Paul H. Carlson - Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)

Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest) — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...40

The Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest

Brujeras: Stories of Witchcraft and the Supernatural in the American Southwest and Beyond

Nasario Garca

Cacti of Texas: A Field Guide

A. Michael Powell, James F. Weedin, and Shirley A. Powell

Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Areas

A. Michael Powell and James F. Weedin

Cowboy Park: Steer-Roping Contests on the Border

John O. Baxter

Deep Time and the Texas High Plains: History and Geology

Paul H. Carlson

From Texas to San Diego in 1851: The Overland Journal of Dr. S. W. Woodhouse, Surgeon-Naturalist of the Sitgreaves Expedition

Edited by Andrew Wallace and Richard H. Hevly

Grasses of South Texas: A Guide to Identification and Value

James H. Everitt, D. Lynn Drawe, Christopher R. Little, and Robert I. Lonard

Javelinas

Jane Manaster

Little Big Bend: Common, Uncommon, and Rare Plants of Big Bend National Park

Roy Morey

Lone Star Wildflowers: A Guide to Texas Flowering Plants

LaShara J. Nieland and Willa F. Finley

Pecans: The Story in a Nutshell

Jane Manaster

Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Austin and Cather

Janis P. Stout

Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis

Mark J. Stegmaier

Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy

Marcia Kaylakie with Janice Whittington

Copyright 2010 by Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum
Maps 2010 by Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit prior written permission of the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review and critical purposes are excepted.

This book is typeset in Amasis. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

Designed by Kasey McBeath
Maps by Curtis Peoples

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carlson, Paul Howard.
Myth, memory, and massacre : the Pease River capture of Cynthia Ann Parker / Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum.
p. cm.(The Grover E. Murray studies in the American Southwest)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: Investigates the so-called Battle of Pease River and December 1860 capture of Cynthia Ann Parker, contending that what became, in Texans' collective memory, a battle that broke Comanche military power was actually a massacre, mainly of women. Questions traditional knowledge and historiographic interpretations of the history of TexasProvided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-89672-707-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Pease River, Battle of, Tex., 1860. 2. Comanche IndiansTexasHistory19th century. 3. MassacresTexasHistory19th century. 4. Parker, Cynthia Ann, 1827?1864. 5. Texas RangersHistory19th century. 6. Indian captivitiesTexas. I. Title.
E83.8596.C37 2010
976.4'05dc22 2010020054

Printed in the United States of America
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 / 9 8 6 5 4 3 2

ISBN 978-0-89672-746-5 (paperback)
First paperback printing, 2012

Texas Tech University Press
Box 41037 | Lubbock, Texas 79409-1037 USA
800.832.4042 |

ISBN 978-0-89672-757-1 (electronic)

With great appreciation, this book is for our wives, Mary Crum and Ellen Carlson

It has been the misfortune of history, that a personal knowledge and an impartial judgment of things rarely meet in the historian. The best history of our Country therefore must be the fruit of contributions bequeathed by contemporary actors & witnesses, to successors who will make an unbiased use of them.

James Madison, 1823

CONTENTS

1
BACKGROUND

2
THE SOURCES

3
THE REPORTS

4
THE REMINISCENCES

5
PETA NOCONA

6
CONCLUSION

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

PREFACE

What most people call the Battle of Pease River occurred along Mule Creek in what is now Foard County, Texas, on December 19, 1860, and resulted in the taking of thirty-four-year-old NaudahCynthia Ann Parkerand her very young daughter from their Comanche family and friends. For various reasons the event in the collective memory of Texans became an Indian fight, one that through the years loomed larger and larger. In its retelling it eventually became an engagement in which Comanche military power was broken. In reality, it was little more than a massacre of women and children, most of whom were running away.

The battle and the capture of Parker, particularly eyewitness accounts of them, represent the major focus of this study, but the work also deals indirectly with myth, folklore, and memory, both individual and collective. The book is part of a historiographical trend that is changing perceptions of how people view the history of Texas. Through that new historiography a different past is emerging, one usable by a more inclusive society. The new story questions conventional knowledge and historical interpretations that first appeared in the nineteenth century and played a major role in creating a Texas character and mystique still familiar to most Texans.

As part of the new approach, historians and journalists are challenging traditional interpretations of some of Texas's most cherished eventssome of the state's most deeply ingrained historical memories. Among such events, for example, are two from the 1836 defense of the Alamo: William Barrett Travis's alleged line in the dirt, and the death of Davy Crockett. Many such familiar narratives are being reexamined and in the end rewritten in ways that assault a collective memory, folklore, and mythology that many Texans hold sacred.

Although the narrative of the Battle of Pease River is not one of the sacred ones, it is similar. In it Texas Rangers and U.S. Cavalry troops attacked a village of Comanches busying themselves with the task of striking camp. As after many such encounters in the nineteenth century, the victorious participants at Mule Creek embellished the incident, for glory perhaps and maybe to avoid the unpleasant truth that they had killed women and children.

Under normal circumstances the Pease River incident might have been relegated to history's footnotes. Present at Pease River, however, were two notable TexansLawrence Sullivan Sul Ross and Cynthia Ann Parkerwhose prominence inspired an elaborate fabrication of events. Over the next century, resulting stories transformed the indiscriminate slaughter at Mule Creek into a decisive battle, one that not only altered the balance of power in Anglo-Indian warfare across the southern Great Plains but also now resides near the center of Texas mythology. Sul Ross, the twenty-two-year-old Texas Ranger captain who gained additional fame as a Civil War hero and a state senator, became governor of Texas and later president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, today's Texas A&M University.

Cynthia Ann Parker, Naudah to her adoptive tribe, was a member of the pioneer clan that erected Parker's Fort in Limestone County, known by Texans for the 1836 Comanche raid in which the then nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and forced for the first time into captivity. At age thirty-four in 1860, she was captured once more, again against her will, which cast a shadow of pathos and tragedy on her repatriation. Filling the space between these violent, bookend encounters is an entire canon of folklore imagining Naudah's life among the Comanches.

Next page

1234567...40

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)»

Look at similar books to Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest). We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Grace Jackson

Cynthia Ann Parker

James DeShields

Cynthia Ann Parker, the Story of Her Capture

Parker Quanah

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

Parker

Lone star nation: how Texas will transform America

Gwynne Samuel C.

Empire of the Summer Moon

Charles River Editors

The Red River War of 1874-1875: The History of the Last American Campaign to Remove Native Americans from the Southwest

William R. Sanford

Comanche Chief Quanah Parker

Glenn Frankel

The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend

S. C. Gwynne

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

Charles Brashear

Killing Cynthia Ann

J. A. Benner

Uncle Comanche

William Y. Chalfant

Without Quarter: The Wichita Expedition and the Fight on Crooked Creek

Discussion, reviews of the book Myth, Memory, and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest) and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.