The Searchers (24 page)

Quanah and his moderate
Kiowa ally, Apiatin, worked hard to convince their fellow Indians that the Ghost Dance had no value. Apiatin even journeyed to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to meet the purported messiah behind the movement, and reported back to Oklahoma that the man was a fraud.

The same kind of panic
occurred in 1898 at the start of the Spanish-American War, when most of the garrison at Fort Sill was ordered to report to the Gulf Coast on short notice, leaving only twenty-one soldiers at the fort. A rumor soon spread that Geronimo and the handful of Apaches who were living on the grounds were planning to rise up and seize the fort. In response, Quanah rounded up his own men and set up a protective ring around the fort's corral and guardhouse. The panic soon dissipated. But the Apaches were bemused to see Comanches—the former Lords of the Plains—mobilized to protect a U.S. Army facility from other Indians.

THE SAD TRUTH was that when it came to whites, Indians had more to fear from their friends than from their enemies. It was their friends, after all, who sought to destroy Native American culture, belief systems, language, and family structures, and seize control of the upbringing and education of Native American children, all in the name of progress and the Indians' own best interests.

Former warriors and hunters were expected to become docile farmers. Their children were required to attend government schools where their Comanche identity, culture, and language were banned or denigrated. Christian ministers, seeking to save souls, challenged the Comanche animistic faith and their practice of polygamy. Even their diet came under attack: Thomas J. Morgan, the chief Indian commissioner, sought to ban the eating of blood and intestines—“
a savage and filthy practice
,” he wrote in a letter to subordinates. “It serves to nourish brutal instincts and … [is] a fruitful source of disease.”

For Quanah, Morgan was a formidable opponent. A devout Baptist schoolteacher from Indiana, he had served as a commander of African-American troops during the Civil War, and he saw himself as a champion of racial equality. But his notion of equality was total assimilation: Indians, like Negroes, needed to lose their identity as a distinctive ethnic group and become proper little white folks.
He even banned Indian participation
in Wild West shows, believing that the exhibitions helped sustain the stereotype of the bloodthirsty savage that Indians needed to overcome.

“
The Indians are destined to be absorbed
into the national life, not as Indians but as Americans,” Morgan wrote to Indian agents and school superintendents throughout the country. “In all proper ways teachers in Indian schools should endeavor to appeal to the highest elements of manhood, and womanhood in their pupils … and they should carefully avoid any unnecessary reference to the fact that they are Indians.”

Reformers such as Richard Henry Pratt, a former army officer placed in charge of Kiowa and Comanche prisoners sent to Florida after the Red River War, were openly determined to destroy Indian culture. As Pratt put it, the goal was to “
kill the Indian and save the man
.” Pratt founded the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, which became the best-known of the many Indian boarding schools. He dressed his charges in “civilized” outfits—high-buttoned coats and stove-pipe trousers for the boys, dresses and smocks for the girls—chopped off their braids, and banned their native languages. This was ruthless pragmatism in the service of a higher good, according to Pratt: “The sooner all tribal relations are broken up; the sooner the Indian loses all his Indian ways, even his language, the better it will be for him and for the government and the greater will be the economy for both.”

Faced with this cultural onslaught, Quanah fought a careful rearguard action. He was willing to accept white religion and education, but was determined to preserve Comanche culture and identity. He authorized Christian missionaries to open churches and schools in Comanche territory, but only those who first came to seek his permission. He eventually sent his own children to white-organized schools, both the Fort Sill Indian School locally and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

In time, Quanah came to believe that Indian children needed to learn the same skills as whites if they were to survive in a white-dominated world. “
Me no like Indian school
for my people,” he said. “Indian boy go to Indian school, stay like Indian; go white school, be like white …”

All of this became part of the image that Quanah carefully constructed
as a reformed warrior who was ready and willing to travel the white man's road. “
Like slaves on a plantation
, the Comanches quickly learned, and none better than Quanah, the necessity of telling the white man what he wanted to hear, while preserving as much of the old way of life as possible,” wrote the historian William Hagan.

