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Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche Indians, son of Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, was born about 1845 near the Wichita Mountains in what is now Oklahoma.
He was a major figure both in Comanche resistance to white settlement and in the tribe's adjustment to reservation life. Nomadic hunter of the Llano Estacado, leader of the Quahadi assault on Adobe Walls in 1874, cattle rancher, entrepreneur, and friend of American presidents, Quanah Parker was truly a man of two worlds.
The name Quanah means "fragrance." Though the date of his birth is recorded variously at 1845 and 1852, there is no mystery regarding his parentage. His mother was the celebrated captive of a Comanche raid on Parker's Fort (1836) and convert to the Indian way of life. His father was a noted war chief of the Nocone band of the Comanches. In 1860, Quanah's father Peta Nocona was killed defending an encampment on the Pease River against Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross. The raid, which resulted in the capture and incarceration of Cynthia Ann and Quanah's sister Topasannah, also decimated the Nocones and forced Quanah, now an orphan, to take refuge with the Quahadi Comanches of the Llano Estacado.
