Quanah Parker - Fort Worth, TX
Posted by: 
QuesterMark
N 32° 47.301 W 097° 20.795
14S E 654832 N 3629033
In the courtyard outside the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame stands a statue of Quanah Parker, last chief of the Comanche nation, sculpted by Jack Bryant.
Waymark Code: WM604A
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/09/2009
Views: 14
Across the street in the Stockyards is the Cowtown Coliseum, where, in 1909, Parker and 38 members of his tribe rode in full regalia as part of what is now the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. The statue used to be on display inside the Coliseum until it was moved to its current location next to a new Texas Historical Marker.
From a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article found elsewhere on the Internet:
Quanah Parker was born about 1845 along Elm Creek in Indian territory (now Oklahoma). His father was Chief Peta Nocona, his mother Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been captured in a raid.
As chief, Quanah refused to sign the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty that sent many Plains Indians to reservations. Instead, he led raids in Texas and Mexico for seven more years and forayed into Tarrant County as late as June 1871. He was never defeated in battle, but after a harsh winter he brought his band to the reservation at Fort Sill, OK, in May 1875, laying down arms and accepting "the white trail." Afterward, he became a liaison between his people and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, encouraging his people to take up ranching and get formal educations. Investments made him wealthy. Yet his ability to walk in two cultures also made him controversial.
Parker's first trip to Fort Worth almost killed him. In December 1885 he visited his father-in-law, Yellow Bear. In the Pickwick Hotel at Fourth and Main streets, they extinguished the gas flame before going to bed but did not turn off the gas. Yellow Bear died of asphyxiation. Quanah barely survived.
He died in 1911 and is buried at Fort Sill.
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