Description: In December 1860, along a creek in northwest Texas, a group of U.S. Cavalry and Texas Rangers raided a Comanche hunting camp, killed several Indians, and took three prisoners. One was the woman they would identify as Cynthia Ann Parker, taken captive from her white family as a child a quarter century before. The event became the stuff of history and legend--based, as it turns out, on errors, falsifications, and mysteries.Myth, Memory, and Massacre peels away 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.
Brief description: 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.