Historic Treasure of the Week - April 19, 1992
By Cheryl Schroeder
Vigo County Historical Society
Historic Treasure of the Week - April 19, 1992
By Cheryl Schroeder
Vigo County Historical Society
Special display - Native Americans’ drumbeats echo through history
As the fires of the last dance faded into the moonlight, young Quanah Parker fingered the small rawhide drum vibrating weakly in his lap. He sat there on the hard, cool ground, hypnotized by the beats still ringing in his ears--their endless repetition echoing in rhythm to the thump of his heart.
His eyes mirrored his soul as he watched the older warriors shove their drums toward the heavens, whooping and wallowing in their success of the buffalo hunt.
Eventually, the celebration and the dancing retired into the night, leaving Quanah to the song of the crickets. He rose from the ground; the dew already beginning to seep into his skin.
He carried his drum from the wooden cross underneath, swinging it by his side, encircling the dying embers of the bonfire, courted with memories of lively stomping and songs of an easier winter.
His steps became lighter as he became Chief Quanah Parker in his imaginings. His drum gathered momentum as he danced along dreaming of the day he would lead the Comanche to better, less nomadic lives.
Quanah’s dance ebbed as the enthusiasm of his youth waned. The buffalo herds were diminishing due to the control of the white men pouring into Texas and Oklahoma. Successful hunts would soon become even more difficult now that the Comanche had been relegated to white-imposed borders--reservations.
Quanah stared down at his drum, his tom-tom. He wasn’t sure of where it came, but it proved its graphical revelation painted on its canvas. A phoenix rising, surrounded by two white man’s flags centered in a bat-shaped world on its round, tautly-covered frame.
That representation would symbolize the promises the Comanche were forced into with the white man.
Quanah Parker realized his dream to become chief of the Comanches.
As the final chief in Comanche history, Quanah and his people assimilated a unique forge into the white man’s world. (His drum was donated to the museum by Walter B. French.)
Today, there is but one Comanche reservation in the United States. It has nearly 232,000 residents who fight 21 percent unemployment, vanishing land, and an endlessly shrinking heritage. For them, the echoes of the drum silenced long, long ago.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.