David Russell Parks was born on the Comanche reservation in Indiahoma, Oklahoma, in 1909. In 1925, Parks left Oklahoma after graduating high school and moved to California with his sister to join the rest of their family. In Southern California, Parks worked as a teacher, principal, and superintendent for a number of schools in the Orange County area from 1928 to 1970. He then worked as an educational consultant from 1970 to 1982. He passed away in 1990.

Quanah Parker was born in Elk Valley, Wichita Mountains, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, in 1845 or 1852. He was known as the “Last Chief of the Comanche,” and was the Comanche leader of the Quahadi band of the Comanche people. Parker was son of the Comanche warrior chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an American captured as a child by Comanches and adopted into their tribe. He came to prominence during the Red River War, where he led his people against the American forces trying to relocate multiple tribes from the Southern Plains to reservations in Indian Territory, although he ultimately was forced to surrender and relocate in 1875 after the extinction of the American bison led the Comanches to have no way of surviving in the plains. Parker was appointed by the United States federal government as principal chief of the entire Comanche nation, and became a primary emissary of southwest indigenous Americans to the U.S. legislature, despite never being appointed as chief by his tribe.

He is also credited as one of the first leaders of the Native American Church movement, and fought for the legal use of peyote in the movement’s religious practices. Parker had seven wives and seventeen children. On February 25, 1911, Quanah Parker passed away in Quanah Parker Star House, Cache, Oklahoma, and was buried in Chief’s Knoll in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.