilated girl was revealed to a waiting crowd, her appearance
had the opposite effect. Mary Maverick, the woman who
helped nurse Matilda back to health, said that she was
utterly degraded and could not hold up her head again.
Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores, and
we were horrified to discover that her nose had been burned
off. All the fleshy end was gone, and
a great scab had formed with both nostrils wide open and
denuded of flesh. She told a pious tale of how
dreadfully the Indians had beaten her and how they would
wake her from her sleep by sticking a chunk of fire to her
flesh, especially to her nose. Texan authorities were quick to
question Matilda on the health of her fellow captives.
She confirmed that at least a dozen of them were still alive,
including four of her relatives, and claimed that various war
bands would only release them if larger compensation was offered.
This slightly contradicts the explanation of the Comanche
peace delegates, who rightfully blamed the lack of unity among
their people. Only one war band had agreed to
release a prisoner, and while the others were open to
negotiations, no agreement had been reached thus far.
It was only then that the Comanche revealed the price for
each captives release and it constituted a huge amount of
food, medicine, ammunition and blankets.
While some argued that this was a simple miscommunication, Texan
authorities viewed it as a slap in the face.
In their eyes, the Comanche had brazenly defied the terms of
their agreement and they sought to detain the peace delegates
until the remaining American captives were released.
The Comanche were led to a one story building next to the
town's jail, known as the Council House.
Here, the warriors and their chieftains sat on the floor as
was their custom, while the Texans sat on chairs.
A translator was then told to inform the Comanche that they
were under arrest, but to the Texans surprise, he refused.
The visibly anxious translator claimed that if he did so, the
Comanche would attempt to fight their way out.
The Texans responded by placing several armed militia members in
the room before reissuing their order to the translator.
He did as they asked, then promptly fled.
Upon learning that they were detained, the Comanche began to
reach for their weapons. The Texan militiamen replied by
levelling their shotguns and muskets while warning the
warriors against belligerents, but their caution fell on deaf
ears. At once, the Comanche rushed
their would be captors. With knives and Tomahawks drawn,
the militiamen opened fire, wounding and killing several in
their opening salvo. But they were quickly
overwhelmed. In the blood drenched chaos of
close quarters fighting, the Texans didn't stand a chance.
Some accidentally shot each other in the confusion, while
the battle hardened Comanche warriors simply cut them to
ribbons. They moved like lightning,
slashing and stabbing and screeching their war cries, and
within seconds the Texans were dead.
Outside the council house, the remaining Comanche heard the
blood curdling cries coming from inside and descended into a
panic. Many believe that the Texans had
set a trap for them and began firing arrows at just about
anyone who came into view. At least one unarmed civilian
was killed when an arrow cleaved its way into their skull.
They died where they lay with the smell of Gunsmoke in their
nostrils and Comanche war cries in their ears.
Once they had cleared a path of escape, the Comanche began to
flee, but were pursued by a number of militia
reinforcements. The militiamen's fire was wild,
and a number of Texan civilians were killed in the crossfire.
On the other hand, the Comanches arrows were as precise as they
were deadly. By the time a Comanche warrior
was around 12 or 13 years old, they were such skilled Archers
that they could shoot horseflies out of the air at short ranges.
What's more, a highly efficient method of shooting meant a young
Comanche could fire off 3 arrows in little over 1 1/2 seconds,
compared to the 32nd reload time of 19th century muskets, or the
limited capacity of relatively cumbersome revolvers, which were
considered to be the cutting edge of military technology.
Take the example of a Texan officer by the name of
Lieutenant Dunnington. At the outbreak of hostilities,
Dunnington pulled his pistol and aimed it at the head of a
Comanche female. She was able to shoot an arrow
with such force that it passed through Dunnington's chest and
buried itself into the wall behind him, all before
Dunnington could even pull the trigger.
The stunned officer was able to reply in turn and blew the
woman's brains out before collapsing to the ground, his
final words having mistook the woman for a young male warrior.
Were. I killed him, But I believe he's
killed me too. By the late afternoon, when the
Comanche found themselves completely outnumbered and
hopelessly surrounded, the decision was made to surrender
to the Texans. 35 of their number had been killed in the
fighting, while the remaining 29 were taken to the town jail as
prisoners. Yet their capture had come at a
heavy cost. 7 Texans had been killed outright, including a
judge and the town sheriff, with dozens of others being treated
for serious injuries. These injuries were treated in
part by a German surgeon by the name of Doctor Wideman, whose
story is so fascinatingly horrifying that it's worthy of
note. Doctor Wideman happened to be in
San Antonio on the orders of Tsar Nicholas the First of
Russia, who had assigned him the task of studying the relatively
New Republic of Texas. As thanks for his services, the
San Antonio authorities offered Wideman ample financial
compensation, but he proposed a considerably more gruesome form
of acquittal. Instead of money, Weidman
requested the bodies of two slain Comanche warriors with the
intention of returning them to Europe for study.
