Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University)

Drawing on a wealth of contemporary accounts, including several first-person stories, Jo Ella Powell Exley follows Cynthia Ann-Parker—a descendant of Elder John Parker—last of the great Comanche war chiefs— through her life in the Indian camp and eventually her recapture by her birth family. She also tells the dramatic story of Quanah Parker through childhood, battle, surrender, and reservation life.

 

This narrative sets straight a story that has sometimes been distorted, offering new insight of Cynthia Ann Parker’s last years, providing a complex picture of the “white” years of a woman who had matured among the Comanches since the age of nine.

 

 

Among the documents from which Exley draws are a short autobiography of Daniel Parker, Rachel Parker Plummer’s two narratives of her Indian captivity, James Parker’s account of his search for Rachel and the other captives and several autobiographical accounts Quanah dictated to his friends.

 

 

 

First published in 2001, Frontier Blood received the Summerfield G. Roberts award and the Rupert Richardson award.