WHO HAS GERONIMO'S SKULL?

[W. Gray]

You and me both.

And it was not as though he was burned at the stake with a big bon fire, which would be bad enough.

It was slow and excruciating from a small fire.

[frawin]

Waldo was those Comanches that done that woman, woman can be twice as mean as men when you get them riled.
I done some work for an operator in Midland that his wife was suing him for Divorce and it really got nasty, she was the absolute meanest woman I have ever been around, I think she was capable of doing something like  that to him.   I knew another couple getting a divorce in Midland, the guy was running around on her, she went to ever bar in town and told all of the women that he had Aids.

[W. Gray]

The Comanches were all men.

After the battle at the Little Big Horn, women cleaned up the battlefield, so to speak.

They stripped the bodies and used knives to defile, although not everyone was touched and there are differing reports as to the extent of mutilation or how many were mutilated.

There are some reports that only the wounded were mutilated.

They stripped the bodies for a reason. All the clothing was put to use in their own life.

[pam]

The mutilation was done in retaliation for the mutilation done by soldiers at the sand creek massacre.

[W. Gray]

Frank,

You might be aware of Cynthia Ann Parker. She was kidnapped by the Comanche from Parker's Fort near present day Waco when she was around eight years old. It was more of a compound than a fort and the only inhabitants was the Parker family and some friends. Her mom and dad were killed.

The raiding party took her to a Comanche village where she was adopted.

Due to her young age, she was apparently not bothered by the raiding party and she eventually became the mother of Quanah Parker. He who might be the most well known Comanche war chief.

Twenty-five years after her capture, she was repatriated by the Army. She did not want to leave but the Army gave her no other choice. She went to live with relatives but died at age 43 after trying to escape the whites several times.

A sixteen-year-old female kidnapped with her did not fare so well. She was constantly ravaged by the raiding party and when was given to a village became the community toy for all the young males.

When she became pregnant, she was given to one of the older warriors who did not have a wife. One evening
when the older guy had some of his friends over for the evening, he forced his wife and baby to sit out in the cold until his company left.

After they left, she complained about having to sit outside and the baby being cold. He literally destroyed the baby in front of her eyes.

She was able to escape to Santa Fe around her 19th birthday and was then able to get on a trade wagon train going to Independence, Mo on the Santa Fe Trail.

She stayed with relatives there but died soon thereafter. Doctors of the time said she died of old age.

[flo]

One of the tales of the Comanche that I recall was when a lone tribal enemy was captured by a few men when out in a hunting party.

Alive, he was staked to the ground and then cooking wood placed over his body.

A fire would be started and the Comanche would cook their dinner over the man. 

Is this documented or a tale

[Diane Amberg]

Quanah Parker is also buried at Fort Sill. The Comanache were known to be extremely fierce in their treatment of people, but I don't how many of the old tales are just that, tales. Some supposedly were intended to scare children, and some may be completely true.

[W. Gray]

As is Cynthia Ann Parker

[W. Gray]

I can believe the cooking fire instance.

There is another tale that I have heard or read about several times and I am of the opinion that it is an urban legend, but I really do not know.

I first heard of it in my twenties in Viet Nam. In this case, GIs who shot female Viet Cong soldiers dead were supposed to have cut out a certain portion of the anatomy, somehow made it into leather, and used it for a coin purse. I have never seen a GI with a coin purse although I suppose it could happen.

I have since read in two different sources about U.S. Cavalry troopers in the Indian wars doing the same thing after killing Indian women but using it for a tobacco pouch.

I am of the opinion it is not true.

[sixdogsmom]

When I was in high school, I did a small research paper on the Indian wars. I ran into some information about this and it made me so ashamed. I don't doubt it a bit. They called them a female scalp.

My late husband was a great sympathizer of the American Indian. He read all the time about them, and I have read some of that material. They were fierce and that is true, but the whites were just as monstrous if not worse as they were supposed to be civilised, and good Christians at that! Some of the stories that came out of the areas of the great lakes areas early in the settling of our country are hair raising. By the way, Dons' Indian hero was Chief Joseph of the Souix.