His wish was granted, and two days later he boiled the bodies
in a highly toxic chemical bath to strip away the flesh and
organs and secure the preserved skeletons.
Then, to dispose of the foul smelling liquid remains of the
two Comanche, Dr. Weidman decided to pour the mess into
San Antonio's only supply of drinking water, causing untold
suffering to the unsuspecting townsfolk.
Dr. Weidman went from hero to villain in a little over 48
hours, and once his heinous act of pollution was discovered, he
was promptly chased out of town. Meanwhile, back at the town's
jail, a single Comanche prisoner was released on the condition
that he relay a message to the rest of his people.
If all 15 American prisoners were released unharmed within 12
days, the surviving Comanche peace delegates would be allowed
to live. If not, they would be executed.
Exactly one week later, a Texan woman by the name of Missus
Webster stumbled into San Antonio with her three-year old
child in tow. Some reports state that Missus
Webster had escaped from 19 months of Comanche captivity,
but if she made it to San Antonio alive, it's only because
her captors allowed her to. She was questioned on the fate
of her fellow captives but was unaware of their condition.
Days went by with no sign of the Comanche or their prisoners.
And then finally, on the day of the deadline, another band of
Comanche rode into San Antonio with three Texan captives in
tow. One of them was a young boy
named Booker, son of the previously freed Missus Webster.
He too was asked what the condition of the remaining
captives were. The story that he told was
beyond horrifying. When word of the Council House
shootout reached the Comanche, they were enraged.
The wives of the slain warriors demanded vengeance, and when it
was granted to them, the methods of torture they conjured up were
the stuff of nightmares. One Texan captive was slowly
roasted to death over an open fire.
Another was slowly dismembered, with the Comanche cauterizing
the amputations to prevent blood loss and prolong their victims
suffering. Booker Webster had also heard of
another captive Texan who was beaten, bound, then laid next to
an anthill. The Comanche then sliced off the
prisoners eyelids and watched as the ants devoured the soft
tissue of their unprotected eyeballs.
Other methods of torture employed by the Comanche
involved the use of hot coals. Victims sometimes had white hot
pieces of firewood stuffed into their mouths or were tied down
before it was heaped on top of their stomachs and genitals.
As you can imagine, the news horrified the Texans who flat
out refused to release their own Comanche prisoners.
They were later moved from the city jail to AUS Army encampment
at the head of the San Antonio River, but escaped in dribs and
drabs over the years that followed.
In the aftermath of the Council House shootout and their chiefs
permanent detention by Texan officials, the Comanche hungered
for revenge. The War Chief of the Pentateca
Band, a man named Buffalo Hump, began riding between neighboring
Comanche groups to converse with their warriors.
At each stop, he made the case for a unified act of vengeance,
a single brutal repost that would avenge their fallen and
captured brethren. Over the course of that summer,
the young war Chief gathered up a raiding party of between 4 and
500 Comanche warriors, and they began raiding the smaller
settlements between Austin and San Antonio.
With each raid, the war party grew stronger and stronger until
finally they were ready for much larger game.
On August 6th of 1840, citizens of the fledgling settlement of
Victoria awoke to a harrowing site.
Almost 600 heavily armed Comanche warriors, resplendent
in their martial finery, whooped their war cries as they galloped
towards Victoria. They had been caught completely
unprepared, and they paid for their lack of diligence and
blood. The Comanche swept through the
town, slaughtering as they went, and when the opportunity
presented itself, they scalloped their fallen victims with Glee.
The quick and the fortunate were able to barricade themselves
inside homes and businesses, while those with rifles took
potshots at the Comanche from windows and balconies.
The warriors killed around two dozen civilians, looted numerous
stores and warehouses, then vanished almost as quickly as
they had appeared. 2 days later, the Comanche arrived at the
small port of Linville, northeast of modern day Port
Lavaca. Thanks to the advanced warning
from Vic, the vast majority of Linville citizens were able to
escape unharmed. They simply boarded the boats
docked in the town's harbor and sailed out to a distance.
The Comanche were unwilling to pursue them, yet this meant that
they were forced to watch as their homes were smashed,
soiled, and looted by vengeful warriors who carted off the
modern day equivalent of $9 million worth of goods.
Over the course of the next few hours, the jubilant warriors
relish their moment of victory. They dressed themselves in a
colorful cavalcade of Texan clothes, drank themselves
legless on looted hooch, and took a horrifying amount of
pleasure in torturing their captives to death.
