March 5, 1836
On this day, legendary cowboy, Texas trailblazer and inventor of the chuckwagon, Charles Goodnight, was born in Macoupin, Illinois. But before he became the most famous Texas trail boss, he was a Texas Ranger and prompted one of the frontier’s most controversial events.
When his fledgling cattle business was hectored by a growing number of Comanche raids in 1857, the 21-year-old Goodnight (right) joined the Texas Rangers. Raising a posse in 1860, Goodnight located the camp of Comanche chief, Peta Nacona. Leading Lawrence S. Ross’s Texas Rangers to the camp on the Pease River, Goodnight and company, accidentally discovered the whereabouts of Anglo-American Cynthia Ann Parker, taken by Peta Nacona’s band more than two decades before
Depending on your point of view, her recapture was either a rescue or a kidnapping. The 35-year-old Parker, then known by her 
Comanche name, Naduah (Someone Found), was the wife of Peta Necona and the mother of three children. The events set in motion by Goodnight altered the lives of the all primary participants forever.
Seized against her will, Parker and her infant daughter, Topsanna (Prairie Flower), (right) were taken first to live with her biological brother, Benjamin. She later lived with her sister, possibly Sarah. But Parker never reconciled to the loss of her Comanche family. The Ranger’s official report of the 1860 incident claims Peta Nacona was killed trying to escape with Nacoah and Topsanna. Parker’s famous warrior son, Quanah, however, disputes the account, insisting his father died several years later from wounds suffered in a skirmish with the Apache.
Parker’s own death in 1871 followed a lengthy hunger strike after young Topsanna died from influenza in 1864 and numerous attempts to escape. She was initially laid to rest at Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County.
For his part, Quanah Parker, (right) became an important combatant in the Red River War before finally surrendering and becoming a progressive leader on the Comanche reservation in Southwestern Oklahoma. Goodnight signed a treaty with Parker, initiating the concept of payment for grazing rights on reservation land.
The pair remained friends the remainder of Quanah’s life. A shrewd investor, he developed a profitable ranch and was perhaps at the time, the richest Native American in the nation.
After forging the Goodnight-Loving Trail in the 1860s, partner Oliver Loving died in 1867. Goodnight returned to Coloradoand became an important force for economic development in the Pueblo area, advocating for the Pueblo tribe, instituting an irrigation project, helping found a bank and an opera house and starting Colorado’s first stock growers association.
Goodnight Prairie Bison herd, Capstone State Park, Texas
And Goodnight substantially aided Native Americans in a way that went under-recognized for years. The herd of plains buffalo he preserved on his JA Ranch is one of just five foundation herds and was an important source of bison around the country from the New York City Zoo to Yellowstone National Park. In addition, he held buffalo hunts for numbers of Native Americans on the ranch and donated breeding stock for tribal herds.
Charles Goodnight, the patron saint of the Panhandle, went on to become perhaps the most famous Texas cowman ever. Despite his standing, he 
suffered a number of financial reverses and in declining health for a number of years, died December 12, 1929 at the age of 93. He was buried next to his first wife, Mary Ann (Molly) Dyer (right) in the Goodnight Cemetery near Amarillo.
Quanah Parker’s efforts to keep the Comanche tribal lands intact ended in 1901. Washington broke up the Kiowa-Comanche reservation into individual parcels, opening up vast tracts to white settlement. Parker died February 
23, 1911 at the age of 66. Just a year earlier, he had reinterred his mother in the Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. He was buried beside her.
But Quanah and Cynthia were destined to be resettled yet again by the Federal Government. The 1957 expansion of a military missile base encroached on the mission cemetery and both mother and son were moved to the Fort Sill Post Cemetery in Lawton. Quanah received full military honors in a section of the cemetery known as Chief’s Knoll. (Above, Quanah’s grave at left)
The Charles Goodnight Historical center, 4901 County Road 25, Goodnight, Texas, is the cattleman’s restored 1880s Victorian home. The J. Evetts Haley Visitor and Education Center features exhibits on the Goodnights as 
well as information of the early settlement of the region. Open March through November, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 5; December through February: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10 to 5. Admission is $10 for adults and children 12 and under, $5. For more information go to texasplainstrails.com or call (806) 226-2187.
© Text Only – 2018 – Headin’ West LLC – All photos – public domain or fair use.