Rachel Parker

Parker and the cousin of Quanah Parker, last free-roaming chief of the Comanches. An Anglo-Texan woman of Scots-Irish descent, she was kidnapped at the age of seventeen, along with her son, James Pratt Plummer, age two, and her cousins, by a Native American raiding party.
Rachel Plummer's 21 months among the Comanche as a prisoner became a sensation when she wrote a book about her captivity, Rachael Plummer's Narrative of Twenty One Months Servitude as a Prisoner Among the Commanchee Indians, which was issued in Houston in 1838.

This was the first narrative about a captive of Texas Indians published in the Republic of Texas, and it was a sensation not just there, but in the United States and even abroad. In 1844, after Rachel's death, her father published a revised edition of her book as an appendix to his Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, Miraculous Escapes and Sufferings of Rev.

Parker
Rachel Plummer was born in 1818 in Crawford County, Illinois1, the second youngest living child of James W. She had two living siblings, and three siblings who had died at an early age.

At the age of fourteen, considered a grown woman in that era, described by her father in his later book as a "red haired beauty of rare courage and intelligence." Rachel married Luther M. Plummer, and moved with the Parker family in 1830 to Conway County, Arkansas, which her father used as a staging ground for exploratory trips to Texas. In 1832 her father proposed to Stephen F.No one believed the flag was genuine, but Benjamin Parker believed it gave the family a chance for most of them to escape. Only five women and children were captured.
As the other women and children were leaving, Plummer chose to stay in the fort out of fear that she and her son would not be able to keep up.

After Benjamin Parker returned from his first talks with the Indians and warned them that they would likely all die, Plummer wanted to flee, but Silas told her to watch the front gate while he ran for his musket and powder pouch. “They will kill Benjamin,” she reported her Uncle Silas saying, “and then me, but I will do for at least one of them, by God.” At that moment, she said she heard whooping outside the fort, and then Indians were inside. She then ran, holding her little boy's hand, while behind her she said she saw Indians stabbing Benjamin with their lances.
Plummer was then seized by mounted warriors who threw her up behind them, and watched helplessly while another seized her son.

Her cousins Cynthia Ann Parker and John Richard Parker were also captured. All five of the men present in the fort that morning were killed.

The women charged with her supervision routinely beat and tormented her. One day, Rachel simply snapped, and began fiercely beating the younger of the two women who she was a slave to. Rachel ended up beating her nearly to death as well, after burning her.The Council agreed, and ordered the three to repair the lodge.
Rachel was stunned that she was treated as an equal by the council, which later, she understood came with her demonstration of the one quality which elevated anyone in the eyes of the Comanche - courage. Later, one of the Chiefs of the band she was with told her:

”You are brave to fight. Her father's desperate efforts to find her had finally begun to pay off.

The Comanches were camped north of Santa Fe when they were approached by Comancheros who wanted to ransom Rachel in accordance with the instructions of her father. She wrote in her book of the agony of believing that the traders had not offered enough to buy her freedom - and her not knowing that in fact, they were simply trying to get the best bargain, because her father had told them to pay any price, no matter how high, to rescue her. She was sold to them on June 19, 1837. William Donaho, acting for the Parker family, and to whom she was delivered in Santa Fe after a journey of seventeen days.

She was reunited with her husband on February 19, 1838, nearly 2 years after the Fort Parker Massacre. She was gaunt to the point of near starvation, covered with scars and sores, and in very poor health.
Death
Plummer became pregnant again almost as soon as she was returned home, and on January 4, 1839 bore a third child, a son, Luther Plummer II. Though medically she was listed as dying from complications after childbirth, James Parker did not believe that, and insisted she died from the mistreatment she suffered at the hands of the Comanche, the murder of one child, and not knowing what happened to her other child. The night before she died, Plummer reportedly told her father “if only I knew what had become of my dear little James Pratt Plummer I could die in peace.” At the time of her death, she was twenty years old and her fiery red hair had turned grey.

New York: Benchmark Books, 2000.
Fehrenbach, Theodore Reed The Comanches: The Destruction of a People.