Still, there were parts of Quanah's life that he refused to compromise or change. While he wore business suits in public, he would not cut off his warrior braids. Similarly, he refused to abandon polygamy, arguing that it was an essential part of the Comanche way of life. When asked by an official to provide leadership by choosing one among his wives, Quanah teased that he himself was willing to pick one, “but you must tell the others.”

His first wife was To-ha-yea, a Mescalero Apache, but the marriage quickly unraveled. Next he married Weckeah (“Hunting for Something”), the woman he had eloped with back in the 1860s. Their daughter Nahmukuh married Emmett Cox, the white ranch hand whom Quanah helped to get a job at the Indian agency and who became one of Quanah's most trusted advisers. Then came Cho-ny (“Going with the Wind”), followed by A-er-wuth-takum (“She Fell with a Wound”), each of whom had four children. By 1892, Quanah had six wives and seventeen children.
Each wife had a specific set of household duties
focused on the Star House. One handled his personal papers, one took care of his riding horses, one was in charge of his clothing, one ran the kitchen, and one carried water, chopped wood, and cleaned the yard. Each had her own room on the main floor and took turns sharing Quanah's bed, while the children slept upstairs dormitory-style.

Quanah, by all accounts, took delight in his children's accomplishments, especially the literacy and education of his daughters. Several of the girls served as his personal secretary over the years, writing his letters and keeping track of the books. There are no stories of him beating or otherwise abusing his children, and many tales of his care and concern. When his son White got into trouble at the Chilocco Indian school in northern Oklahoma and was confined to the guardhouse, Quanah wrote to the superintendent, S. M. Cowan: “
I cannot, Mr. Cowan, ask you to turn him loose
even if it could be done that way, but I do want you to wire me if he is ill during his confinement.” He added, “I want you to make a good boy out of him if you can …”

Still, there were times when Quanah's public mask slipped, giving a glimpse of the man hiding behind it. For several months
he met clandestinely
with a young Comanche woman named Tonarcy—she quickly
earned the nickname Too-Nicey—who had been married off as a young girl along with her sister to Cruz Portillo, an older Comanche. Tonarcy pleaded with Quanah to allow her to come live with him at the Star House, but he warned her that her husband would kill her if she did. This was no idle threat: when Cruz had suspected another man of paying too much attention to one of his wives, he arranged to have the man killed, according to Comanche lore.

One night after a quarrel with her husband, Tonarcy knocked on the window of Quanah's bedroom on the first floor of the Star House. He did not let her in but sent her down the road to the home of his sharecropper, David Granthum. The following day, Quanah headed off in his buggy without telling anyone. He picked up Tonarcy and rode to a nearby ranch of white friends, then crossed the Red River to the small Texas town of Vernon and rode on to Mexico. At first his wives and friends feared he had been murdered. But when Tonarcy's husband reported her missing as well, the truth became obvious.

The incident inflamed Quanah's enemies among the Comanches. “
Now it's time to kill that white man
,” one of them said, referring to Quanah's mixed blood. “He's caused enough trouble, and now it's getting worse.”

The Mexico trip became a key moment in the Quanah Parker legend. Some storytellers say it was on this trip that he first became acquainted with peyote and its healing powers and brought this strong medicine back to his people. Others contend that Quanah and Tonarcy found a haven at the Mexican ranch of his uncle John Parker, Cynthia Ann's younger brother, who had purportedly settled there with his wife after failing to find a home in either Texan or Comanche society. Neither of these tales is even remotely documented.

What is clear is that after several weeks, agents for the United States and Mexican governments tracked down Quanah and convinced him to return home. When he and Tonarcy came back, his wives were furious. Weckeah packed her clothes and children and stormed out, never to return. The other wives, angry but wary, forced him to cede to them a large proportion of his horses, cattle, and other possessions. He also had to pay Tonarcy's aggrieved husband a team of horses, a buggy, and one hundred dollars cash. Tonarcy moved into the Star House, married Quanah in September 1894, and became his “show wife,” the one he took on trips to Washington and other cities. Tonarcy was unable to have children, and so a few years later Quanah added yet
another wife, Topay (“Something Fell”), with whom he had three more children.