Only six of Victoria's citizens had been unable to escape in
time, one of whom was a man named Hugh Orrin Watts, who had
delayed his escape to retrieve a family heirloom.
Hugh probably heard stories of the Comanches brutality, yet
it's likely he didn't know exactly what that entailed.
But thanks to a serious error of judgement, he received a full
and comprehensive education on what it meant to be a Comanche
prisoner. It was standard practice for
warriors, as well as other Great Plains tribes, to inflict
unspeakable horrors on those they defeated in battle.
But this is not a moral judgement, and those who
employed such barbarity cannot truly be described as evil.
In a society where courage was prized above all, being tortured
to death offered a warrior the opportunity to prove himself
worthy of the title. To die with fortitude was a
thing of great honor, and since he would be shown no mercy, he
would show none in return. It's not clear how Hugh Watts
died on the day of the Linville raid, but it's safe to say that
it would have been agonizingly slow and unimaginably painful.
At the time, Linville was the second largest port in Texas,
and capturing such a large town was a momentous occasion for
many of the Comanche warriors. Yet opting to savor the moment
proved to be their downfall. One of the great military
strengths of all Native American tribes was their incredible
mobility, and the success of a raid rested not just on the
speed and surprise of the attack, but also the urgency of
the withdrawal. In sacking and burning Linville,
the Comanche had given the pursuing Texas Rangers enough
time to coordinate their forces and plan an attack.
Volunteer companies from all over East and Central Texas
converged on Linville and they eventually tracked the fleeing
Comanche to a place called Plum Creek, not far from modern day
Lockhart. Around 60 Comanche warriors were
killed in the first few minutes of the Rangers ambush and the
remainder were forced to flee with only what they could carry.
There's no doubt that thanks to the element of surprise, the
pursuing Rangers could have run the bloody war band down and
slaughtered them. But as they rode through the
Comanche campground, they made a startling discovery.
Thousands of dollars in silver bullion were discovered in the
packs of several mules. The Rangers were faced with a
choice, do their job or succumb to their greed, and they chose
the latter. Whether or not this was a
deliberate ploy by the ever cunning Comanche, it's not for
me to say. But the fact remains, the
Rangers greed was the war band's salvation and thus marked the
end of the Great Comanche Raid of 1840.
The cycle of violence would continue for decades afterward
with hideous injustices, betrayals and atrocities
committed by both sides. The morality of westward
expansion and the philosophy of Manifest Destiny will be debated
and scrutinized until there's no one left to talk about them.
But when talk stops and the sunsets over the land that's
yours and mine, we can take comfort in the relative peace
and security that most of us enjoy today.
Because coexistence is always preferable to killing.
My name is Ryan. I'm from southern Oklahoma and
I'm half Native American on my mom's side.
My grandpa, who was born in the year 1912, was full blooded
Comanche. Much like many of the elders
from his time, he had a lot of stories to tell.
These weren't his own stories. They were passed down from his
grandfather in turn, from a time before the Wild West was tamed,
as they say. He used to tell us some pretty
wild tales sometimes of how our ancestors would talk to spirits
using peyote cactus, or how they could shoot nickels out of the
air with their bows and arrows. Most of Grandpa's stories were
either interesting or insightful like that, but every so often he
would tell us something a little darker.
Now, I'm no expert in Native American history or culture, so
I'm not going to pretend to be able to speak for other tribes,
but I know that a lot of tribes were mostly peaceful hunters and
gatherers who only went to war to defend themselves and their
land. The Comanche were not one of
those tribes. Basically, a bunch of other
tribes forced the Comanche out of Wyoming and South into the
Great Plains of Texas and Oklahoma.
This is because we sucked at everything.
We couldn't fight, we couldn't farm, and when we got to the
plains, life sucked even harder because the whole place is
basically one big grassy desert. But then the Comanche got horses
from the Spanish, and because we didn't have much else going for
us, we decided to get really good at riding horses.
This gave us a huge advantage over just about everyone, and
because we had a huge chip on our shoulder, we decided to get
a little pay back on all the other tribes.
We beat the Apache who had been bugging US ever since we arrived
on the plains, all the way down into Mexico and Nevada.
I mean, we were kicking it hard and taking names all the way
from Kansas to Corpus Christi, but that's about where I stopped
being proud of it. I know it's an overdone bit to
be like, wars aren't glamorous, y'all, but in the case of the
tribes of the Great Plains, it's a gigantic understatement.
Yes, we stuck it to the settler colonizers for like 100 years,
but we did it in some pretty disgusting ways.
