UT author probes myth of American West

AUSTIN (KXAN) - It is a book about a legend, about a legend derived from myth, from myth that was created in part by a movie, by a movie that was, itself, based on myriad stories, stories that point to actual events, the exact nature of which, are clouded by the murky mists of barely remembered history.

Writing, “ The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend ,” was Glenn Frankel 's way of diving headlong into those mists in search of the truth about a vulnerable little girl who became what he calls, “the ultimate victim of the Texas-Comanche Wars.”

It was also this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist's way of deconstructing the larger-than-life hoopla that often passes for Texas history.

“It's about," said Frankel, “what we know about what happened and it's trying to sort out what we don't know, what we can't know, what we've been told that may not be true.

“So I'm trying to do a little investigative work, but at the same time, separate myth from the little bits of reality we have.”

The raid

According to Frankel’s research: On May 19, 1836, a Comanche raiding party attacked a white settlement fort in East Texas, killing five of the settlers and abducting five, including nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker .

Survivors mounted a search that lasted for years, but it was nearly a quarter-of-a-century before Parker was recaptured and returned to her family. By then, she was not only an adult, but the wife of a Comanche brave, having all but forgotten her origins.

“People think of her as another great Texas, you know, woman, you know, tough, hardy, all that,” Frankel said. “And she was all that, I suppose, but she also was the ultimate victim of the Texas-Comanche Wars .

“Twice she was abducted. Twice she watched the people she loved around her being killed by strangers. And twice she was hauled off by men who she thought was going to kill her, as well.”

“And so I tried to get a little closer to that person.”

The research

To do that, Frankel, director of the Journalism School at the University of Texas, dove into the archives of the university's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History . There he found first-person accounts from distant relatives of Parker. There he found recorded notes from people who actually knew her, notes that put to rest the notion that this tormented young girl was some kind of super woman.

“There's a more nuanced version of Cynthia Ann,” he said, “and what her life was like, especially after she was recaptured and restored to her Texas family and how difficult it was to be wrested for yet a second time, wrenched away from her community and her people, in this case, her adopted people, the Comanches and forced back into a white society that she just had no means of understanding and how difficult that was.”

The myth

Frankel, though, also turned to the wide variety of popular accounts of the Parker story that were produced over the decades, accounts that often embellished, exaggerated and altered the tale and, in the process, began to create a myth.

It became, he argues, a foundation or creation myth, used by succeeding generations of Texans to set themselves apart, even to set themselves above the rest of their American brothers and sisters.

The only way to get to the truth, he decided, was to dig.

“It's about what we know about what happened here,” said Frankel, “and it's trying to sort of sort out what we don't know, what we can't know, what we've told that may not be true.

“So I'm trying to do a little investigative work, but at the same time separate myth from the little bits of reality we have.”

The film

To do that, Frankel turned back the clock in his own life, to the first time he really absorbed what is now considered one of the giants of American cinema: John Ford’s classic Western, “ The Searchers .”

Based on Alan Le May ’s dark book about two men who went looking for a young girl captured by Indians, the film lightens the mood a bit, but still offers a powerful psychological probe of Ethan Edwards, played by an in-his-prime John Wayne. Edwards is the uncle of the kidnapped child. He is also an angry, Indian-hating racist.

“Frankel was instructed to watch the movie when he was a student at Columbia University and taking a class with Andrew Sarris, who was the film critic for the “ Village Voice .”

“I do remember being very moved by it, surprised by it,” Frankel recalled. “We weren't all big John Wayne fans in 1969 because of the Vietnam War and because of the position Wayne had taken, and because the Wayne we knew then was the sort of big heavy guy with a Toupée and a little bit of a self-parody.

“So The Searchers was a revelation, both about how beautiful it was (we watched it on big screen), how powerful it was and how wonderful Wayne was.

“And it had an impact on me that has lingered, you know, for forty years more.”

The correspondent

Later, Frankel would be posted, as a foreign correspondent for the “ Washington Post ” to world hot spots like South Africa and the Middle