Peta Nocona

Peta Nocona was a Comanche war leader, the husband of Cynthia Ann Parker and father of Quanah Parker. He belonged to a period when Comanche power still dominated large areas of the southern plains. Texas accounts claimed that he was killed at the Battle of Pease River in 1860, but Quanah later stated that his father survived the fighting and died several years afterwards.

Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Ride the Wind presents Peta Nocona through Cynthia Ann Parker’s adopted Comanche life and gives him a fuller role than frontier narratives centred on her supposed captivity. His disputed death is a reminder that many familiar details derive from self-promoting settler accounts and should not be repeated as settled fact.