Friday OYSTERS

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Quote of the day:

“A victory has many fathers, a defeat is an orphan.”

                     Sitting Bull, Lakota Sioux

I have a question. A 14 year old girl shows up pregnant, the circumstances are irrelevant. What is she supposed to do, if anything, according to Pro-Life advocates?

Speaking of telling others how to live, here is a very sad tale about a woman that was forced to live her life as directed by others...it killed her.

                         Cynthia Anne Parker

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. Groesbeck is a short distance SSE of Dallas and was in the very heart of Comanche country. 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, they 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 Comanche 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 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 in what later became Texas 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. Later 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 Comanche 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.

     This Date in History   February 19

1847 Back in August of 1846 a wagon train of 86 people arrived at Fort Bridger, Wyoming from Springfield, Illinois headed for California. The unofficial leader of the wagon train was George Donner. For some reason the wagon train chose to go on the recently blazed train known as the Hastings Cutoff rather than the tried and true California Trail blazed by Jim Bridger. They believed the new trail was shorter and would save time. The trail was a bit shorter but the terrain was much rougher and cost them time instead. In October the wagon train was caught on top of the Sierra Nevadas and the snows came locking them in. It was on this date that a rescue party from California reached what was left of the survivors. We all know what happened.

     Thanks for listening  I can hardly wait until tomorrow