The press was fascinated by the beauty and multiplicity of Quanah's wives. It fit the white notion of the Indian as a sexually voracious animal with no sense of moral decency—the same psychosexual theme underpinning the captivity narrative. A correspondent for the
Daily Oklahoman
retold the tale of the elopement with Tonarcy and described in loving detail her appearance and the apparent wealth of her husband as if they were American nobility: “The seventh Mrs. Parker is
one of the finest Indian women in America
and Chief Parker is proud of her … He never allows her to go out of his sight … She wears a blue velvet waist with what is known as a bat wing cape and moccasins that are very rich. The costume which she wore the last time she was here cost, it is said, over $1,500, the beads and other ornaments being very costly.”

THE PEYOTE PLANT is a small, spineless cactus
found mostly in northern Mexico and South Texas. It contains a powerful hallucinogen whose effects can be relaxing and euphoric. Accounts of the original Spanish explorers to the region describe native peyote rituals of frenzied dancing with knives and hooks. From its earliest days in Mexico, leaders of the Catholic Church saw peyote worship as an idolatrous evil that needed to be eradicated. They never quite succeeded.

In their longstanding raiding and trading forays into northern Mexico, Comanches and Kiowas were exposed to peyote and its spiritual and medicinal powers. But it seems to have gained traction among these tribes only after they were consigned to the reservation. A new generation of prophets and holy men emerged who blended Christian theology with traditional Native American music and rituals. John Wilson, a Caddo-Delaware, recounted a vision in which Christ took Wilson down the road he had walked after the crucifixion from his tomb to the moon on his way to heaven. Those who traveled the Peyote Road, preached Wilson, would themselves follow Christ to heaven.

Peyote worship was a direct result
of white man's demands and innovations. The reservation system threw Comanches and Kiowas together with Mescalero and Lipan Apaches who had practiced peyote worship and brought the rituals to the reservation. Quanah first learned these rituals from two Apaches who ran all-night meetings in a big teepee with a fire pit in the middle. And it was a technological breakthrough,
the railroad, that facilitated the introduction of peyote worship by enabling Indians to travel efficiently to Mexico and bring back dried peyote buttons. The loss of their old way of life and their difficulties in adjusting to reservation life created a spiritual void for many Indians. Some turned to Christianity for answers. But others found peyotism more in keeping with their spiritual identity. It was, above all, uniquely
theirs
, not another forced import from the white world.

Quanah helped introduce peyote to his tribe, protected it from those seeking to ban it, and preached about its healing powers even while maintaining friendships with white Christian missionaries and officials who opposed it. Even when it came to myths and legends, Quanah was willing to split the difference, blending Christian ritual with Indian traditions. “
The white man goes into his church house
and talks about Jesus,” said Quanah, “but the Indian goes into his teepee and talks
to
Jesus.”

In 1888, Special Agent E. E. White posted a written order prohibiting the use of peyote. White anticipated resistance, but Quanah paid him a visit claiming to carry a message from the other chiefs and headmen expressing their understanding that White “had taken the step solely for their own good and that they had almost entirely quit using [peyote].” White was not immovable, and Quanah quickly learned how to move him. Two months later White reported that he had reached an agreement with Quanah “to permit Indians to use peyote one night at each full moon for the next three to four months” until the supply ran out. Apparently it never did.

James Mooney, an Indiana newspaper reporter who became an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institution, attended several all-night peyote rituals in the early 1890s. He was allowed to participate, he wrote, “so that on my return I could tell the government and the white men that it was all good and not bad, and that it was the religion of the Indians in which they believed, and which was as dear to them as ours to us.”