Chief Quanah Parker
~ Nermernuh Tseeta ~
(1850 - 1911)
During the time of the lease agreements Quanah Parker flourished financially. Quanah was close friends with the ranchers. During their time leasing the range land the ranchers provided Quanah with an invaluable education. An education that he was to use later when dealing with the government concerning allotments.
In 1888 Quanah farmed 150 acres. In 1890 Quanah had 425 head of cattle, 200 hogs, 3 wagons, 1 buggy and 160 horses (Hagan Quanah 42). Quanah was a celebrity, hosting several dignitaries of his time, including hosting a wolf hunt for President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt understood the Indians. He understood why they fought so fiercely to save their land. Roosevelt was an outdoorsman and as such loved and respected nature. The hunting expedition with Quanah served as the avenue for Roosevelt being made aware of the plight of the Native American. This did prompt Roosevelt to veto the Stephens Bill to open the reservation to settlement. Several months later Roosevelt did sign the revised bill on June 5, 1906.
The Jerome Commission came to the reservation on September 19, 1892. The Jerome Commissions duty was to convince the Indians to sign a treaty allowing allotting of land. The allotments were to be 160 acres each, per the Dawes Act. The Treaty of Medicine Lodge had stated that when allotments occurred the lots were to be 320 acres each. According to The Treaty of Medicine Lodge allotting of the land was to happen in 1898. Quanah pointed this out in one of the meetings. He also started asking how much per acre were the Indians going to get for the land that was being opened up for settlement. An estimate of $2,000,000 had been given for the sum total of money the Indians would receive for the land. The following is an excerpt of this discussion between Quanah Parker and Commissioner Sayre:
Quanah Parker: How much per acre?
Mr. Sayre: I can not tell you.
Quanah Parker: How do you arrive at the number of million dollars if you do not know?
Mr. Sayre: We just guess at it.
Because of Quanah's line of questioning Commissioner Jerome had came up with some figures to give him the next day. But Quanah was onto another line of questioning, he started lobbying for an additional $500,000 (Neeley 213). Lone Wolf of the Kiowas expressed concern for the more impoverished and less educated of the reservation. Quanah agreed with Lone Wolf and went on to say:
"There has been several statements as to the amount of money that we receive. It is a great deal of money to be paid each person, and if the Indian makes good use of it he can live like Tanananaka and myself. You look around you and see so many good faces, but they will take their money and buy whiskey."
He went on to say:
"We think we understand what the commission has said to us, but do not think the commission has understood what we have said....This land is ours, just like your farm is yours; but for one reason we can not hold on to ours, because on the right had is what you are trying to do and on the left hand is the Dawes bill."
Quanah had realized he could not stop allotment, only postpone it. He knew he had two options. One, deal with the Jerome Commission or two let the Dawes Act dictate what happened. He chose to deal with the Jerome Commission. It took the Jerome Commission one month to accomplish getting the "signatures" they were after.
Senator Dawes said, "that greed was the element most conspicuously lacking in Indian societies and that without it they could not hope to reach the white man's level of civilization". Greed may or may not have been the driving force behind Quanah Parker but he did use his power to gain personal wealth.
Quanah told the commission that as long as the Jerome Agreement was not ratified he would continue to see to the leasing of the grassland. The Jerome Agreement was ratified 1900. The version that passed the House in March 1900 gave each Indian 160 acres each, did not guarantee them money for the remainder of the land. The Indian Rights Association lobbied against this bill. In a statement they condemned it by saying:
"utterly destructive of that honor and good faith which should characterize our dealings with any
people, and especially with one too weak to enforce their rights as against us by any other means than an appeal to our sense of justice".
This pressure lead to another version of the Jerome Agreement. This version gave each Indian 160 acres, an additional 480,000 acres of land to be held communally, and guaranteed the Indians would receive at least $500,000 of the $2,000,000 purchase price for the surplus land. This was the version of the Jerome Agreement that was ratified in 1900. Provisions were also made for the children that had been born during the time of the signing of the Jerome Agreement and its
ratification.
