Bookin' It
The perfect literary companion for your Old West vacations.
Categories: Featured Travel Stories
By: TW Editors 03/01/2008
CACHE, OK
“Every day when Chief Quanah Parker was home at his ranch near the Wichita Mountains, ‘Dummy,’ his deaf and dumb Comanche driver, drove the chief in his stagecoach or buggy the four miles into the little hamlet of Cache and stopped at the post office for Quanah to get his mail. Communications of all kinds were unusually good at Quanah’s rural home in comparison with those of his neighbors, many of whom lived in dugouts, log cabins, or clapboard shacks. Burk Burnett had provided Quanah with an imposing twelve-room house, and as early as 1908 it had a telephone,” wrote Bill Neeley in The Last Comanche Chief.
Mestizo Quanah’s white mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was captured by Comanches in 1836. His father was the Comanche warrior Peta Nocona. From his youth, Quanah followed in his father’s footsteps, fighting white incursions at every step. That ended when his band surrendered in 1875 and moved to the reservation in Oklahoma. Quanah became tribal chief and an important statesman for all Indians, working with U.S. authorities to advance his people wherever possible.
When Quanah died in 1911, his body was buried in the Cache cemetery next to his mother; the remains were moved to Fort Sill in 1957. Quanah’s magnificent two-story frame home—called Star House because of the huge stars painted on the roof—was moved to a park in Cache. There it stands, basically unused, with some of Quanah’s belongings still in it (including the bed he died in). The Star House could use a bit of love and care, but the presence of the “last Comanche chief” is still strongly felt.
Trip Lit:
The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neeley
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