The Searchers (58 page)

For such an iconic film,
The Searchers
has been the subject of surprisingly few books. Edward Buscombe's
The Searchers
, part of the first-rate BFI Film Classics series, is an excellent introduction; while
The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western
, edited by Arthur M. Eckstein and Peter Lehman, is a fine collection of thoughtful academic articles. Michael F. Blake's
Code of Honor
gives a thorough account of the making of the film.

Fortunately, there are many fine books on Ford and Wayne to help fill the gap. The essential list includes
Searching for John Ford: A Life
, Joseph McBride's magisterial biography;
Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford
by Scott Eyman;
Pappy: The Life of John Ford
by Dan Ford; and my sentimental favorite,
Company of Heroes
, Harry Carey Jr.'s candid but affectionate memoir of his life as a member of the John Ford Stock Company.

Abbreviations

BYU
Brigham Young University Library

CVW
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Papers

FSN
Frank S. Nugent

JFP
John Ford Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University

JW
John Wayne

JWP
James W. Parker

KCA
Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Indian Agency Files

MHL
Margaret Herrick Library

NYT
New York Times

OKU
University of Oklahoma Library

OKHS
Oklahoma Historical Society

PPHM
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

QP
Quanah Parker

SMU
Southern Methodist University Library

TSL
Texas State Library and Archives Commission

WB
Warner Brothers Archive

“It's so absolutely right”:
Fonda to JF, April 5, 1954 (Lilly).

“Pappy, you know I love you”:
Henry Fonda,
Fonda: My Life
, pp. 233–4.

Sometimes, when Ford was too wasted:
Joseph McBride,
Searching for John Ford: A Life
, p. 550.

He had had cataract surgery:
Gerald Peary,
John Ford Interviews
, p. 32.

“John Ford was going through changes”:
Maureen O'Hara,
'Tis Herself: A Memoir
, p. 193.

“My name is John Ford”:
Robert Parrish,
Growing Up in Hollywood
, offers a detailed account of the meeting, pp. 207–210.

Ford … had once commissioned:
See Larry Swindell, “Yes, John Ford Knew a Thing Or Two about Art,”
John Ford Interviews
, pp. 146–7.

“Wayne is plainly Ahab”:
Greil Marcus, “John Wayne Listening,” p. 321.

“It was a sacred feeling”:
Rachel Dodes, “IMAX Strikes Back,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 19, 2012.

“all modern American literature”:
Stuart Byron,
“The Searchers
: Cult Movie of the New Hollywood,”
New York
, March 5, 1979, p. 45.

“Thus was the wilderness”:
James W. Parker,
Narrative of the Perilous Adventures
, p. 7.

the Night the Stars Fell:
Joseph Taulman note, 2F 206 (Taulman Papers).

“The remainder of the night”:
Carl Greenwood to Joseph Taulman, September 11, 1931 (Taulman); see also Jo Ella Powell Exley,
Frontier Blood
, pp. 36–7. For an extended family history of the Parkers in Illinois and Texas see Eugene G. O'Quinn, “Quanah—The Eagle: Half-White Comanche Chief,” unpublished (Van Zandt).

“not a good day for bee hunting”:
Charles E. Parker to Joseph Taulman, Feb. 8, 1928, 2F 205 (Taulman).

“Farming was my only way”:
Joseph Taulman, “First Regularly Organized and Constituted Protestant or Non-Catholic Church in Texas” (Taulman).

“He seemed full of his subject”:
Max Lee, “Daniel Parker,” p. 2.

“without education, uncouth in manners”:
Ibid., pp. 2–3.

“awakened in me feelings”:
JWP, p. 5.

“We now shot them down”:
Dyersbury
(TN)
State Gazette
, May 29, 2002.

“We believe that God created man”:
“Records of an Early Texas Baptist Church,” p. 86.

“The grass is more abundant”:
Stephen F. Austin, “Journal,” p. 289.

“vicious and wild men”:
Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas
, p. 79.

“literally shot to pieces”:
JWP, p. 6.

“an honest man”:
Character Certificate, July 20, 1833, 2F 192 (Taulman).

“an Enemy to truth”:
Reverend Bing, undated handwritten note, Daniel Parker Papers 3G 479 (Briscoe).

“the most fertile, most healthy”:
JWP, p. 63.

“forests of cast iron”:
Washington Irving,
A Tour of the Prairies
, p. 113.

They shot the two chiefs:
Papers Concerning Robertson's Colony in Texas XIV
, p. 72. For description of tensions, see also Jack Selden,
Return
, pp. 22–4.

“If this region was not infested”:
JWP, p. 70.

“to destroy my reputation”:
“Defense of James W. Parker,” p. 5 (Bancroft).

The settlers had no nails:
See museum displays at Old Fort Parker, Groesbeck, Texas.

“to secure the inhabitants”:
Telegraph and Texas Register
, October 26, 1835.

winter of 1836 was a desperate time:
Typescript ms. by Morris Swett, Fort Sill librarian who collected Comanche oral folklore (Fort Sill, Swett File Collection B1 F3).

Daniel signed his name:
Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin.

“To our minds this was a far more trying time”:
A. D. Gentry, “The Runaway Scrape,”
Frontier Times
, p.9.

“for the purpose of Killing the white people”:
Daniel Parker handwritten statement, June 18, 1836 (Taulman).

“voices that seemed to reach the very skies”:
Rachel Plummer,
Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings
, 1839, p. 6. The details of the massacre are from Plummer, pp. 5–8, and JWP, pp. 9–11.

“We were in the howling wilderness”:
JWP, pp. 12–13.

“dressed in white with long, white hair”:
“The Charmed Life of Abram Anglin,”
Groesbeck Journal
, May 15, 1936, p. 5.

“We found the houses still standing”:
JWP, pp. 14–15.

“feelings of the deepest mortification”:
Plummer, pp. 7–8.

“abandon once more the habitations of civilized men”:
Richard Slotkin,
Regeneration Through Violence
, p. 430.

clad in native garb:
Grant Foreman,
Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest
, p. 184.

“jealous, envious, dissipated”:
Lawrence E. Honig,
John Henry Brown: Texas Journalist
, p. 11.

“Your enemies and ours are the same”:
Thomas W. Kavanagh,
Comanches: A History
, p. 251.

“All argument failed”:
JWP, p. 17.

“with mingled feelings of joy”:
Ibid., pp. 18–9.

“something inexpressibly lonely”:
Irving, p. 162.

Comanches called themselves
Nemernuh: T. R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches: The History of a People
, p. 31; also Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains
, pp. 25–8.

“most horrible attire”:
Gerald Betty,
Comanche Society
, p. 122.

“the largest and most terrible nomadic nation”:
Jean-Louis Berlandier,
The Indians of Texas in 1830
, p. 114.

“a vast hinterland of extractive raiding”:
Pekka Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire
, p. 182.

Rachel Plummer never said:
This account of her captivity, including her baby son's murder, is from Plummer, pp. 9–18.

“Its light turned the evening mist”:
Larry McMurtry,
Lonesome Dove
, p. 285.

the country's first indigenous literary genre:
Gary L. Ebersole,
Captured by Texts
, p. 10.

“the special demonic personification”:
Slotkin,
Regeneration
, p. 4.

“Their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit”:
Mary White Rowlandson,
Narrative of the Captivity and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
, p. 7.

“the tresses of this lady were shining”:
James Fenimore Cooper,
The Last of the Mohicans
, pp. 16–17 and 109–10.

“This intelligence kindled anew”:
JWP, pp. 22–3.

She would soak the hides to soften:
Marcus Kiek, “Brain-Tanned Buffalo Hide.”

The dead bison provided food, hardware, clothing:
“Skinning and Butchering a Bison,” PPHM video presentation.

“It was the sweetest stuff”:
T. A. “Dot” Babb obituary, undated (PPHM).

“The squaws did all the manual labor”:
T. A. Babb,
In the Bosom of the Comanches
, pp. 39–40.

“if she attempted again to force me”:
Plummer, p. 17.

“You are brave to fight”:
Ibid., p. 19.

Humans became just one more commodity:
Michael Tate, “Comanche Captives,” pp. 231–4.

forced to scrape and clean her own dead mother's scalp:
J. W. Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas
, p. 401.

“trained, from infancy to age, to deeds of cruelty:
Carl Coke Rister,
Border Captives
, p. 68.

“all females were chattels”:
Fehrenbach, p. 287. For a conflicting view, Joaquin Rivaya-Martínez, “Becoming Comanches.”

“The sweeping generalizations by Dodge and Fehrenbach”:
Gregory and Susan Michino,
A Fate Worse Than Death
, p. 473.

Bianca produced an unpublished memoir:
Her account finally appeared in print fifty-three years after her death: “‘Every Day Seemed to Be a Holiday': The Captivity of Bianca Babb,” Daniel J. Gelo and Scott Zesch, eds.

“No man can regret”:
Sam Houston,
The Writings of Sam Houston
, pp. 53–4.

Still, James persisted:
The ambush is narrated in JWP, pp. 24–7.

Houston was no city:
For details of the five capitals and the executive mansion, see Selden,
Return
, p. 106, and Exley, pp. 79–80.

“Calling me a fool and a mad man”:
Parker to Houston, June 6, 1837 (TSL).

“flog those Indians”:
Houston, p. 36.

the truce did not last long:
Selden, p. 89.

“As soon as the opportunity presented itself”:
JWP, p. 30.

“Had I the treasures of the universe”:
Plummer, p. 28. For her account of her rescue and return to her family, see pp. 27–30.

Her appearance was “most pitiable”:
James W. Parker, p. 31.

“The prejudice existing”:
Petition, 1840, Star of the Republic Museum Archive.

He went into hiding:
Exley, pp. 99–101.

“My success engendered malice”:
Parker, “Defense,” p. 6.

“feeling assured that before they are published”:
Plummer, pp. 31–3.

“This life had no charms”:
JWP, p. 32.

Wilson died two days later:
Exley, p. 104.

“John Parker and Sinthy Ann”:
Petition, November 22, 1840 (Star of the Republic).

a wild scheme to raise an army:
Exley, p. 106.

“If the wild cannibals of the woods”:
Indian Relations in Texas (TSL).

intimate enemies:
Rupert N. Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement
, p. 101.

the centrality of attacks on women and children:
see Slotkin,
Gunfighter Nation
, p. 48.

The elderly Cherokee leader:
see Gary Anderson,
The Conquest of Texas
, p. 179.

“Her head, arms, and face were full of bruises”:
Mary A. Maverick,
Memoirs
, p. 44. This account of the Council House massacre is largely from her memoir, from Fehrenbach, pp. 322–9, and from “Hugh McLeod's Report on the Council House Fight,” March, 20, 1840 (TSL).

“These the Indians made free with”:
Handbook of Texas Online.

“The bodies of men, women, and children”:
Fehrenbach, pp. 347–8.

“The two cousins … exulted”:
Foreman, p. 285.