Nowadays wars have rules, but back then it was anything goes.
And that whole scalping thing really is just the tip of a very
gory iceberg. Kids were routinely killed,
women were made into slave wives, whole families were
tortured until they just straight up died.
The settlers did some evil stuff to us too, but it's like the
Comanche made war crimes into an art form.
But that's just the way things were back then.
Like I said, anything goes. All that nasty stuff said was
hey, don't mess with us or you'll get this too.
But still, it makes me glad that I was a 70s kid and not an 1870s
kid, you know now. Anyway, like I said earlier,
every so often Grandpa would break out a Horror Story for
just us boys. It makes me cringe a little to
think about it now, but back then those were my favorite
kinds of stories to hear from him.
Call it that morbid curiosity that all teenage boys have, but
I was really into hearing about our people's badass past, and if
I thought that it was an appropriate moment, I'd bug him.
Until he told me one. He told me a few Humdingers over
the years, let me tell you. But the one he saved for
Halloween when we were all hitting our mid teens had the
hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
So picture the scene. It's like the 1850s or whatever,
and the war between my ancestors and the white settlers is at its
peak. We'd raid some homestead, steal
a bunch of horses, and then ride off into the plains to make our
escape. Inevitably, we'd end up getting
followed by a bunch of soldiers or Texas Rangers who planned on
getting revenge and taking back the horses.
Now on paper, getting chased like that isn't ideal, but the
reality is US Comanche enjoyed it when the Texans followed us
out into the plains. See, we traveled much lighter
and had our pick of the best horses, so we'd always end up
escaping. Then as the Raiders wandered
around the plains running out of food and water, we just hide out
somewhere and watch them. After a few days the Rangers
would be really low on supplies and you've got to remember these
dudes would ride for days at a time trying to catch up to us.
They weren't just in and out real quick, 20 minute adventures
as they say. They rode for hundreds of miles
at a time, but then on their final nights camp before heading
back to civilization. Comanche warriors would sneak up
to their horses in the middle of the night and Stampede them off
into the plains before the Rangers knew what hit them.
A really skilled group of warriors would Stampede the
horses through the Rangers camp, wounding and killing a few of
them while robbing them of their transport in the process.
The result would be a few dozen stranded Rangers facing A7 day
walk with no food or water if they ever wanted to see home
again. And by the sounds of things, not
many of them did. Grandpa said that a lot of the
time the Comanche wouldn't even waste bullets or arrows on the
stranded Rangers. They just watched them on
horseback from a distance, taunting and laughing at them.
Some men collapsed from heat stroke and died where they fell.
Their comrades were forced to keep going, probably looking
back in time to see their friends being scalloped and
butchered. I can't even imagine how
horrifying it must have been to see that and to wonder how long
it would be before it was your turn to die.
Dehydration killed the next bunch, and when the group of
Rangers was in a weak enough state, the Comanches flew in,
finished them off, and then went off looking for their horses to
add to their collections. But every so often some Ranger
or soldier proved much tougher than the others and could be
seen wandering back home alone, long after their fellow Rangers
had died or deserted them. These were the guys who actually
earned a little respect from the Comanche, but unfortunately not
their mercy. In fact, it became a kind of
game to mess with the final survivor.
The Comanche would do things like pour water on the ground
about 100 meters ahead of them and then watch as they rush to
suck up the mud it produced. They do other stuff like ride up
real fast and then lean over to one side and slap the lone
survivor around the head before laughing.
I asked Grandpa why the Ranger didn't shoot him, but he
explained that they'd be too weak to hold their rifles.
By that point, all they had left were swinging a knife or hatchet
all pathetically while the Comanche screwed with them.
The point is, it became a game to do stuff like that, and more
often than not, the Comanche ended up killing this lone
survivor, stripping their corpses, and then riding off to
do it all over again once they were good and ready.
Anyway, in this one story, my Comanche ancestors are trailing
this lone surviving Texas Ranger, waiting for him to drop
his rifle so they can swoop in to start messing with him.
He'd been going on no food or water for a long time, kind of
going along through the grass into the featureless horizon,
longer than the warriors had ever seen any lone survivor go
before him. And then finally, he spins
around, takes a wildly inaccurate shot at the Comanches
direction. The bullet whizzes harmlessly
past them, and the Comanches start laughing and taunting the
Ranger. But then the Ranger starts
laughing back at them. Confused, the warriors ride in
closer, then draw down with their lances on him.
Most others in his place would have tried to run or fight, heck
some even took their own lives to save them from what they knew
was coming. But instead of doing any of
that, the Ranger tears open his shirt, points to his heart, and
with a big smile on his face, starts goading them to kill him
and get it over with. The Comanche didn't understand
what he was saying, but with a gesture like that, it didn't
need any translating. The Comanche looked at each
other, impressed by the man's bravery in the face of death,
but as they did so, the man shoved aside their lances and
carried on his March along the plains.
