MIXED BLOOD NATIVE PEOPLE- THE SILENCE OF INDIAN COUNTRY
The Quanah Parker Story
By: Mike (Ali) Raccoon Eyes Kinney
This editorial is both inspirational and motivational, and yet hard hitting and in some cases very ugly and brutal.
It is a story whose time has come to be discussed in Indian Country. It is our stories of being mixed blood Native people, damned for whom we are and damned for who we are not. It is a story of human courage, dignity and pride, of being whom we are, not wishing what we could have been. Let us continue with the story Cousins, for it is the history, Our history of Indian Country.
Perhaps the most internationally famous mixed blood to come out of Indian Country was the legendary Quanah Parker. Quanah, the son of Cynthia Ann Parker; a white female child who was carried off by the Comanche's in a raid at Parker's Fort in Texas in Spring of 1836.
Cynthia Ann was adopted by a band of Penatakas. Quanah's father was of the Quohada band. He name was Peta Nocona, he was a full blood leader of the band.
Quanah would lead the final and the last of the campaigns to drive out the white settlers and farmers from Comanche lands.
When the McKenzie expedition used the scorched earth policies where tons of Comanche clothing, food, weapons and supplies were burned and thousands of horses were shot by the blue coats, Quanah's war is quickly coming to an abrupt halt.
Realizing his people are starving from malnutrition and disease, he makes the painful decision to march to Ft. Sill.Words cannot fill the empty bellies of children and elders.
As Quanah's band of Quohada warriors enter Ft. Sill, they quietly throw down their weapons in piles. No words are spoken to the blue coats of Colonel McKenzie.
In the months to follow his being held against his will as a captive, Quanah has reached a spiritual decision about being a mixed blood Native.
In effect, if his mother Cynthia Ann Parker could learn to live among the People of his father Peta Nocona, then he would learn to live among his own mother's extended family.
Cousins, this is one of the many stories of mixed blood people in Indian Country. The decision to leave one culture and to enter into another culture. Quanah's story, is the story of why there are hundreds of thousands of mixed blood people even today in Indian Country.
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