Ride the Wind (1982) by Lucia St. Clair Robson is the story of Cynthia Ann Parker's life after she was captured during the Comanche raid on her family's fort. In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia was kidnapped by Comanche Indians. This is the story of how she grew up with them, mastered their ways, married one of their leaders, and became, in every way, a Comanche woman. Her son Quanah Parker was the last Comanche leader to surrender. It is also an account of a people who were happiest when they were moving, and a depiction of a way of life that is gone forever.
Lucia St. Clair Robson is an American historical novelist. She was married to science fiction novelist Brian Daley.
Cynthia Ann Parker, also known as Naduah, was an Anglo-American who was kidnapped in 1836, around age 10, by a Comanche war band which had attacked her family's settlement. Her Comanche name means "someone found."
The Comanche are a Native American nation from the Great Plains whose historic territory consisted of most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma, and northern Chihuahua. The Comanche people are federally recognized as the Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Ride the Wind earned The Western Writers' Golden Spur Award for best historical western in 1982. It also made the NY Times and Washington Post best seller lists that year. In its 26th printing, it is still popular today. Ride the Wind has earned more than 120 5-star reviews on Amazon.
Spur Awards are literary prizes awarded annually by the Western Writers of America (WWA). The purpose of the Spur Awards is to honor writers for distinguished writing about the American West. The Spur awards began in 1953, the same year the WWA was founded. An author need not be a member of the WWA to receive a Spur Award. Among previous Spur Award winners are Larry McMurtry for Lonesome Dove, Michael Blake for Dances with Wolves, Glendon Swarthout for The Shootist, and Tony Hillerman for Skinwalkers.
Ride the Wind was voted one of 100 Western Classics for the century by; 100 Years of Western Classics as selected by American Western Magazine's readers in 2000 100 Western Classics
The Searchers is a 1956 American Technicolor VistaVision Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, set during the Texas–Indian wars, and starring John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece, accompanied by his adoptive nephew. Critic Roger Ebert found Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, "one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created".
The Fort Parker massacre was an event in May 1836 in which members of the pioneer Parker family were killed in a raid by Native Americans. In this raid, a 9-year-old girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, was captured and spent most of the rest of her life with the Comanche, marrying a Chief, Peta Nocona, and giving birth to a son, Quanah Parker, who would become the last Chief of the Comanches. Her brother, John Richard Parker, who was also captured, was ransomed back after six years, but unable to adapt to white society, returned to the Comanches.
Quanah Parker was a war leader of the Quahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band, the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American, who had been kidnapped as a child and assimilated into the tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans deliberately hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into extinction, Quanah eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Quahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Margaret St. Clair was an American science fiction writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard.
Cynthia Rylant is an American author and librarian. She has written more than 100 children's books, including works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Several of her books have won awards, including her novel Missing May, which won the 1993 Newbery Medal, and A Fine White Dust which was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Two of her books are Caldecott Honor Books.
Peta Nocona was a chief of the Comanche Nokoni band. He married Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a captive in a raid and was adopted into the tribe by one of the families. Among their children was Quanah Parker, the last war chief of the Comanche.
The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Ghost Warrior, Lozen of the Apaches is a 2002 historical novel by Lucia St. Clair Robson. This novel was the runner-up for the Golden Spur Award in 2002.
Light a Distant Fire is a 1988 historical novel by Lucia St. Clair Robson that fictionalizes the story of the Second Seminole War, Andrew Jackson, and the charismatic leader Osceola, warchief of the Seminole tribe.
A Star Is Born is a 1937 American Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick, directed by William A. Wellman from a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell, and starring Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as a fading movie star who helps launch her career. The supporting cast features Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, and Owen Moore.
Rachel Parker Plummer was the daughter of James W. 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.
Dorothy Marie Johnson was an American author best known for her Western fiction.
The Battle of Pease River occurred on December 18, 1860, near the present-day 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 event, where a group of Comanche Indians were killed by a detachment of Texas Rangers and militia under Ranger Captain "Sul" Ross. The Indian camp was attacked as retaliation against recent Comanche attacks on white settlers.
John T. Parker (1830–1915) was the brother of Cynthia Ann Parker and the uncle of Comanche chief Quanah Parker. An Anglo-Texas man of Scots-Irish descent who was kidnapped from his natural family at the age of five by a Native American raiding party, he returned to the Native American people of his own free will after being ransomed back from the Comanche. He was a member of the large Parker frontier family that settled in east Texas in the 1830s. He was captured in 1836 by Comanches during the raid of Fort Parker near present-day Groesbeck, Texas.
James W. Parker was the uncle of Cynthia Ann Parker and the great uncle of Quanah Parker, last chief of the Comanches. A man of English American descent, he was a member of the large Parker frontier family that settled in east Texas in the 1830s.
Iron Jacket was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the Comanche Indians.
This is a list of the works of fiction which have won the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West:
