Futility Closet - 141-Abducted by Indians, a Captive of Whites

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from an impossible golf hole to a musical constitution. This is episode 141. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1836, Indians abducted a nine-year-old girl from her home in East Texas. She made a new life among the Comanche with a husband and three children.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Then, after 24 years, the whites abducted her back again. In today's show, we'll tell the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, caught up in a war between two societies. of Cynthia Ann Parker caught up in a war between two societies. We'll also analyze a forger's motives and puzzle over why a crowd won't help a dying woman. And just a short announcement, we were really touched that we hit 500 patrons this past week in our Patreon campaign. We aren't kidding when we say that Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us, so it really is the support of our listeners that helps to pay the bills so that we can keep making the show. So thank you so much to all of our supporters. There wouldn't still be a Futility Closet without you.

Starting point is 00:01:16 On May 19, 1836, several hundred Indians attacked Fort Parker, a family compound in East Texas on the edge of the frontier. They took five captives, two women and three children, and rode west into Comanche territory. Among the children was a nine-year-old girl named Cynthia Ann Parker. Within six years, all the other captives had been ransomed back to the whites, but Cynthia Ann remained with the Comanche. She was given to a couple who adopted her and raised her as their own daughter. They named her Nadwa, which means she carries herself with grace, and in time, as she grew into womanhood, she married Peta Nokona, the man who had abducted her, and he ascended to the rank of war chief. Together they had three

Starting point is 00:01:53 children, two sons, and a daughter. As time passed, the mystery of Cynthia Ann Parker's whereabouts became a legend in Texas. Almost all settlers had heard of the Fort Parker raid and her abduction. Mothers warned their children not to stray far lest they be captured too, and frontiersmen told stories of a helpless beauty held captive on the prairie. She changed bands periodically, but she was sighted from time to time at Indian camps, and this kept alive her family's hopes that she might someday be rescued. In the late 1840s, traders and soldiers began to report that they'd encountered her in Indian country. 1840s, traders and soldiers began to report that they'd encountered her in Indian country.

Starting point is 00:02:29 In 1846, a plains trader named Leonard Williams encountered her during a meeting with Comanches on the upper Brazos. He said she continued to weep incessantly. He offered to trade 12 mules and several hundred dollars for her, but her Comanche parents said they would die rather than give her up. When he talked to her directly, she kept her eyes on the ground and said nothing, but her lips trembled as he spoke. At first she stayed because the Comanche would not part with her, but in time it appeared that she had chosen to stay with them. Two commissioners, Pierce Butler and M.G. Lewis, reported that she was the wife of a warrior and said that, quote, from the influence of her husband or from her own inclination, she is unwilling to leave the people with whom she associates, and that she would run off and hide herself to avoid those who went to ransom her. In 1852, Captain Randolph B. Marcy was sent by the army to find the headwaters of the Red River.

Starting point is 00:03:11 He wrote, There is at this time a white woman among the middle Comanches by the name of Parker. He said she has adopted all the habits and peculiarities of the Comanches, has an Indian husband and children, and cannot be persuaded to leave them. When he prevailed on her to leave the Indians, she refused to listen to the proposition, saying that her husband, children, and all that she held most dear were with the Indians, and there she should remain. It was not unusual for captured boys to choose to remain with the Indians who had raised them, but it was more unusual for

Starting point is 00:03:36 women. This rankled some Texans, stoking their prejudices. Most white people thought of life among the Comanche as degrading. They felt Cynthia Ann had been forced into a fate worse than death. How could she prefer it to white society? She had her first child, a son, when she was about 18 years old. She named him Kwana, which means sweet aroma because he was born in a bed of wildflowers. Her second son she named Peanuts because that had been her favorite treat of hers at Fort Parker. In late 1858 or 1859, she had a daughter named Tozia, which means prairie flower. Around this time, in November 1860, her husband, Peto Nocona, who is now a war chief, made many raids in the Palo Pinto country, which was the deepest point of white penetration into Comanche

Starting point is 00:04:17 and Kiowa territory. She traveled with him as he moved through a series of counties with a band of Indians and killed half a dozen settlers. In retaliation, the whites began to hunt them, and at the end of that year, on Mule Creek in north-central Texas, a combined force of U.S. cavalry, Texas Rangers, and citizen volunteers surprised a small Comanche hunting camp, mostly women and children. It was not the full Indian raiding party. Many individuals had gone their own way by that point. Peter Nakona himself, Cynthia Ann's husband, had left two days earlier, taking their two sons on a hunt, and few warriors were in camp. Cynthia Ann and the other women were dismantling the lodges to prepare for moving. The soldiers attacked, killing more than a dozen Indians. It was not a battle, but a massacre. One participant, H.B. Rogers, said, I was in the Pease

