Free The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers by Charles M. Robinson III Page B

settler Daniel Parker that about five hundred tribesmen had gathered on the Trinity River and were sporting two captive white women and several children, but the Parkers did not try to ascertain whether this was true.¹
    Daniel and his brother Silas Parker were among those who had been authorized by the Permanent Council to form Ranger companies to defend the frontier during the Mexican crisis. In private life, they and their other brothers headed a fortified settlement that had many characteristics of a religious commune; most of the settlers were either Parker kin or followers of a Predestinarian Baptist movement headed by Daniel. Originally from Virginia, the clan and its congregation had migrated to Texas from Illinois in the early 1830s. By the spring of 1834, they had chosen their land, staked their claims, completed their fort, and cleared and planted their fields. Surviving floods and Indian scares, they prospered, and in the fall of 1835 the War of Independence brought Silas and Daniel to prominence with the convention.²
    Because the Rangers of this era were citizen volunteers, they used periods of relative peace to return home and tend their crops and handle other chores. With the frontier reasonably quiet and the immediate Mexican emergency over, May 1836 found Silas Parker back at the family seat of Parker’s Fort near the headwaters of the Navasota River. The fort was not a military post but a fortified settlement of several families such as were built on the Indian frontier up through the 1860s. The modern reconstruction, erected on the original site based on archaeology and contemporary accounts, is a stockade of upright cedar logs enclosing a communal square and stock pens. The families lived in cabins built against the interior of the stockade. Between each cabin and the next was a rifle stage and loopholes for defense. Blockhouses were built over the northeast and southwest corners. The northeast blockhouse covered the main gate, and the southeast blockhouse overlooked the “spring gate,” a waist-high portal that led to the springs where the families drew their water.
    On May 19, 1836, most of the men were working in their fields some distance away, leaving only a handful of men in the fort with the women and children. The day was hot, and the main gate, which closed would have made the stockade virtually impregnable, was open to catch the breeze. About mid-morning, a large band of Indians appeared outside the gate, and before a defense could be prepared, they overran the fort. By the time the men arrived from the fields, the fort had been sacked. Five were dead, including Silas Parker; one was badly wounded, and five were taken captive.³
    Eventually, every captive of the raid was ransomed except Silas’s daughter, Cynthia Ann. For the next quarter of a century, whenever the Texas Rangers recovered a female white captive of the appropriate age, the question in everyone’s mind was: Is this Cynthia Ann Parker?
    NEWS OF THE attack on Parker’s Fort created a sensation on the frontier. Many settlers in the outlying farms and ranches moved in closer to the settlements for protection. Indian depredations spread, and Bastrop County, about sixty miles northeast of San Antonio, suffered especially badly. Even as the financially battered Republic cut back on its army, it had to raise new Ranger units from those scattered after the War of Independence. On August 12, 1836, Acting Secretary of War F. A. Sawyer ordered Robert Coleman “to raise for the term of one year three companies of mounted men for the Special purpose of protecting frontier inhabitants. . . .” Many of these were Rangers from Tumlinson’s company, called back into service because their previous enlistments had not expired. Among them was the twenty-eight-year-old Noah Smithwick, who appeared at a dance during this period “resplendent in a brand new buckskin suit, consisting of hunting shirt, pantaloons and moccasins, all elaborately