Quanah never learned to read but he spoke three languages, Comanche, Spanish and English. Realizing that the only way for his people to survive was to acculturate he encouraged education. Ironically, his own children were not always in school. Lack of space in the schools kept them from attending regularly. In 1893, the Fort Sill Boarding School opened. The addition of this school afforded many children, Quanah's included, the opportunity for an education they would not have otherwise received. Because of the lack of a school in his area Quanah had enrolled his
son Kelsey in a white school in Cache. The residents of Cache protested an Indian in their school.
Officially the reason given for Kelsey being denied access to the school was where he lived, outside of the school district (Hagan U.S. 293). So Quanah enrolled Kelsey in the Fort Sill school. Kelsey was not happy. Quanah's said of the Indian school, "No like Indian school for my people. Indian boy go to Indian school, stay like Indian; go white school, he like white man. Me want white school so my children get educated like whites, be like whites."
In 1908 Quanah offered a piece of his property to be used for a school. The reason for the proposed school was that many Indian and white children in the area where Quanah lived were not in any school district. This school never was built. Rumor was that Quanah's son, White Parker, was to be the teacher. Quanah wanted a white teacher, he felt that an Indian teacher
would not speak English well enough to truly teach the children.
August 6, 1901, Lawton, Oklahoma was founded five miles south of Fort Sill. Lawton is a dominant location in the history of the Comanche. During the winter of 1872-73 the Quahadas camped in that area. Later Quanah would appear in parades in Lawton during their Indian Days Celebrations.
On December 4, 1910, Quanah re-interred his mother's remains. He had brought her body up from Texas to Oklahoma. During the ceremony he said,
"Forty years ago my mother died. She captured by Comanches, nine years old. Love Indian and wild life so well no want to go back to white folks. All same people anyway, God say. I love my mother. I like my white people. Got great heart. I want my people to follow after white way, get educated, know work, make living when payments stop. I tell ‘em they got to know how to pick cotton, plow corn. I want them know white man's God. Comanche may die today, tomorrow, ten years. When end comes then they all be together again. I want see my mother again then."
One of Quanah's wishes was to live long enough to see a monument placed on his mother's grave. Two weeks before his death he supervised its installation. After one of his appearances, at an Indian feast, Quanah returned home not feeling well, twenty minutes later he was dead. The Lawton Daily News carried the following obituary.
"Quanah Parker, chief of the Comanches, man among men and chieftain among chieftains, has gone to the Great Father. He died at his ranch near here at five minutes past noon today, twenty minutes after his return from a visit with Cheyenne’s near Harmon, Oklahoma.
The immediate cause of death was heart failure caused by rheumatism, according to the physician called, Dr. J. A. Perisho of Cache. The Chief was dying on the train coming from Snyder but with primitive stoicism he determined to live until he reached home. His favorite wife, To-nicy, by his side, the dying chief sat quietly, his head bowed and his limbs trembling. When the train reached Cache he arose and walked from the train unaided and sat in the waiting room. Dr. Perisho was called and gave him a heart stimulant and the chief was then rushed to his home in the automobile of his son-in-law Emmit Cox.
He was helped into the house and laid on a couch. He arose unaided while Knox Beal, a white man raised from childhood by the Comanche chief, took off his outer garments.
‘Have you any objections to the doctor of the white man treating you?' asked To-pay, one of his wives, in Comanche. ‘No - it is good - I'm ready,' said Quanah.
The Indian women seemed to know the end was near. They motioned to the physician, Beal, and a friend to leave the room while the ‘Cotes-E-Wyne,' the Indian's last resort, was administered by Quas-E- I, a medicine man.
‘Father in heaven this our brother is coming,' prayed the medicine man. Placing an arm about the dying chief, he flapped his hands and imitated the call of the Great Eagle, the messenger of the Great Father.
Then an eagle bone was thrust in Quanah's throat to open it and To-nicy, his favorite, squirted a
mouthful of water down his throat. He coughed, gasped, moved his lips feebly, and died, just twenty minutes after his arrival."
One of the men that was sent to oversee or review the affairs of the reservation was Francis E. Leupp. Leupp was sent in 1903 by T. Roosevelt to investigate claims of corruption at the Wichita Reservation and the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache and Comanche Reservation. In his report Leupp described Quanah Parker as "always conscious that he is Indian, but never forgetful that the white civilization is supreme, and that the Indians wisest course is to adapt himself to it as fast as he can".
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