Old Fort Parker

Old Fort Parker. . The stockade-blockhouse fortress that you see here today is a replica of the original fort built in 1834 by eight or nine Illinois families who had come to the Mexican state of Texas in 1832 and 1833. This structure, architecturally, is typical of the forts built by Anglo-American pioneers in the eastern United States during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this part of Texas, which was then a wilderness, the fort with its log cabins located inside the walls offered security to the families who worked their fields located just outside the fort. , On May 19, 1836, shortly after three of the men left to work in the fields, a band of about five hundred Comanche and Kiowa Indians attacked the fort. Benjamin Parker was the first to be killed as he approached the band in a gesture of friendship, and four more men were killed as they at tempted to defend women and children. One woman managed to leave the fort and warn the men working in the fields, who in turn alerted four neighbors. The Indians rode away at the approach of armed men. , Fearing the Indians would return, the men hid the small groups of survivors in a creek bottom. The next morning, equipped with horses and provisions from the fort, the group of survivors, unknown to the first, started for Fort Houston on foot the day of the attack. Led by James Parker, they arrived six days later., Two women and three children were captured in the attack. All but two were ransomed within a relatively short time. John Parker, 6, and Cynthia Ann, 9 - both children of Silas Parker - lived with separate Comanche bands. John is said to have become a Comanche warrior, married a Mexican captive, and then settled on a ranch in Mexico., Cynthia Ann, resisting ransom offers several times, married a Comanche chief, Peta Nacona. She was recaptured with her daughter at the Battle of Pease River in 1860 but could not readjust to the ways of her white kin. She died in 1864. A son, Quanah, later became one of the great Comanche chiefs of Texas.