John Parker
Fort Parker was established by the headwaters of the Navasota River in 1834 by the extensive Parker clan and other families intent on leaving Illinois and settling in Texas, at the time a province of Mexico. John Parker was born there that year. Two years later the fort and settlement were attacked by Comanche, who took several captives, among them young John, who was adopted into the Comanche. The Comanche often took women as captives for the purpose of bearing children. Children were taken into the tribe either to become fighters or to be raised into women bearing slaves.
Parker was raised by a Comanche, learning to hunt, fish, and ride. When one of the women with whom Parker was captured gave birth, the Comanche killed the infant, claiming that the need to care for it distracted the woman from her other duties. The woman, Rachel Plummer, later wrote a book about her experiences as a prisoner of the Comanche, Rachel Plummer’s Narrative of 21 Months‘ Servitude as a Prisoner Among the Comanche Indians.
John Parker was ransomed in 1842 and returned to the settlements. In short order he demonstrated he was unable to adapt to the restrictions in “civilized” society, even one as coarse as the settlements of mid-19th century Texas. Parker soon escaped the shackles of the white settlements and made his way back to the Comanche, where he continued to live with them as one of the tribe.
Comanche raids, on other tribes and on the settlements of Americans and Mexicans, were frequent and often of a rogue nature, usually to obtain horses or other livestock. Parker participated in these, as did all young male Comanche, as a way of establishing their courage and their manhood. During one raiding trip Parker was stricken with smallpox; his companions, recognizing the symptoms and fearing the disease, abandoned him on the trail, leaving behind a recently captured Mexican girl to care for him.
After recovering he returned the girl to her family in Mexico. After discovering that the family was moderately wealthy he married her. He later served with the Confederate Army during the Civil War, eventually retiring to his large Mexican estate and ranch, where he died in 1915.