Battle of Pease River The Battle of Pease River occurred on December 18 , 1860 , near the town of Margaret , Texas in Foard County , Texas , United States . The town is located between Crowell and Vernon within sight of the Medicine Mounds just outside present - day Quanah , Texas . A monument on that spot marks the site of the famous battle between the Comanche Indians under Peta Nocona and a detachment of Texas Rangers and militia under Ranger Captain " Sul " Ross . The battle was fought to protect the lives and property of white settlers in the area who had encroached on land historically belonging to the Comanches . This very small skirmish gradually acquired an unwarranted grandiosity as a major Texan historical event primarily due to the self - promotion by Sul Ross who claimed that " the great Comanche confederacy was forever broken , the blow was decisive , their illustrious chief slept with his fathers and with him were most of his doughty warriors . " This battle is primarily remembered as the place where Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured from the Comanche she had lived with for 24 years . Cynthia Ann Parker . Cynthia Ann Parker was a woman of European descent who had been kidnapped as a child by the Comanche in the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 . The nine year old Parker had grown up among the Comanche , who called her “ Nadua ” . She had married war chief Peta Nocona and borne him 3 children . Nonetheless , the Rangers and her family had never given up hope of regaining her , though it is doubtful they realized until her recapture how thoroughly she had become Comanche . Her uncle , James Parker , had spent most of his adult life , and his fortune , in a fruitless search for her . Her presence and recapture at Pease River was a matter of national importance , probably because , as Ross was quoted as saying in the book " Indian Depredations " , by J . W . Wilbarger , " Most families on the frontier had lost someone to the Indians . Cynthia Ann ' s recovery would be looked at as almost a miracle by those folks . " The famous picture of her with her daughter Topsanah at her breast was carried in almost every paper in the country . Peta Nocona . The greatly feared Comanche war chief Peta Nocona was a son of a chief of the Quahadi band of the Comanche known as the Wanderer , or possibly wanderer as in " outcast " , or " he who wanders far and returns " . Peta Nocona was one of the war chiefs present at the attack on Fort Parker , and had formed his own band of the Comanche called the Nokoni . They occupied territory along the Red River . Nocona had taken Cynthia Ann Parker as his wife a few years after she was captured by the Indians in 1836 . A great tribute to his affection to her was that he never took another wife , though it was common among the Comanche for such a successful war chief to do so . The couple eventually had two sons , Quanah Parker and Pecos , and a daughter , Topsannah . The battle . In early 1860 Peta Nacona led the Comanches in a raid through Parker County , Texas , which ironically was named in honor of his wife ' s family . After the raid he returned with his band to what he believed was a safe retreat under the sandstone bluffs of Pease River near where Mule Creek flowed into the stream . The site was long a favorite of the Comanche , providing both cover from the fierce blue northers that hit the plains , and ample forage for their ponies , with easy buffalo hunting from the nearby herds . But the raids of the Comanche had brought pressure in Austin to protect the settlers , and Texas Governor Sam Houston had commissioned Ranger Captain Sul Ross to organize a company of 40 Rangers and 20 militia to put a stop to the Indian raids . The company of 60 was based at Fort Belknap , in Parker County . Sul Ross quickly ascertained that he simply did not have sufficient men to guard the frontier , and instead determined that the best way to protect the settlers was to take the offensive to the Indians at the earliest opportunity . In preparation , he began to scout the area for sign of Indian camps . After Peta Nocona ' s raid into Parker County , Sul Ross and his fighters started tracking the Nokonis , who were considered the hardiest fighters among the Comanche , who were in turn considered the fiercest of the Plains Indians . Modern research has revealed that Peta Nocona did not intend to stay at Pease River , and was preparing to move on when the attack came on his camp that December day . It was daybreak on December 18 , 1860 , when Ranger Captain Sul Ross himself scouted out the camp on the Pease River as his scouts reported the presence of a fairly large hunting party and camp on the banks of the Pease . With an oncoming blue northern blotting out sign , Ross was able to move up to spy out the location of the Noconas on the Mule Creek head bank as it came into the Pease River . Ross sent a detachment of 20 men out of his force of 60 to position themselves behind a chain of sand hills to cut off retreat to the northwest , while with 40 men , Ross himself led the charge down into the Indian camp . The result was that the band was taken completely by surprise , and were massacred , either shot down where they stood , or were killed by the 20 men to the north as they attempted to flee . Sul Ross wrote , quoted in " Indian Depredations " , by J . W . Wilbarger , that they fired at everyone present , saying " The attack was so sudden that a considerable number were killed before they could prepare for defense . They fled precipitately right into the presence of the sergeant and his men . Here they met with a warm reception , and finding themselves completely encompassed , every one fled his own way , and was hotly pursued and hard pressed . " There are two distinct and very different stories about Peta Nocona ’ s death . The first is that he died trying to escape with his wife and infant daughter , which is the generally believed story , and the one reported by Sul Ross officially . According to this story , seeing that the camp was hopelessly overrun , Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker fled to the east up a creek bed . Reportedly , mounted behind Nocona was a 15 - year - old Mexican girl , while Cynthia Ann Parker carried her two year old child , Topasannah ( “ Prairie Flower ” ) . Captain Ross and his lieutenant , Tom Killiheir , pursued the man they believed to be the legendary Peta Nocona . But Quanah Parker , the chief ' s oldest son , once reportedly said in Dallas to Sul Ross , " No kill my father ; he not there . I want to get it straight here in Texas history . After that , two year , three year maybe , my father sick . I see him die . " Certainly Quanah Parker said on numerous occasions to both friend and foe that his father had survived the massacre of his Band , and died three to four years later of complications from old war wounds suffered against the Apaches . In this story , strongly supported by the Comanche people , Peta Nocona was out hunting with his oldest son and a few others when the attack occurred . This story is supported also by an Army Colonel who reported interviewing reliable men who saw Nocona after his death at Pease River . In the popular account recollected by Sul Ross and first printed in James T . DeShields ' 1886 book " Cynthia Ann Parker " , after a chase of a mile ( 1 . 6 km ) or so , he and Ranger Tom Killiheir hotly pursued a man they thought was a chief from his headdress , who had a second Indian on the back of his pony , and a second pony with a woman carrying a small infant . The Rangers pulled up and either ( Ross claimed he shot the man , Killiheir said he did , one of the two shot the second Indian on the back of the chief ' s pony . It turned out to be a Mexican girl on the back of Nocona ’ s pony , and both white men would later claim that they did not know she was a girl , with only her head showing out of the buffalo robe . She was killed instantly by the shot , and as she died , pulled the chief , supposedly Peta Nocona , off the horse . The Comanche chief recovered and began to fire arrows at the approaching Ross , one striking the horse on which the Ranger captain was mounted . One shot from Ross ’ s pistols reportedly broke Nocona ' s arm , while two other shots reportedly hit his body . Apparently mortally wounded , Nocona managed to drag himself to a small tree and bracing himself against it began to chant the Comanche death song . Captain Ross ' s Mexican - born servant , Antonio Martinez , who spoke Comanche , and reportedly had been taken captive as a child by Nocona , approached the dying warrior and spoke to him in the Comanche language . As an interpreter for Captain Ross , Antonio Martinez told Nocona to surrender . The fierce Comanche ’ s response was a dying attempt to hurl a lance at the Ranger leader . His family captured — except for his son Quanah , who had escaped the slaughter — and his warriors dead or dying , their families dead or prisoners , Nocona was executed on the spot by a shotgun wielded by Martinez , while the woman supposedly screamed his name and wept . The popular account of the Battle of Pease River is called into question by conflicting accounts from participants including Ross himself . There is evidence in his later correspondence that Ross was aware of the political advantages conferred by widely - held perceptions about his role in the incident at Pease River . The record also indicates his own version of the story changed over time , generally casting his involvement in a more positive and grandiose light . Other participant accounts contradicted much of the popular account , including an interview in which Hiram B . Rogers , a Ranger who joined the Ross command in October 1860 , said , " I was in the Pease River fight , but I am not very proud of it . That was not a battle at all , but just a killing of squaws . " Once he had come into the reservation , and the topic arose with him , Quanah Parker adamantly denied that the man killed with his mother was his father . Further , Quanah Parker had told his fellow warriors for years that his father had made good his escape from Pease River , and had died years later . Quanah said that he and his father , along with a few others , had left the camp late the night before to go hunting , and thus were not present the morning of the massacre of their band , and when they returned , virtually no adults were left alive to tell him or his father exactly what had taken place , or what had become of his wife and two youngest children . Not knowing whether his wife and youngest children were even alive , Peta Nocona made the hard decision to flee the place of the slaughter of his people , in order to assure