Crazycrow

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: The Great Raid ---- the most successful Comanche raid to take place in Texas ---- began 186 years ago today, with a probing attack on Victoria, Texas, by between 400-500 warriors under Buffalo Hump. It was launched in retaliation for the deaths of Comanche chiefs during the earlier Council House Fight in San Antonio. Hundreds of Penateka Comanche warriors swept out of the Hill Country, striking the towns of Victoria and Linnville on the Gulf Coast. They killed roughly 20 settlers, captured prisoners, looted vast quantities of goods, and burned Linnville, which at that time was the Republic of Texas' second-largest port. Laden with horses, mules, and stolen merchandise, the raiding party began its journey back west but was intercepted by Texas Rangers and militia at the Battle of Plum Creek near present-day Lockhart. Although many Comanches escaped, they abandoned much of their loot and suffered significant losses. The swiftness and violence of the raid shocked Texans, hardened attitudes on both sides, and helped cement decades of bitter warfare between the Republic of Texas and the Comanche Nation. There are no photos of the raid, of course, so here's a photo of a young Comanche girl that I have never posted. It was taken by George Addison.

Bull, a Comanche, and Satanta, a Kiowa war-chief, imprisoned in Huntsville, 1874. I don't think anybody knows why Bull was there, but Satanta had been found guilty of murder for his role in the 1871 Warren Wagon train Raid. He was sentenced to be hanged but was subsequently imprisoned at Huntsville when Governor Richard Coke ordered him released as a peace gesture. Satanta was imprisoned a second time in Huntsville in 1874. This photo was shot during his second incarceration. Satanta hated the notion of being confined and said 'I cannot wither and die like a dog in chains.' He committed suicide in 1878 by jumping from a second story landing of the prison hospital. After reading Lonesome Dove, I was fairly certain that Larry McMurtry was acquainted with Satanta's suicide.

Wanada Parker, the daughter of Quanah Parker. She was born in 1882 and died in 1971. Here's her obituary: "Services are pending at Greenlawn Funeral Home for Mrs. Wanada Parker Page, 89, of Lawton. The last surviving daughter of Comanche Indian Chief Quanah Parker, she died about 4 p.m. Tuesday in the U.S. Public Health Service, Lawton Indian Hospital. Her death leaves only one surviving child of Quanah, her half-brother, Tom Parker, of Apache. She was born in 1882 in Indian Territory. Her Indian name was Woon-ardy Parker. "Woon-ardy" in Comanche means "Stand Up and Be Strong," because she was weak in the limbs and had to walk on crutches for a long time. Mrs. Page had also been given her mother's name, Weckeah. She attended Chilocco Indian School, then in 1894 was sent to Carlisle Indian School, Pa. where she remained several years with her half-brother Harold (oldest of Quanah's sons) and her half-sister Neda. At Carlisle, her name was spelled at first "Juanada" until it was objected that she was not Mexican or Spanish. She was baptized under the name of "Annie" in 1895 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Carlisle, but nobody called her that. Wanada attended the Fort Sill Indian School for about a year, about 1903, living in a girl's frame dormitory. Mrs. Page was a charter member of the Comanche Reformed Church of Lawton. In 1908 she married Walter Komah, a Comanche. They went to Mescalero, N.M., where he died of tuberculosis in 1912. Wanada returned to Lawton shortly after that. She worked at Fort Sill Indian School as assistant matron while her sister Alice was a student. In 1915 she became a nurse's aide at the Fort Sill Indian Hospital and it was during her work there that she met her future husband, Harrison Page. He was a white soldier in the Medical Corps assigned to the Station Hospital at Fort Sill. They commuted by street car during their courtship and were married on Dec. 18, 1916. He was discharged from the service on a medical disability in November, 1917. About 1919 Mrs. Page was a feature actress in "Daughter of the Dawn." Her husband began practice as a chiropractor in Apache in 1924. From 1929 to 1933 both Harrison and Wanada Page lived in Phoenix, Ariz., white Harrison attended C. H. Cook's Bible School. After his graduation, they spent several months at a Yaqui village in Arizona. The Pages returned to Oklahoma in 1934 and lived in various towns where Harrison served as a chiropractor. The couple returned to Lawton in 1938 where Mr. Page worked as a painter and contractor until his retirement in 1956. In her later years, Mrs. Page attended the first Parker Family Reunion at Fort Parker, Tex., in 1953, when the Indian Parkers of Oklahoma and the white Parkers of Texas held their first annual get-together. At the reburial of her father, Chief Quanah, and his mother Cynthia Ann, in Fort Sill's Post Cemetery in 1957 from the Old Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Mrs. Page was designated by the family to receive the burial flag from the Army as the senior of the children participating. Mrs. Page spoke on behalf [of] the Quanah Parker family during the unveiling of a sculptured bust of her father at Quanah, Tex., in 1959. She was the only one of the children who made a trip to Texas for the removal of Chief Quanah Parker's little sister Prairie Flowers from Texas for reburial beside her mother Cynthia Ann in Post Cemetery at Fort Sill in 1965. After the reburial of Prairie Flower, Mrs. Page took a leading part in a project to raise funds among the Parker family and procure a grave monument for Prairie Flower that was an exact replica one-half the size of Cynthia Ann's monument. She was too ill to attend the unveiling of the monument on July 18, 1970, and her sister, Mrs. Alice Parker Purdy represented the children. (Mrs. Purdy died last Aug. 23.)"

Comanche buffalo hunters and their camp, 1871.