How to read this Quanah Parker family tree
Read the Quanah Parker family tree from the top down, one generation to a row. Quanah Parker is the centre, drawn with a double frame. Squares are men and circles are women. Quanah and his mother have photographs. A silhouette stands for everyone else, because no photograph of them has been identified, and the chart uses no drawings made later in their place.
The double frame is Quanah Parker
His year of birth is given as about 1845, with a question mark.
Eight couple lines leave Quanah
One for each wife, in the order Wikipedia gives.
Two children hang from Quanah alone
The sources read do not name their mothers.
Names on the Quanah Parker family tree
The Comanche Nation calls its people Nʉmʉnʉʉ, which means The People.6 The Nation writes that its bands formed through kinship and other ties, and the chart names the bands as the Handbook of Texas does.61 English sources spell Comanche names in many ways, so the Quanah Parker family tree follows Wikipedia's spelling and gives other forms in the notes.7
Quanah kept the name his mother gave him. In Comanche it means smell or odor, and Wikipedia says he kept it in her honour after she was taken from him.17 His mother was Cynthia Ann Parker to the Texans and Nautda among the Comanche, as the National Park Service records.5
Cynthia Ann Parker, taken at Fort Parker
Cynthia Ann was born in Crawford County, Illinois, to Silas M. Parker and Lucy Duty Parker. The 1870 census puts her birth between June 1824 and May 1825.2 When she was nine or ten her family built Fort Parker in what is now Limestone County, Texas. On 19 May 1836 a force of Comanche, Kiowa and Kichai attacked the fort and took five captives, Cynthia Ann among them.2
She grew up Comanche and married Peta Nocona. Their children were Quanah, Pecos and a daughter, Topsannah, whose name means Prairie Flower.25 On 18 December 1860 Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross attacked a camp on Mule Creek, near the Pease River, and took Cynthia Ann and Topsannah.24 Her uncle Isaac Parker identified her.2
She never went back to her sons. The Texas State Library says she tried several times to return to the Comanche.4 Topsannah died of illness in 1863.7 Some sources say Cynthia Ann died in 1864, but the 1870 census lists her, aged forty-five, so the Handbook dates her death to about 1871.2 The Quanah Parker family tree follows the census.
Peta Nocona and the Pease River
Peta Nocona led the Noconi band of the Comanche, which raided the Texas frontier from the 1830s.3 Quanah wrote to Charles Goodnight that his father did not know when or where he was born, so the chart gives no year of birth.3
The Handbook of Texas records that Ross's men killed him at the Pease River on 18 December 1860. Ross's interpreter, who said Nocona had held him captive as a boy, identified the body, and Cynthia Ann wept over it.3 Years later Quanah doubted that the man killed there was his father. The Handbook finds that the weight of the evidence says it was.3 The Quanah Parker family tree gives 1860 as his year of death and records the doubt in his notes.
The eight wives of Quanah Parker
The Handbook of Texas speaks of seven wives in his twenty-two-room house, the National Park Service of eight, and Wikipedia names eight.157 The first two came in 1872. Weakeah was the daughter of the Penateka leader Yellow Bear. Ta-ho-yea was the daughter of the Mescalero Apache leader Old Wolf. She asked to go home, and Quanah sent her back.7
Wikipedia gives no dates for the other six. They were Chony, Mah-Chetta-Wookey, Ah-Uh-Wuth-Takum, Coby, Toe-Pay and Tonarcy.7 The Quanah Parker family tree draws each marriage as a separate line and writes a year only where a source gives one.
Children and the household at Cache
Wikipedia counts twenty-five children, some of them adopted, and the Park Service writes of two dozen.75 With the help of Charles Goodnight and other cattlemen Quanah built the Star House near Cache, Oklahoma, where he and his wives raised their children and took in several homeless boys.5 The Handbook adds that most of his children went to school.1
Only two children are named in the sources read. Baldwin Parker was a son and Wanada Page Parker a daughter.7 No source read says which wife was the mother of either, so the Quanah Parker family tree hangs both from Quanah alone. Genealogy websites list many more names, often in conflict with one another, and the Quanah Parker family tree takes none of them.
Quanah's life in dated records
Birth
Born on Elk Creek below the Wichita Mountains by his own account. The year is given as 1845, 1848, 1850 and 1852.
Pease River
His mother and sister are taken by the Rangers.
Adobe Walls
He fights at Adobe Walls. Within a year the Quahada surrender.
Lawton
He is named deputy sheriff of Lawton.
His mother reburied
He moves Cynthia Ann's body from Texas to Post Oak Mission near Cache.
Death
He dies at the Star House and is buried beside his mother.
Fort Sill
He and Cynthia Ann are reburied in the Fort Sill Post Cemetery.
Questions about the Quanah Parker family tree
Who the parents of Quanah Parker were
His father was Peta Nocona, a war leader of the Noconi band. His mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, taken captive at Fort Parker in 1836 and called Nautda among the Comanche.
How many wives and children Quanah Parker had
Wikipedia and the National Park Service give eight wives, the Handbook of Texas seven. He had about two dozen children, some of them adopted.
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 17 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the seven numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.