QUANAH PARKER
At the turn of the century Parker raised the school integration issues of Brown v. Board of Education 50 years earlier.
In his honor, there have been no more Comanche chiefs selected. Leaders after Parker have had the title of Chairman. Parker is sometimes referred to as “the last Comanche chief.”
Quanah Parker (Comanche kwana, "smell, odor") was a war leader of the Kwahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was likely born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band of Tabby-nocca and grown up among the Kwahadis, the son of Kwahadi Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American who had been kidnapped as a child and assimilated into the Nokoni tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into near extinction, Quanah Parker eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Kwahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