Starting point is 00:04:59 River fight, but I am not very proud of it. That was not a battle at all, just a killing of squaws. One or two bucks and 16 squaws were killed. When the fighting started, one soldier killed nearly all the fleeing women, it was said, almost in a pile. Cynthia Ann grabbed a pony, mounted it with her daughter, threw a buffalo robe around the two of them, and rode off with Ranger Sullivan Ross and Lieutenant Tom Kelleher in pursuit. After a mile, when Ross was close enough to shoot them, Cynthia Ann turned, held out her child, and shouted, Americano, Americano.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Ross told Kelleher to hold the captive while he rode after the others. In the end, all but three of the camp inhabitants were killed, one of the survivors being Cynthia Ann. When Ross returned, he found her protesting violently to Kelleher. Kelleher was ready to shoot her when Ross noticed something strange. He said, Why, Tom, this is a white woman. Indians don't have blue eyes. They weren't certain who she was. That night around the campfire, a rancher named Jonathan Baker suggested she might be one of the Parker children who had been carried off by the Comanches more than two decades

Starting point is 00:05:54 earlier. Another, James Pollard, said she looked familiar. In 1857 or 1858, he had visited the old Brazos Reservation and had seen a woman with light hair skinning a buffalo. He hadn't realized who she was. Now, when Cynthia Ann tried to communicate in Comanche English and sign language, Pollard had the impression that she remembered him. Some of Ross's followers, realizing that she'd forgotten most of her English and would miss her people, urged him not to take her, but he felt it best to return her to her birth family. He sent her and her daughter to Camp Cooper, a small cavalry outpost, and notified her

Starting point is 00:06:25 uncle, Colonel Isaac Parker, who was now 73. During the journey to the outpost, she tried repeatedly to escape. She was 33 years old and had left behind a husband and two boys. They were taking her from her entire life of the last 24 years, except for her daughter and the clothes on her back. At Camp Cooper, the army wives gave her food and clothing, but she was desolate. She tried again to escape, but was locked up and guarded. When Isaac Parker arrived, she claimed at first not to know her original name, to understand English, or to remember where she had come from. A.B. Mason, who accompanied Parker, said she, quote,

Starting point is 00:06:56 sat for a time immovable, lost in profound meditation, oblivious to everything by which she was surrounded, ever and anon convulsed, as it were, by some powerful emotion which she struggled to suppress. Through an interpreter, Parker asked whether she remembered her childhood home. She said she'd lived in a house surrounded by a large clearing, but added there were plenty of woods within a short distance. That describes Fort Parker. She dated the raid to within four months,

Starting point is 00:07:19 which is remarkable as it had taken place almost 25 years earlier. She remembered that she had once had pale-faced parents. Finally, Parker said, if this is my niece, her name is Cynthia Ann, and at that she slapped her chest and said, Cynthia Ann. Her uncle took her home, meaning first to his home, first to Fort Worth and then to his home in nearby Birdville. When the wagon swung through Fort Worth, she and her daughter were compelled to sit for a photograph in a general store where school children were ushered past them as if they were in a zoo. In the photo, she has hacked her hair short, which is a Comanche demonstration of grief. Isaac's son wrote, when they got home in the news spread, the people came from far and near. For a week or more, there were crowds of men and

Starting point is 00:07:58 women and children from every quarter came to see her papoose. When she would see a crowd, she would run to my wife and cling to her and sometimes crawl under the bed as she believed she would be killed. And when a crowd came, she thought the time had come as the Indians teach their prisoners that the white people kill them when reclaimed. She was having to readjust to a life that she had known for only nine years and long ago forgotten. She'd been abducted at age nine from Fort Parker and spent 24 years with the Comanche. So she wouldn't remember very much of it i'm sure yeah uh officials arranged a celebration but this was this only frightened her and she tried again to escape an uncle took her to austin the state capital to

Starting point is 00:08:34 appear before the legislature to ask for a pension to help her manage the return to white society as she watched from the gallery she became alarmed that it was a council of chiefs who were deciding whether she should live or die they reassured her that she was among friends and gave her seven square miles of land and a yearly pension of $100. As her old Comanche clothing grew tattered, she traded it in for new calico, but she kept up her Comanche ways. She was handed off eventually to Isaac's son, William, then to her brother, Silas, then to her sister, Orlena. At her sister's house, she learned to weave, spin, and sew. They found that she was already skilled in tanning hides, and neighbors brought skins for her to prepare.

Starting point is 00:09:09 She picked plants and herbs to make home remedies. She learned to speak English again and started to read and write. A man named T.J. Cates met her when she was staying with her sister. He said she was, quote, stout and weighed about 140 pounds, well-made, and liked to work. She had a wild expression and would look down when people looked at her. She could use an axe equal to a man and disliked a lazy person. She was an expert in tanning hides with hair on them or plaiting or knitting either ropes or whips.

Starting point is 00:09:34 She thought her two boys were lost on the prairie. This dissatisfied her very much. I suppose it would. She knew her boys were with their father, but she had these ideas that they could freeze to death on the prairie. She was just beside herself wanting to get back to them. Because she wasn't there to watch over them. Yeah. Her family, the people she was staying with, promised to take her to visit the Comanche, but in fact, they moved her even farther from the frontier.

