The descendants of Elder John Parker were a strange and 
often brilliant family who may have changed the course 
of Texas and Western history. Their obsession with religion 
and their desire for land took them from Virginia to Georgia, 
Tennessee, Illinois, and finally Texas. From their midst came 
Cynthia Ann, taken captive by Comanches as a young girl and 
recaptured as an adult to live in grief among her birth family 
until she died. From their line too came her son, Quanah Parker, 
last of the great Comanche war chiefs-and first of their 
great peace leaders.

Although the broad outlines of the stories of Cynthia 
Ann and Quanah are familiar, Jo Ella Powell Exley adds a 
new dimension by placing them in the context of the stubborn, 
strong, contentious Parker clan, who lived near and dealt with 
restive Indians across successive frontiers until history finally 
brought them to Texas, where their fate changed. Drawing on a wealth 
of contemporary accounts, including several first-person stories, 
Exley follows Cynthia Ann 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 is filled with authentic flavor and sets straight a 
story that has sometimes been distorted. It offers new insight if 
not a definitive interpretation of Cynthia Ann Parker's last years, 
providing a more 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.

Exley tells a compelling story and gives rich character 
insights into the extended Parker family. But she also does 
more: she gives a feeling of what it was really like to live 
on the frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
_________________________________________________________

JO ELLA POWELL EXLEY is an independent writer who is the 
compiler of Texas Tears, Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier 
Women, which has become a modern classic. She lives with her 
husband and daughter in Katy, Texas.


Number Ninety: Centennial Series of the Association of 
Former Students, Texas A&M University