Obviously. The Comanche chief followed the
man on their horses, watching an amusement as he continued
laughing and joking with himself, trying to find out if
the man was brave or if he'd simply lost his mind.
One of the Comanche leaned in with their Lance and stabbed the
man in the arm, deep enough to draw a heavy amount of blood.
The man didn't cry out in pain, instead his laughter
intensified. He then tore off his shirt and
began cupping his hand under the wound, letting his own blood
pool in his palm before he gulped it down in a mad,
desperate thirst. Now to us this is a clear sign
as any that the guy had completely lost his mind.
But drinking blood wasn't nearly as extreme to the Comanche as it
is to us. If they were in a bad spot and
couldn't find any drinking water, it wasn't uncommon for
the Comanche to drink a little tortoise or Jack rabbit blood to
prevent them from Keeling over. So to them, having this guy
drink his own blood wasn't a deciding factor.
And if he was crazy or not. I can already hear most of you
asking why this guy's mental health has anything to do with
how the Comanche were going to treat him.
Well, if a person was really brave, then it was an honor to
kill them and take their scalp. But if they were crazy, the
Comanche believed that they had bad magic about them.
It was no honor to kill someone barely capable of defending
themselves, and whatever Vadnais was in their victim might jump
to them. To put it simply, the Comanche
didn't have any set religion or anything like that.
They had their customs and traditions, which spirituality
tended to be a person to person thing.
Some warriors prayed to lucky trinkets for protection, others
worshipped pet crows, but everyone agreed that there was a
kind of magic in the world, sometimes working for good,
sometimes for bad. Still unsure whether the lone
survivor was mad or not, one of the Comanche rode forward,
intent on taking a trophy. He scalloped the survivor
standing up, slicing around the base of his skull before pulling
away the bloody mess of hair and flesh again.
The man just laughed louder and harder when another might have
just howled in agony. Once the warrior was done, the
lone survivor turned around, saw his own bloody scalp flapping in
the wind, and began to clap. As you can imagine, it took a
lot to freak out a hardened Comanche warrior, but the
display the scalloped and bloodied survivor was putting on
was unlike anything they'd ever seen.
It took a minute or two before they figured out what they
wanted to do with him, but in the end they decided that they
had to break him. This guy was human, and a weak
European one at that. They thought he might have been
acting strong like a Comanche, but they were going to prove
that he wasn't all that. They jumped off their horses,
knocked the guy to the ground, then tied him up and staked him
down. The Comanche then got a small
fire burning, stripped the dude naked, and laid him near the
fire, legs spread with the fire near his.
You know what the plan was? To drag him closer and closer to
the fire, legs wide open until his junk was burned to a crisp
and even the most incredibly courageous of warriors broke at
the thread of that. But once again, the shirtless,
blood soaked, scalpless survivor just laughed.
And this time he starts nodding his head as if to say do it, do
it. And this was the last straw for
the Comanche. If this guy didn't care about
his junk getting roasted. If he actually wanted it, then
there had to be something deeply wrong with him, and the Comanche
took that as some very bad magic to kill a person with that kind
of magic in them. And the effect could be deadly
not just for the warrior who did the deed, but for their entire
extended family too. With that being the case, the
warriors just left him there and then rode off before the guy's
bad magic could follow them. The last they saw of the guy he
was walking back home naked as the day he was born, scalpless
and covered in blood, and for around 1/4 mile they could still
hear him laughing to himself. Of all the stories my grandpa
told me, that's the one that creeps me out the most.
Because it's not really about evil spirits or demons or any of
the messed up things the Comanche or the Texan Rangers
did. It's about how war can make a
man lose his mind to the point he's not even really a person
anymore. It's like he went out thinking
that he was fighting monsters and then became one along the
way. On October 28th, 1827, in
Crawford County, Illinois, a woman named Lucinda Parker gave
birth to a baby girl she named Cynthia Ann.
Had she remained in Illinois, Cynthia might have led an
unremarkable life. However, around the age of nine
or ten, her parents made a monumental decision to follow
their extended family into the heart of Mexican ruled Texas to
a place now known as Limestone County.
There, the Parker family constructed a heavily fortified
compound consisting of several block houses surrounding a
central defensive citadel. It was christened Fort Parker,
and within just a few short weeks the entire Parker clan had
been joined by a bevy of other Anglo American settlers who
dreamed of peace, piety, and prosperity.
