The Native American Church: Ancient Tradition and Modern Controversy
“We do not go into ceremony to talk about God. We go into ceremony to talk with God.” These are the words of Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche people, and the man credited with playing a key role in the peyote movement and the establishment of the Native American Church. Born sometime between 1848 and 1852 (the exact year of his birth is not known) in Texas or Oklahoma (his birthplace is also a subject of dispute), Quanah was the son of a Comanche chief and a white woman who was captured by the Comanche at the age of nine. The United States military considered him to be one of the greatest Native American warriors of his age. U. S. Cavalry officer Captain Robert G. Carter’s book, On the Border With Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas From the Comanches, included a description of an encounter with Quanah Parker in 1871 in which Captain Carter portrayed Quanah as “a large and powerfully built chief” who “seemed the incarnation of savage brutal joy” in his bear claw necklace and full-length eagle feather headdress.
A full-fledged warrior by the age of fifteen, Quanah Parker established himself as a fierce and unyielding fighter, and became a war chief while he was still a young man. During the mid 1870s, he led Comanche and Quahadi bands in battles on the Texas frontier in an attempt to stop white expansionists…
