History of Texas, Together with a Biographical History of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson Counties. Page: 231

H O

different tribes, and traveled several thousand
miles, was ransomed and taken to Fort Gibson
late in 1842, and reached home in 1843,
in charge of his grandfather. He became a
respected citizen of Anderson county. Both
lie and his father are now dead.
'" This still left in captivity Cynthia and
Jolln Parker, who as subsequently heard were
held by separate bands. The brother amnd sister
thus separated gradually, forgot the langulage,
manners and customs of their own
people, and became thorough Comanches as
the long years stole slowly away. IIow long
the camera of their brains retained tlhe impressions
of the old home within the old fort,
and the loved faces of their pale kindred, no
one knows; though it would appear that the
fearful massacre should have stamped an imnpress
indelible while life continued. But the
young mind, as thle twig, is inclined by present
circumstances, and often forced in a way
wholly foreign to its native and original bent.
- "John grew up with the semi-nude Comanclhe
boys of hlis own age, and played at
hunter anld warrior with thle pop-gun, made
of elder-stems, or bows and arrows, and often
flushed the chapparal for hare and grouse, or
entrapped the tinny denizens of the mountain
brook with thle many peculiar and ingenious
devices of the wild man for securing for his
repast the toothsome trout which abounds so
plentifully in the elevated and delightful region
so long inhabited by thle lordly Comanches.

"When John arrived at manhood he accompanied
a raiding party down the Rio
Grande and into Mexico. Among the captives
taken was a young Mexican girl of
great beauty, to whom the young warrior
felt his heart go out. The affection was
reciprocated on the part of thle fair Dona
Juanita, and the two were engaged to be

married as soon as they should arrive at thle
Comanche village. Each day, as the cavalcade
moved leisurely but steadily along, the
lovers could be seen riding together and discussing
the anticipated pleasures of connubial
life, when suddenly John was prostrated by
a violent attack of smallpox. The cavalcade
could not tarry, and so it was decided that
the poor fellow should be left all alone, in
the vast Llano Estacado, to die or recover as
fate (lecreed. But the little Aztec beauty
refused to leave her lover, insisting on her
captors allowing her to remain and take care
of him. To this tlle Indians reluctantly consented.
With Juanita to nurse and cheer
him up, John lingered, lived and ultimately
recovered, when, with as little ceremony,
perhaps, as consummated the nuptials of the
first pair in Eden, they assumed the matrimonial
relation, and Dona Juanita's predilection
for the customs and comforts of civilization
-were sufficiently strong to induce her
lord to abandon the wild and nomadic life of
a savage for the comforts to be found in a
straw-thatched house. 'They settled in
Texas,' says Mr. Thrall, the historian of
Texas, 'on a stock ranch in the far West.'
When the Civil war broke out John Parker
joined a Mexican company in tlhe Confederate
service and was noted for his gallantry
and daring. Ile, however, refused to leave
the soil of Texas, and would under no circumstances
cross the Sabine into Louisiana.
I e was still on his ranch across the Rio
Grande a few years ago, but up to that time
lIad never visited any of his relatives in
Texas.".
CYNTIhIA ANN PARKER.
The following interesting account is a
chapter added to the foregoing story: "Four
long years have elapsed since she was cruelly

231

MISTRY F TXAS