By the spring of 1836, the Parkers had tilled half a dozen
plots of land and were busying themselves in preparation for
farming. The work was endless, the heat
oppressive and the land nearly barren, but for a time the
Parkers were happy, healthy, and free.
Until one day a man collecting firewood began to feel as if he
was being watched. Over the weeks that followed,
more and more of the family began to complain of that same
creeping feeling, as if the nearby woods were haunted by
unseen apparitions. In response, Fort Parker's
security contingent was doubled, with at least two men watching
the walls at any one time. Then finally, at the break of
dawn on May 19th, 1836, one of the Watchmen began to raise the
alarm. The terror in the young man's
voice was heard by each and everyone of Fort Parker's
inhabitants. As the armed settlers scrambled
to man the fort's crude battlements, they immediately
understood his fears. A huge war party of Comanche and
Kiowa warriors was galloping across the plains towards the
Fort. But just before passing into
range of the settlers muskets, the party halted and began
waving a huge white flag. The settlers held their fire,
hoping that the warriors had simply come to talk or trade.
John Parker knew otherwise. The Comanche and their Kiowa
allies had quickly worked out that a large piece of white
cloth had some kind of magical effect on the Anglo American
settlers. Upon waving one in their
direction, a heavily armed, well defended group would sometimes
completely let down their guard, making them ripe for the
slaughter. It only took one or two
instances of this feigned surrender tactic before outrage
swept across the Prairie, and John Parker knew all too well
that it was a trap. Cynthia's father, Silas proposed
that the settlers strike first, claiming that five good men
would be enough to defend the Fort if properly supplied and
positioned. His brother Benjamin disagreed.
The 48 year old knew how skilled the Comanche were at scaling
enemy fortifications and argued that the defenders would last
just minutes before being overrun.
According to Benjamin, the best that they could hope for was to
play dumb, attempt to negotiate, and by the women and children,
enough time to mount an escape attempt when the assault finally
came. At that, he volunteered himself
to be the doomed emissary. As the Parkers watched an
unarmed Benjamin walk out of the Fort towards the mounted
Comanche, they knew it was the last time they'd ever see him
alive. Yet they honored his last
request, gathered up a few essentials, and prepared to flee
into the nearby woods. Silas took charge of the
defenders, instructing them to open fire as soon as Benjamin
had been killed. They fought like lions and a
handful of Comanche were killed by their musket fire, but they
were drops in a torrent of violence that spilled over Fort
Parker with terrifying speed. Their final stand bought their
families a few minutes, but for some it wasn't enough.
Samuel Frost and his young son were cornered by the Comanche as
they attempted to flee. Frost was forced to watch the
scalping and execution of his young son before he too was
mutilated and murdered. John Parker's wife was almost
out of the Fort when she turned around for one final goodbye.
Instead, she witnessed a trio of Comanche warriors castrating her
husband while he wailed in agony.
The sight was too much for her to bear.
She collapsed to her knees, broken and sobbing, and was
captured by the Comanche. Cynthia's mother and her two
youngest siblings slipped away with the help of an armed
teenage boy. Cynthia herself was not so
lucky. She was quickly surrounded by
Comanche warriors, picked up, and then thrown onto one of the
horses. Then, after looting and burning
the Fort, the warriors departed. While it's indisputably
unfortunate that Cynthia was captured, her age meant that she
fared far better than most Comanche prisoners.
In the aftermath of a Comanche raid, grown men were invariably
tortured, killed, and then scalloped.
Older women were violated by groups of warriors, then
tortured and executed in similar ways to the menfolk, while
younger women were sometimes taken as slaves.
Babies and small children were also killed, but when it came to
children between the ages of nine to 13, the Comanches made
an exception. Kids of that age were ripe to be
integrated into the tribe, first as slave labor, but eventually
as fully fledged members of the tribe if they proved themselves
worthy. Cynthia, being around 9 or 10
years old at the time of her abduction, had been picked out
by the warriors for this exact purpose.
Although her life among her family's killers was initially
traumatic, Cynthia's resilience marked her out as having massive
amounts of potential. As I've mentioned, Cynthia's
first few months as a Comanche prisoner were extremely rough.
If her experience was anything like other captives of that
period, she was most likely treated with extreme contempt by
the other females of the tribe while being used as a source of
menial slave labor. But after learning the Comanche
language and standing up for herself on a few occasions, she
gained the respect of her peers and began to slowly increase in
standing. She was given more and more
freedom to do as she pleased, so long as she partook in some of
the more arduous camp tasks. She was taught to tan the hides
of slaughtered Buffalo, a gruesome process that involved
painting the raw skin of the Buffalo with its own brains.
She learned quickly, and her output soon rivaled those of
even the most experienced Comanche Tanners.
