White Flag Massacre
Who Was Jack Still?The story of Cynthia Ann Parker and the White Flag Massacre at Parker's Fort is Texas history. But Jack Still, who tried to prevent the massacre -- who was he?
Jack Still was an Indian who lived on Still's Creek, east of Palestine. He numbered among his paleface friends Adrian Anglin of Fort Houston, Adrian's brother, Elisha Anglin, had pushed west with members of the pioneering Parker clan to set roots in virgin soft west of the Navasota River at Parker's Fort.
In the early spring of 1836, Adrian Anglin rode east to barter with his Indian friend.
"You my friend," Jack Still said ominously. "Before this many moons" -- Still lifted three fingers -- "wild tribesmen of Northwest go on warpath, take fort, kill your brother."
Adrian hurried to Fort Parker to warn his kinsmen.
Elisba Anglin and David Faulkinberry agreed that the friendly Indian's warning should be heeded. They loaded their belongings on wagons and clanked toward Fort Houston.
Other Fort Parker settlers were in a rebellious mood. They looked at the lush green of corn they had cultivated on soil wrested from the flat brush. It was a sad day in their lives to abandon their new homes on the word of a Redman.At the Navasota River, families came streaming out to argue with the Faulkinberrys and the Anglins. There was Elder John Parker and his aged wife, his three sons, and other settlers named Plummer, Duty, Frost, Dwight, Nixon and Kellogg.
James Parker argued with his father, Elder John: "I have troops to defend the fort. Why should we abandon everything we've worked too hard to build here? God willed that we come here, and we'd be unworthy of blessings to forsake our duty."
The Elder, a pillar in the Pilgrim Predestinarian Baptist Church, moved from Palestine, Illinois to become the first such Protestant church in Texas, was moved by his son's words.
"If it is ordained that we should die here," he decided, "then the Lord have mercy on our souls. We shall stay with you, James."
And with the patriarch casting the die in an age when the wisdom of the elders seldom failed to prevail, Indian Jack Still's solemn warning that Fort Parker had been marked for destruction before July lost its terror.
Thirty-four souls remained after a few who heeded Still's warning and the troops departed.
On the morning of May 19, 1836, Indians approached Fort Parker under a white flag of truce. The Kiowas and Comanches, when they found only a few defenders in the fort, attacked them.
Twenty-three survivors in two wandering groups made their way to safety. Eighteen led by James Parker, leaving a trail of blood, finally reached Tynnan settlement, 60 miles downstream. The other small group straggled eastward to Fort Houston.
Cynthia Ann Parker, 8, was among the women and children carried off captives by the raiders. Five men were slain and two women wounded.
A sufficient reason for the settlers to respect the flag of truce was a treaty negotiated in February, 1835, by James Parker, Major Sterling C. Robertson and Major J. G. W. Pierson with a dozen chiefs of principal hostile tribes, which stipulated peace between the tribes and the settlers in Texas' western settlements.
Gen. Sam Houston, hero of the battle, refused to authorize James Parker or others to lead an expedition to avenge Fort Parker, although Parker at one time, with the help of this brother Nathaniel, an Illinois state senator, raised a company of volunteers.