Quanah Parker
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Image:Chief Quanah Parker of the Kwahadi Comanche.gif
Quanah Parker (c. late 1840s - February 23, 1911) was a Native American leader, the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and "Anglo-Texan" Cynthia Ann Parker, and the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche Indians.
Quanah Parker's mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was a member of the large Parker frontier family that settled in east Texas in the 1830s. She was captured in 1836 by Comanches during the raid of Fort Parker near present-day Groesbeck, Texas. She was given the Indian name Nadauh. (In the book "Where the Broken Heart Still Beats", it is spelled Naduah.) Cynthia Ann was eventually married to her warrior captor, Puhtocnocony (called Peta Nocona by the whites). In 1860, Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured in the battle of Pease River by Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross. Orphaned, Quanah took refuge with the Quahadi Comanches. Quanah Parker became a leader of the Quahadi, and led them successfully for a number of years. With their food source depleted, and under constant pressure from the army, the Quahadi Comanches finally surrendered and in 1875 moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Parker's was the last tribe of the Staked Plains or Llano Estacado to come to the reservation. Quanah was named chief over all the Comanches on the reservation, and proved to be a forceful, resourceful and able leader. Through wise investments, he became perhaps the wealthiest American Indian of his day in the United States. Quanah embraced much of white culture, and was well respected by the whites. Nevertheless, he rejected both monogamy and traditional Protestant Christianity in favor of the Native American Church Movement. He had seven wives and twenty five children and founded the Native American Church. One of his sons, White Parker, became a Methodist minister.
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Founder of the Native American Church Movement
Quannah Parker is credited as the founder of the Native American Church Movement. Parker adopted the peyote religion after reportedly seeing a vision of Jesus Christ while suffering from a near fatal wound following a battle with Federal Troops. Peyote is reported to contain hordenine and tyramine, phenylethylamine alkaloids which act as potent natural antibiotics when taken in a combined form. Parker was given peyote by a Ute medicine man to cure the infections of his wounds. During the peyote experience, Parker claimed he heard the voice of Jesus Christ who then appeared to him, and told him in order to atone for his many killings and misdeeds, he must forsake a life of violence and conflict and take the peyote religion to the Indian Peoples. Parker's words and teachings comprise the core of the Native American Church Doctrine and the "Peyote Road."
Parker taught that the sacred peyote medicine was the sacrament given to the Indian Peoples by the Lord Jesus Christ, and was to be used with water when taking communion in a traditional Native American Church medicine ceremony. Parker created the "half-moon" style of the peyote ceremony. The "cross" ceremony later evolved in Oklahoma due to Kiowa influences introduced by John Wilson, a Kiowa indian who traveled extensively with Parker during the early days of the Native American Church movement. The Native American Church was the first truly "American" religion based on Christianity outside of the Latter Day Saints.
Parker's most famous teaching regarding the Spirituality of the Native American Church:
- The White Man goes into his church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his Tipi and talks with Jesus.
The modern reservation era in Native American History began with the universal adoption of the Native American Church and Christianity by virtually every Native American Tribe and Culture within North American and Canada as a result of Parker and Wilson's efforts. The Peyote religion and the Native American Church, however, was never the traditional religious practice of North American Indian Cultures. This religion was created by Parker's vision of Christ and was driven by influences from Mexico and other Southern Tribes who have used peyote since ancient times. Under Parker's leadership, peyote became an important item of trade, and this, combined with his Church movement and political and financial contacts, garnered Parker enormous wealth during his lifetime.
Trivia
Quanah Parker was born sometime between 1845 and 1849 in the Wichita mountain region of what is now Oklahoma, and died in 1911 in Oklahoma. In 1957, both he and his mother were re-interred at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The town of Quanah, Texas, county seat of Hardeman County, was named for Quanah Parker.
The town of Nocona, in Montague County, Texas, was named for Quanah Parker's father, Comanche chief Peta Nocona.
External links
References
- Frontier Blood: the Saga of the Parker Family, by Jo Ann Powell Exley
- Quanah Parker, by Clyde L. and Grace Jackson
- Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, by William T. Haganca:Quanah Parker