Depending on the source, she was given the name Narua, meaning
that which has been found within just a few short years.
Cynthia Ann was not only given free reign of the camp, but a
great deal of responsibility. Comanche bands would typically
migrate approximately every two weeks, and the women were
responsible for all aspects of the move.
Cynthia included. The fact that she was given
responsibility over other people's belongings speaks
volumes to the trust and respect the Comanche bestowed upon her,
and she was soon partaking in all parts of Comanche womanhood,
all except one. It's believed that around the
age of 13 or 14, Cynthia was introduced to a warrior who went
by the name of P Nuna. The pair became fast friends,
and after P was promoted to war chief, he proposed to her.
Although it was traditional for a Chieftain to have several
wives, P refrained from taking another wife and the couple were
said to be deeply in love and very happy together.
They would go on to have three children together, a boy named
Peso, a daughter named Prairie Flower, and a second son whom
Cynthia named Quanah. To Cynthia's knowledge, they
were her only living family and she was every part the loving
Comanche mother to them. But Cynthia was also mistaken.
Several members of the Parker family had miraculously survived
the massacre at Fort Parker, and once they were back on their
feet, they set about searching for their missing relatives.
Decades passed and time after time they were told that Cynthia
was most likely deceased. But the Parkers were also
acutely aware of the Comanches habit of integrating children
into their war bands, and they never gave up on looking.
Finally, in December of 1860, more than 26 years after the
raid on Fort Parker, a group of Texas Rangers tracked a band of
Comanche warriors back to their camp, a camp that was rumored to
hold live Anglo American captives.
As dawn broke on December 18th, Ranger Captain Sol Ross sent a
detachment of 20 men to position themselves behind a chain of
Sandhills overlooking the camp, the goal being to cut off any
potential escape route. The remaining 40 Rangers then
crept up the Crest of an adjacent hill and attacked the
completely unprepared Comanche in unison.
It was an incredible achievement.
It wasn't often that a people so tactically masterful as the
Comanche were caught unaware, and the result was nothing short
of devastating. The entire war band were either
killed by the attacking Rangers or picked off by the blocking
force atop the sandy hills. At one point, a Texas Ranger
found himself face to face with a terrified Comanche woman.
He aimed his revolver at her and prepared to defend himself, but
hesitated when he noticed that the woman held a baby in her
arms. Having decided to take the woman
prisoner, the Ranger began barking rudimentary orders at
her, gesturing wildly for her to sit down.
But as he did so, he noticed that unlike her fellow Comanche,
this woman had pale blue eyes and lighter, sandier brown hair.
The Ranger asked the terrified mother in clear, plain English,
Who are you? And in reply she said, Me,
Cindy. Cindy Ann By 1860, the story of
the massacre at Fort Parker had gained international infamy.
The Texas government had named a county after the family, with
Cynthia Ann being a household name in all four corners of the
state. The Ranger who found her must
have immediately recognized who was sat in front of him and
marked it one of the most momentous recoveries in Ranger
history. Captain Ross rushed Cynthia back
to nearby Fort Belknap, then summoned her Uncle Isaac to
deliver the good news. At first he didn't recognize
her, but the family resemblance slowly became evident and Isaac
was stunned to realize the girl was his long lost niece.
To say that Cynthia's entire world had fallen apart would be
a huge understatement, and it wasn't the second time she had
endured such a calamitous event. She wasn't exactly thrilled to
have returned to civilization, but she also acknowledged Isaac
as a relative and agreed to return to Isaac's home in
Weatherford. Shortly afterward, the state of
Texas compensated Cynthia by granting her 5000 acres of land
and an annual pension of $100 for the next five years.
They appointed her uncle Isaac as her legal guardian, wishing
her a long and happy life, then left her to decompress.
By all accounts, Cynthia tried her best to reintegrate back
into Anglo American society, but adjusting to such a radical
culture shift proved a feat too difficult to accomplish a second
time. Her Uncle Isaac would sometimes
catch her performing intricate rituals involving fire and
tobacco smoke, and he once asked her the purpose of such things
in broken English. She told him that they were
prayers, prayers for the husband and children she'd lost, and
prayers that she could finally be happy with her blood
relatives. At one point, a man fluent in
the Comanche language came to visit Cynthia in the hopes of
learning more about her time living with the tribe.
Initially, Cynthia stared daggers at him, having long
grown tired of being gawked at by curious white men.
But when he spoke to her in Comanche and invited her to
talk, she quite literally threw herself at the man's feet.
In a voice that trembled with tears held back, she replied,
Yes, let us talk. For Cynthia Ann, her time with
the linguist was perhaps the happiest in recent memory.
