Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom and flowers.”

                         Hans Christian Anderson

There was a meeting held last week in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was an informational meeting to update the fishermen on the Gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida that are planning to file a claim for loss of income due to the oil well blowout. Federal authorities have forbidden fishing in the Gulf for the foreseeable future due to crude oil pollution. The federal government has appointed Kenneth Feinberg to administer the $20 billion fund that BP has established. In this meeting Feinberg stated that any money paid to the fishermen for using their boats to clean up the spill will be deducted from any claims they may file. He said that he wanted to be fair but he was not going to pay the claimants twice. I have mixed emotions here. I am sympathetic to the fishermen but they were indeed making a living by the use of their boats be it for fishing, skimming or laying out barrier booms. Many of the fishermen walked out in protest and swore they would not use their boats in the clean-up any longer.

A few days ago a man was waiting at a light rail station south of Charlotte, NC. He was approached by a man wielding a knife who demanded the man’s wallet. The man resisted slightly and was struck in face for his trouble and the robber took his wallet and ran. Very soon thereafter two men entered a nearby Target store and walking very swiftly went directly to the men’s room. The store manger thought this was pretty fishy and called the cops. You guessed it. The cops came and arrested them and one of the men was identified by the victim as the person that assaulted him. This is very ignorant planning by the robbers, y’all. But nowhere is it written that criminals must have intelligence.

I have a friend that used to sell merchandise out the trunk of his car. He was in a very unsavory neighborhood in the Atlanta area and had the trunk open to show his wares to potential customers. He walked away from his car about 20 feet and a man came up and began helping himself to what was in the trunk. My friend told the man to stop but was ignored so he opened the driver side car door and retrieved a .38 caliber revolver and pointed at the man and again told him to stop. The man took a step toward my friend and he shot the man in the right thigh. He went down, of course and the potential customer saw what happened and called the cops. The cops came and told my friend to lay the pistol down on the ground and back away which he did. The cops took one look at the man writhing on the ground and told my friend that he should have killed him because this man had a rap sheet a mile long but now the city was going to have to pay for his hospitalization. To them it was just a matter of economics.

This date in history July 20

1889    Earlier a barroom girl named Ella Watson met up with a barkeep named James Averill in a saloon down in Kansas. James had 320 acre homestead up in Wyoming. Ella and James decided to move onto the homestead unmarried, this would allow Ella to homestead her own 320 acres. They were legally within their rights to homestead this treeless grassland but the cattle barons were reluctant to give “their” lands to settlers. It really wasn’t all their land; many, many acres belonged to the United States Department of the Interior who was trying to bring people to settle the west. The only problem with Ella and James was they settled on land that cattle baron James Bothwell considered “open range” and wanted that land to graze his cattle. He had no legal way to kick them out so he did the next best thing. He accused Ella and James of rustling. On this date Bothwell and company captured the two and hanged them. Bothwell went to court but the “cattle man friendly” jury acquitted him. The American west was going through a transition from open range to barbed wire fenced ranches. The old-timers did not like it but it came anyway.

1969    “Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed”. On this day those immortal words were uttered by astronaut Neil Armstrong upon the landing of the lunar excursion module (LEM) on the moon. This was known as the Apollo 11 mission. After taking a rest and getting into his space suit, Neil opened a hatch, crawled down a ladder and stepped onto the moon surface. He then gave us another immortal phrase in “That’s one small step for man and a giant leap for mankind.” We don’t do anymore manned lunar exploration now-a-days, but I remember Armstrong and Aldrin walking around on the moon and how thrilling it was. By the way, Buzz Aldrin claims to have seen a UFO.

1780    On this date US General Anthony “Mad Anthony” Wayne is tasked with capturing a British blockhouse located about 12 miles north of Hoboken, New Jersey. So Wayne assembled two brigades of Pennsylvania militia and headed out. The blockhouse is defended by 70 Loyalists (Americans fighting for the British). Wayne ordered the attack but it was repulsed as was two additional attacks. So Wayne says “to hell with it” and withdraws. As ya’ll know Wayne got his nickname when he ordered an attack on a British encampment late at night. He ordered his men to use bayonets only and they killed 94 British soldiers by bayoneting them in the throat and they died without making a sound. It takes all kinds.

The Saga of Cynthia

Cynthia Anne Parker was born in Crawford County, Illinois in 1826. When little Cynthia was seven years old, her family moved to east Texas to the headwaters of the Navasota River near present day Groesbeck, Texas. By 1834 the extended Parker family had completed Fort Parker. When Cynthia Anne was ten years old a large party of Comanche warriors swept down on the fort and after killing 5 men, the Comanche kidnapped two women and three children. The kidnapped children were Cynthia Anne, her brother John and a cousin named James Plummer. I cannot find out what happened to John and James but Cynthia Anne spent nearly 25 years with the Comanche. Her Comanche name was Naduah (Someone found) and she married a Comanche warrior named Pohtocnocony or as the white man called him, Peta Nocona. Cynthia and Peta Nocona had two sons, Quanah (Fragrant) and Pecos (Peanuts) and one daughter named Topsannah (Prairie Flower). Cynthia’s husband, Peta Nacona, was eventually named chief of the tribe. In December of 1860 a troop of Texas Rangers, led by Captain Sullivan Ross, surrounded and captured a group of Comanche near the Pease River. Included in this group were Cynthia and her infant daughter Prairie Flower. After interviewing Cynthia many of the Rangers told Captain Ross that they thought it would be best for Cynthia to be allowed to rejoin her adopted Native American family because she had spent so much time with them that they did not believe she could adapt to life with the whites. But Captain Ross had heard so many complaints about white children being kidnapped by the Natives that he thought it would be best for all concerned if they tried to rehabilitate her. Cynthia and Prairie Flower were sent to Camp Cooper where Cynthia was identified by an uncle named Isaac Parker. Isaac took Cynthia and Prairie Flower to his ranch near Birdville, Texas. The Texas legislature granted Cynthia a league of land which is equal to 4,428 acres and a pension of $100 per year for five years. Incidentally, most land grants given by the Mexican Government to the Anglo settlers was a “labor and a league”. A labor was 177 acres that had water frontage and a league was land without water frontage. They also named her uncles Isaac and Benjamin Parker as her guardians. It did not help. Cynthia was terminally homesick and tried to escape several times. In 1862 Cynthia went to live with her brother Silas in Van Zandt County, Texas. Silas was also named as her guardian. After Silas was mustered in the Confederate Army, Cynthia went to live with her sister Olrena. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Parker family was in negotiation to send Cynthia back to live with her adopted family in west Texas but unfortunately the war got in the way. To make things much worse, in 1864 Prairie Flower died of influenza. This was bad enough but what made Cynthia so unhappy was that she missed her sons and did not know what had happened to them. Anyway she wasted away and died in 1870 of malnutrition at the age of 44 because she refused to eat. After several movements of her body she was finally put to rest beside her son Quanah and her daughter Prairie Flower in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Her son Quanah became a legend in the history of the American Indians and I will do a biography on him in the near future. The city of Quanah, Texas was named for him and the city of Nocona is named for Cynthia’s Comanche husband.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.