the safety of his remaining ( and oldest ) son . According to Quanah , Ross did not know who the man he killed was , and his father was away with him , and virtually all the warriors when the attack occurred , and lived four more years , before old battle wounds finally killed him . It must be also noted that a rare book from that period supports Quanah ' s claim that his father did not die at Pease River . In a book decades out of print , written in 1890 , " Carbine & Lance , The Story of Old Fort Sill " , by Colonel W . S . Nye , the Colonel buttresses Quanah ' s version of the story . Ney says : " Accounts vary as to what happened . Captain Ross , who was acclaimed a hero for the deed , claimed and probably honestly believed that he had caught and killed Peta Nacona . But in the melee he pursued and shot Nawkohnee ' s Mexican slave , who was trying to save the fleeing Comanche women . " Nye claimed that he encountered men who saw Nocona alive several years after Pease River , when he was ill with an infected war wound . This version strongly supports Quanah ' s claim that his father survived Pease River , and died three to four years later of an infected wound . Nye said what Quanah maintained , that Nocona and Parker had been an exceptionally happy couple , and the forced separation killed them both , Parker starved herself to death , and Nocona withered away . Aftermath . At first Ross believed the woman he had captured was just another “ old and unkempt squaw . ” Some accounts say Martinez noticed her blue eyes , a rare trait for a native Comanche , and as the woman was questioned , she pointed at herself and said “ me Cynthia . ” Thus ended Cynthia Ann Parker ’ s quarter century among the Comanche , and began a tragic capture among people she didn ’ t want to be with . Although her family attempted to care for her , they simply did not and could not understand that while she might have been of European descent by birth , her character was utterly and totally Comanche . Ross reported that from the moment he captured her , Cynthia Ann begged to be returned to her people , the Comanche . Despite this , every man connected with the capture tried to take credit for " rescuing " Cynthia Ann . Martinez claimed he identified her by her hair and eyes , as did Killhair . Another version , that of Sul Ross , in his official report on the battle wrote of identifying Cynthia Ann Parker , again quoted in " Indian Depredations " , by J . W . Wilbarger : ' Why , Tom , this is a white woman , Indians do not have blue eyes . ' In any event , it was Ross who forced Parker to return to white society instead of allowing her to go back to the Indians as she asked upon capture . When he returned to Fort Belknap , Ross sent at once for Isaac Parker , a brother of Silas Parker and uncle to Cynthia Ann , who lived near Weatherford , Texas , but he was unable to positively identify this frail captive as his niece . Alas , though her remembered few words of English finally convinced Parker she was his niece , her travails had only begun . Cynthia Ann was essentially kept captive by her white family to prevent her from returning to the only family she knew , the Comanche . Topasannah died of influenza in 1864 , followed shortly by her mother , who starved herself to death . Cynthia Ann already was in mourning for her sons when her daughter died , leaving her without a reason to live . According to her neighbors " She thought her sons were lost on the prairie after she was captured . She would take a knife and slash her breasts until they bled and then put the blood on some tobacco and burn it and cry for hours . " Ironically , of Cynthia Ann ’ s two sons , both escaped the Battle of Pease River , but one died later before he could be returned to his mother . Charles Goodnight , the famous scout and later rancher , found the sign of two horses who had trotted at a normal trot out of the camp for about a mile , then taken off at a dead run to the nearest large Comanche camp . Goodnight trailed the horses 50 miles to that camp , but as it had more than 1 , 000 Comanche present , and he had less than a dozen men with him , he abandoned the chase . Later in life , Quanah told Goodnight he was one of those horsemen , and his brother was the other . Though his brother died , Quanah became a famous chieftain among the Comanche ' s , indeed , he was the last of their war chiefs . Quanah Parker , the last Comanche war chief , at the end of his life would see his mother and sister ’ s remains disinterred , and reburied beside him at Fort Sill . In death Cynthia Ann was finally reunited with the son she loved so dearly . Quanah Parker refused to ever visit the site at Pease River where his family was destroyed . John Wesley of Foard County , Texas , in 1880 , acquired the land upon which the fight had taken place , along Mule Creek . In 1918 he wrote " I became acquainted with Quanah Parker in 1882 or 1883 and met him quite often in Vernon where he and members of his tribe came to trade . He was very friendly and wanted to know all about his kinfolks in Parker County . He asked me to visit him at Fort Sill and I in return asked him to visit me , but he said he never went to Mule Creek because his father was killed there and his mother and brother ( actually it was his sister ) were captured and carried off . He said he never wanted to see the place . "