Chapters 11 through 15 Summary and Analysis

In chapter eleven, the Comanche Indians, including Cynthia Ann Parker and her family, were camped on the Pease River in the fall of 1860. All that previous summer, Cynthia's husband, Peta Nocona, was busy raiding white settlements in the Fort Worth area. One of his main targets that year had been Parker County, named for some of Cynthia's relatives. The raids were so frequent and the Indians so difficult to catch that a new band of militia was raised with a sole purpose - to "punish" the Indians. Peta Nocona's raids increased in brutality. In one case, a family was attacked and the wife, nine months pregnant, beaten, scalped and raped. There were forces at work escalating the conflict, including the fact that whites were moving farther into territories that had previously been home only to the Indians. As Peta...