Texas authors reexamine the Cynthia Ann Parker story

Myth, Memory, and Massacre:

The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker
by Paul Carlson and Tom Crum

Hardcover, $29.95, 216 pgs., 17 b/w photos, 3 maps  |  978-0-89672-707-6

DATE: 7/2/10

CONTACT:  Barbara Brannon, Texas Tech University Press, 806-742-2982

Texas authors reexamine the Cynthia Ann Parker story
and the “Battle of Pease River”

Historians Paul Carlson and Tom Crum believe so. In reexamining the accounts and eyewitness reports of the December 1860 confrontation in which the white woman Cynthia Ann Parker was retaken from her Native American captors, the collaborators expose errors, falsifications, and mysteries that have contributed to a skewed understanding of the facts.

For political and racist reasons, they argue, an outright massacre was labeled a battle. Firsthand testimony was fabricated; diaries were changed; the official Ranger report went missing from the state adjutant general’s office. Historians, as a result, have unwittingly used fiction as the basis for 150 years’ worth of analysis.

Carlson and Crum seek not only to set the record straight but to deal with concepts of myth, folklore, and memory, both individual and collective. Myth, Memory, and Massacre peels away layers of assumptions surrounding one of the most infamous episodes in Texas history, even while it adds new dimensions to the question of what constitutes reliable knowledge.

Paul H. Carlson is professor emeritus of history at Texas Tech University. A fellow of both the Texas State Historical Association and the West Texas Historical Association, he has published numerous books and articles, earned several research and writing honors, and received six university teaching awards. In 2006 he was elected to membership in the Philosophical Society of Texas. He and his wife, Ellen, live in Lubbock, Texas.

Tom Crum lives with his wife, Mary, in Hood County, Texas. A retired state district judge and a past president of the West Texas Historical Association, he has published several articles and book chapters. Currently he serves on the boards of directors for both the East and West Texas Historical Associations, as counselor for the Texas Folklore Society, and as a member of the Advisory Council for the Center for Big Bend Studies.

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