Rachel Parker Plummer was born on March 22nd of 1819, in Crawford County, Illinois.
She was the second-cousin of Cynthia Ann Parker, and joined the rest of the Parker clan in their migration south to Texas, before being captured in the raid that forever changed her family.
She was described as “a red-haired beauty of rare courage and intelligence”, and later married a man named Luther M. Plummer, who somehow survived the raid that saw his wife taken into captivity.
In the chaotic aftermath of the attack on Fort Parker, seventeen-year-old Rachel was seized by mounted warriors, who also captured her young son.
She was no doubt violated during that night’s camp, but later wrote that she never wished to revisit the subject in any of her literature.
“To narrate their barbarous treatment would only add to my present distress”, she wrote, “for it is with feelings of the deepest mortification that I think of it, much less to speak or write of it”.
The only other occasion on which she spoke of her violation was to criticize those who claimed that, and I quote, “a good woman died before being sullied in such a way”.
Rachel said that anyone who said that had clearly not been forced to run naked, tied by a rope to a horse, for a day or two in the sun.
Given that she had a more advanced education than her younger cousins, Rachel was able to write a detailed account of her time in captivity, and it serves as a valuable insight into the culture and creed of the Comanche people.
Yet it also serves as a detailed account of their abject and unfeeling cruelty, especially when it came to things that might hinder their survival.
During her captivity, Rachel gave birth gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
For the first six weeks, the Comanche allowed Rachel to nurse her newborn son, but then one day, a group of warriors surrounded her, and wrenched her child from her arms.
One of the warriors threw the baby to the ground, and beat it ‘til it stopped moving. The warriors then gestured for Rachel to bury her now deceased child, then walked away.
Believing her son was dead, Rachel began scraping a swallow trench in the dry earth beneath her, but as she did so, she noticed her little boy was still breathing.
She attempted to nurse him back to health, but when the warriors heard the babies cries, and saw that Rachel had disobeyed them, they chose to make an example.
Rachel’s infant child was tied to a horse via a long rope, then dragged through a cactus patch until it’s tiny body had been quite literally torn to shreds.
Rachel was then taken hundreds of miles north, to the farthest reaches of the Comanche homeland.
There, she saw vast, wide-open spaces so desolate and barren they were was almost maddening to behold, but after reaching the southern reaches of what is now southern Colorado, the land became lush and abundant with life.
The warband she was a prisoner of took her along to a giant Comanche summit, one which included their close allies, the Kiowa. She wrote that she’d never seen so many people in one place before, nor imagined there to be so many Indians scattered across the Great Plains.
She was treated poorly at the gathering, and was often jeered at by young Comanche boys. She also spotted many other Anglo and Hispanic-American captives among the warbands, and such a large gathering provided a clear opportunity to show them off.
Having picked up some of the Comanche language, Rachel was able to eavesdrop on certain conversations, and was amazed to hear that their war chiefs intended to conquer the entirety of Central America.
Rachel’s maltreatment at the hands of her captives seemed to have peaked around the time of the great Comanche summit.
She was guarded by the female members of the tribe, and as you can imagine, they came up with particularly cruel and degrading methods of humiliation. They routinely beat and tormented her, and by the time they departed from the summit, Rachel was bruised, battered, and itching for retribution.
One day, during a period of particularly intense abuse, Rachel snapped, and launched herself at the younger of her two slave-masters. The attack was half revenge, half suicide attempt, but instead of killing her, the warriors seemed impressed with Rachel’s display of defiance.
“At any second, I expected a spear in the back”, she wrote, “but instead, the warriors seemed amused, and gathered to watch us fight”.
At one point, Rachel managed to gain the upper hand, and proceeded to beat the young Comanche woman until the blood ran from her mouth and nose. Her older slave-master soon intervened, and attempted to set Rachel alight by pushing her into an open fire. She too was beaten half to death by the furious young captive, who bested both her mistresses in brutal fashion, yet refrained from delivering fatal blows.
When the violence was over, Rachel and her Comanche owners were taken before a tribunal of elders.
Rachel thoroughly expected to be executed for her insolence, but instead, all the elders asked was she repair the damage she’d inflicted to her owner’s tipi.
Bemused, but continually defiant, Rachel said she’d only repair the damage if her owners helped her. The elders agreed.
She later claimed that one of the elders told her “She began with you, and you had a right to kill her, but your noble spirit prevented you. Indians do not have pity on a fallen enemy, but we show mercy to our family”.
By brutally attacking the two women assigned to guard her, Rachel had not in fact angered the Comanche, she had earned their respect; and from then on, their treatment of her dramatically improved.
Just over a year after she was captured, on June 19th of 1837, the Comanche warband Rachel travelled with was approached by a group of Mexican merchants.
Known as ‘Comancheros’, these roving traders knew the Great Plains better than any Anglo American, and were one of the few groups to ever gain a free pass through the land they called ‘Comancheria’.
The traders approached the warband, and the Comanches sent out a small welcome party to begin negotiations. Rachel watched the exchange, wondering what goods or services might be traded. Little did she know, she was who the Comancheros were looking for.
Rachel’s father, who had survived the massacre at Fort Parker, had enlisted the help of the Comancheros in tracking down his daughter; and finally, they had found her.
That morning, Rachel didn’t know if she’d live to see another sunrise. A few hours later, she was free.
Seventeen days later, Rachel and the Comancheros arrived back in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was gaunt to the point of near starvation, covered with scars and sores, and her fiery red hair had turned a silvery grey...
...but she was alive.
Sadly, Rachel Parker Plummer passed away just over a year later in Houston, Texas, on March 19th of 1839. She was just twenty years old.
Her death certificate stated that “complications after childbirth” were to blame for her demise, but her husband insisted it was the trauma of Comanche captivity which slowly ate away at her.
In reality, the already weakened Rachel had been suffering awfully due to unseasonably cold weather, and this is most likely what finished her off. But the fact remains, a once vibrant, outgoing young woman had been completely broken by her time in captivity.
And although she’d seen and done more in brief time on this earth than most folks do in a lifetime, there’s no doubt that she deserved so much more.