Quanah Parker fought against all odds to save the Comanche way of life, then fought to survive and prosper in a white man’s world. His mother, Cynthia Ann, was a white woman captured by Indians at age nine and raised as a Comanche. When Quanah was a young boy, she was recaptured against her will by Texas Rangers on the Pease River in 1860, and he never saw her again. As a warrior, Quanah showed great bravery leading Indian forces, especially in the Battle of Adobe Walls; he was never routed and never captured. Facing the encroaching civilization of the white man, he chose to lay down his shield and arms in the spring of 1875 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. As he approached the fort, he dismounted and turned his horse loose, saying, “There goes the spirit of the Comanche.” However, Quanah was never defeated. Acknowledged as a leader by Comanches and whites alike, he became a Tribal Judge, cattleman, spokesman to Washington, and friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. The town of Quanah was named for him. In 1890, on a visit to Quanah, he pronounced his blessing on the town he called “My Town.” His epitaph reads: “Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, last chief of the Comanches.”