"Are my husband and father alive?"
Following her abduction during a Comanche raid, her purchase by a group of Spanish traders who brought her to Santa Fe where she was ransomed by a wealthy local couple, her survival of the Pueblo rebellion in Santa Fe, Rachel finally meets her brother-in law in Independence, MO. These were her first words to him.
Rachel does not ask after the other four captives taken along with her: her fourteen-month old son James, her aunt Eilzabeth Kellogg (who, as luck turned out, was also ransomed), or the two children Cynthia Ann and John, because she assumes they are all dead. The Parker clan was attacked by a Comanche raiding party because, as militant pioneers, they decided to settle deep in Indian territory, in blatant violation of the treaty. However, militant as they were, the Parkers believed strongly in family ties. James Parker hunted for the captives for years.
"After I had gone some distance, I missed both of my boys. I came back in search of them, coming as near the battle as I could. In this way I was caught. I am greatly distressed about my boys. I fear they are killed."
Abducted in the same raid in which Rachel was captured, Cynthia Ann Parker's experience of the Comanche was very different. Only nine years old, she was adopted by the tribe. She grew up with the Comanche, spoke their language, completely forgot her native tongue, married a local chief, and had three children. She became known as Nautdah.
As an adult, Nautdah was captured following a battle. Her sons escaped alive, but she never saw them again. She tried desperately to escape and resisted living with the Parkers. It did not help that she and her young daughter were treated as a local curiosity. Thus, when she was returned to her original family, she was effectively a captive once more. Nautdah's concern for her children parallels her aunt Rachel's concern for her own family, however whereas Rachel's loyalty remained firmly with the Parkers Nautdah had bonded permanently with the Quahadi Comanche.
"If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace."
Ten Bears is chief of the Yamparika, one of the five Comanche tribes. Hounded for years by raids from the Texas Rangers who sought to free the various captives taken from pioneer encampments, Ten Bears won several battles but lost his final one against Kit Carson at the Battle of the Adobe Walls. Ten Bears has realized, along with most of the surviving Comanche who are now only a few thousand in number, that the war of expulsion has not only failed to drive the Texan settlers from their lands, but has increased the danger to the remaining Comanche people by attracting not only the attention of the US Army and the Texas Rangers but sociopathic killers such as the notorious Kit Carson. Defeated, he is nonetheless proud and he speaks eloquently at a council with several other chiefs and Senator John B. Henderson. He wants Henderson to hear the version of history not customarily told by the winning side, and he wants the representative of the US government (which signed the treaty) to understand how grotesquely the treaty has been violated.
From the perspective of Ten Bears and the other Comanche chiefs, it was not the Comanche who started the war: it was wave after wave of settlers, soldiers, and other people who pressed forward illegally over the frontier and into their territory, disrupting their way of life. According to the customs of the First Nations in that part of the Americas, a tribe or clan that insisted on invading another tribe's hunting grounds was committing an act of war. Retaliation was not only necessary but mandatory.
"When will you answer the questions? I want a thorough understanding. I want to talk about business. Talk to the point. We would like to know how much per acre, because we have heard that some tribes received $1.25 an acre, and the Wichita received fifty cents per acre and were dissatisfied."
Quanah is protesting the blatantly unfair and dishonest tactics of the US Government, which is reneging on its original deal. There are more settlers in the area, and some of the Comanche land also contains coal and mineral deposits. After a particularly hard winter, and several military setbacks during the Red River War including the defeat at the Battle of Adobe Walls, Quanah Parker recognized that the Comanche could not win, and that it was necessary to surrender and to adopt reservation life in order to save as many lives as he could. He led a group of over four hundred Quahadi to Fort Sill to surrender and rode out collecting and persuading several other groups to do the same. By doing this he incurs the wrath of Isa-Tai and other more established Comanche leaders. However it establishes him as a primary point of contact for federal and state government authorities.
This quotation came during the negotiations related to the Jerome Agreement, in which the various Indian tribes are forced to sell their land at much less than its real value. Because of Quanah Parker's astute business sense, he was able to prevent the forced sale of all the Comanche land. He was unable to save all of it, but spent most of the rest of his life lobbying to have the land restored.
