Quanah Parker, the last Comanche chief, was buried beside his famous white mother on Feb. 25, 1911.
A few days after surrendering at Fort Sill in the spring of 1875, the battle-scarred leader of the Quahada Comanches just happened to tell Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie that his mother was the former white captive Cynthia Ann Parker. It fell to his longtime pursuer to inform Quanah that the woman, who had given him birth, was dead.
Mackenzie either did not know or did not care that the Comanches never had been a united tribe under one leader before he appointed Quanah chief. Comanche critics blamed the controversial decision on the Quahada’s white blood, which made him popular among the soldiers, frontiersmen, politicians and white people generally.
