Fort Worth Characters by Selcer Richard F.;

Author:Selcer, Richard F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Quanah Parker: Fort Worth’s Adopted Native Son

In the heart of the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District stands a statue of legendary Comanche Chief Quanah Parker. It is fitting that the statue stands in front of a hotel because Quanah himself was never more than a visitor to Fort Worth. He never resided here, did not have family roots here, and visited the city only rarely. Yet this son of a Comanche father and an Anglo mother became Fort Worth’s “native son” in the truest sense of that term. The city virtually adopted him. City fathers such as W. T. “Tom” Waggoner and Samuel Burk Burnett called him friend and he always had a special place in his heart for the town even while making a home among his people in Oklahoma. How Quanah Parker came to be Fort Worth’s Native Son is one of our city’s great stories.

It is the remarkable story of a man straddling two cultures, alternately embraced and rejected by both, who in the end helped heal the wounds of war and hatred. He was born and grew up in the world of the fearsome Comanches but died in the white man’s world after making peace with his people’s longtime enemies. His given name, Quanah, was Native American and the only name he needed among his father’s people. Years later he added the surname Parker as acknowledgment of the white half of his ancestry. The two names symbolized the two worlds that Quanah Parker lived in.

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