She shared a great deal with the man, not because she enjoyed his
company, but because she could finally communicate herself
properly. When they tried to have dinner,
Cynthia playfully chastised the man, stealing away his cutlery
as she told him. We can eat later, but now we
talk. Perhaps there was a slim chance
for Cynthia, but it died along with her daughter Prairie
Flower, who succumbed to influenza in 1864.
The grief of losing her final child drove her over the edge
and she began to engage in a series of grizzly Comanche grief
rituals. She would slash at her breast
with a razor sharp knife, dribble the blood onto some
tobacco and then inhale the smoke it produced when put to
flame. She did this for hours on end on
a daily basis until she finally made the decision to stop eating
after wasting away for the better part of a month. 43 year
old Cynthia Ann Parker passed away in March of 1871 and was
buried in Foster Cemetery near the small town of Power, Texas.
Cynthia Ann's story, as well as that of the wider Parker family,
is perhaps one of the most horrifying, heartbreaking, and
under explored in all American history.
But not all of their lives had had such tragic endings, and as
an epilogue, I'd like to touch on the life of Cynthia's younger
brother and fellow Comanche captive, John Richard Parker.
Much like his sister, John was raised as a Comanche, but his
upbringing was radically different to that of Cynthia
Ann. Comanche boys between the ages
of around 9 to 14 LED lives that would inspire envy in their
modern day counterparts. They had absolutely no
responsibilities, no chores, no formal education.
They just played around with their bows and blunt arrows,
rode around on horseback and generally did as they pleased.
They did this day in and day out for years and by the time they
were young men they were phenomenal Archers and master
horsemen. John spent six years with the
Comanche from the ages of 6 to 12 years old, but was ransomed
back to Texan authorities in 1842.
In contrast to his sister, 12 year old John made an attempt to
reintegrate himself back into Anglo American society and soon
ran away to rejoin his Comanche war band.
The Comanche were no doubt delighted with his decision, and
even the most skeptical of warriors would have been
impressed the boy had deserted his own blood relatives to
rejoin the war band, a demonstration of loyalty
tantamount to an oath of allegiance.
John would have no doubt spent the next few years preparing to
become a fully fledged Comanche Raider, and by the time he was
18 he was participating in devastating raids deep in the
heart of Mexican territory. This means John would have
participated in all the torture, murder, and violation that came
with successful raids, and by the time he was a veteran
warrior in his mid 20s, it's likely he'd killed hundreds of
soldiers, civilians, and rival Apache.
Yet it was on one of these raids that John almost met his end,
not by the tip of some Apache arrow or Mexican bullet, but by
an invisible killer responsible for more death than any weapon
of war. After one particularly
profitable raid, John's war band was on their way back to Texas
when he began to feel ill. Before long he was too sick to
ride, and with a rudimentary medical exam, his fellow
warriors discovered that he was suffering from smallpox.
The Comanche were well aware of how devastating the disease was,
and John understood that he had to be abandoned in order to
protect his brethren. It's likely he accepted this
fate with a quiet stoicism, as would be expected of him as a
warrior. But to alleviate his suffering,
his Comanche comrades ordered a captured Mexican slave girl to
stay with him until his death. Miraculously, not only did John
survive his bout of smallpox, but his impromptu caregiver
failed to contract it. In turn, as she nursed him back
to health, the pair fell deeply in love, and after returning the
girl to her family, John proposed and they were married.
Incredibly, John would later return to the United States at
the outbreak of the Civil War. His motivations for doing so
were unclear, as he most likely felt no loyalties to his former
home, but he soon signed up with a group of Texan Confederates
and rode N to battle the Union. His tactics no doubt would have
suited his unique Comanche skill set, and his commanders used him
to devastating effect. Shockingly, John survived the
Civil War and returned to his home in Mexico following the
collapse of the Confederacy. The lute he came home with made
him a very wealthy man and he was able to purchase his own
ranch on which to raise a family.
He lived to the ripe old age of 85 and died peacefully of
natural causes sometime in 1915. John's life and death provided a
remarkable silver lining to the violence and grief of the raid
on Fort Parker. He is one living proof that the
Comanches were not monsters, merely a nomadic primordial
civilization shaped by centuries of deprivation, forced migration
and inter tribal warfare. His story, like that of his
sisters, underscores the complex layers of cultural and personal
identity shaped by the tumultuous events of their
times. Both siblings, in their own
ways, navigated and survived the harsh realities of frontier life
and tribal conflicts, leaving legacies that challenge simple
narratives and invite deeper reflection on the history of the
American West. Don't forget to check out Magic
Mind. You can find the link in the
description to get started today.