Starting point is 00:09:58 In 1909, one relative wrote, I don't think she ever knew but that her sons were killed, and to hear her tell of the happy days of the Indian dances and see the excitement and pure joy which shone on her face, the worst possible misfortune happened. Prairie Flower, her daughter, caught influenza. It developed into pneumonia, and she died. Cynthia Ann was inconsolable. She began refusing food and water, and finally herself died in March 1871 at her brother's home in Anderson County, 10 years after her return to white society. It's not clear how old she was. She was probably somewhere in her

Starting point is 00:10:33 mid-40s. Mother and daughter were both given Christian burials in a local cemetery. Cynthia Ann Parker was the most famous white captive in the history of the Western frontier. She'd been a captive in two societies. At age nine, she'd witnessed the death of her father and other relatives and was abducted never to see her mother again. As a Comanche, she was married to the same man for almost 20 years and had three children. On her return to the whites, she lost her husband, children, and identity as an Indian. When she lost her daughter, her only connection to the life she had loved, she grieved herself literally to death, and she never found out what had become of her sons. In fact, the second son, Peanuts, had died of smallpox, but the first, Kwana, rose to become the last great chief of the Comanche. Enraged at the loss of his mother, he

Starting point is 00:11:14 took her last name and retaliated with murderous raids across white society. Whites called his band the most wild and hostile of all Indians. The U.S. Army's entire 4th Cavalry failed to catch him, but he never allowed his followers to kill any white women or children. He said that since his mother and sister were living with white people somewhere, he wanted to avoid the chance of harming them accidentally. He refused to visit Pease River, where his mother had been captured. He said, my people had trouble there. I never want to see that place again. As the Buffalo disappeared and the soldiers became more numerous on the frontier,

Starting point is 00:11:44 the Indians were gradually forced onto reservations. In 1875, Quanah became the last Comanche chief to surrender to the whites, leading his people to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Afterward, he became an advocate of education and progress, helping to establish peaceful relations between Comanches and whites in the Southwest. He became the most influential Comanche of the reservation era, establishing peace and friendship between Comanches and whites after more than a century of hatred and war. When he reached the reservation and could communicate with white people, he asked immediately about his mother and learned that she had died five years earlier. He reached out to Isaac Parker but received no reply. He advertised for a photograph of his mother and was given a dated one. He wrote letters to various Parker relatives. Learning of the pension, he sought

Starting point is 00:12:24 to learn whether he was entitled to any inheritance, but he received no counsel, money, or land despite an appeal to the governor in 1907. He sought and found her grave, and at his request, the U.S. Congress agreed to relocate it to Lawton, Oklahoma, five miles from his home so that he could be buried with her when his own time came. On December 4th, 1910, he held a service there. After two sermons and two songs in both Comanche and English, he addressed a large crowd. He said, Forty years ago, my mother died. She captured by Comanches, nine years old.

Starting point is 00:12:53 Love Indian and wildlife so well she no want to go back to white folks. All the same people anyway, God say. I love my mother. I like my white people. Got great heart. I want my people follow after white way. Get educated. No work. Make living when payments stop. I tell them they got to no pick cotton, plow corn. It said that he stood in tears and deep agony throughout the remainder of the funeral. Two months later, he himself died and was laid to rest beside her.

Starting point is 00:13:26 The inscription on his headstone reads, Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, last chief of the Comanche. If you wear glasses, then you know that sometimes you end up focusing more on what's on your lenses than what's going on around you. That's what's great about Crizal No-Glare lenses. They're life-tested to provide the most complete protection against glare, scratches, smudges, dust, and water. So you don't have to worry about your glasses being rendered useless by a rainy day, or getting dirty when you take them on and off, or getting scratched when you clean them on your shirt. Plus, Crizal no-glare lenses make it safer for you to drive at night by reducing any reflection caused by surrounding streetlights

Starting point is 00:14:12 and the headlights of oncoming traffic. Crizal lenses even protect your eyes from harmful UV light, which can contribute to long-term damages like eye disease. And because Crizal no-glare lenses stay clear and reduce distracting glare, your friends and family can actually see your eyes, not just your glasses. Look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to Crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L.com and start living life in the clear. John Hancock wrote to say, Worth your time to research if you're not familiar with him. He was something of a celebrity when I was younger, following his trial for forgery, not least because of the way he not only fooled the professional art world, but also ensured that he could get away with it.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Keating used numerous techniques to flag his paintings as fake, such as including anachronistic objects in the pictures, and, my personal favorite, writing obscenities, or this is a fake, on the canvas with white lead, which would clearly appear on an x-ray. Despite all that, he was only discovered when someone noticed an awful lot of paintings of the same village seemed to be turning up. He was so popular that he was given a television program where he displayed how the great masters painted their famous works. And we hope you're feeling better, John, and thanks for writing in despite your illness, because we were not familiar with Tom Keating. I did look into his story and learned that Keating was a painter who, according to The Guardian, startled the art world in the 1970s when he admitted to knocking out more than 2,000 phony pictures. similarities between his story and that of von Megarin. Keating came from a rather humble background and hadn't received too great of an education and had been rather humiliatingly mocked by his peers for his lack of culture and refinement and his plebeian tastes when he had

Starting point is 00:16:15 attempted to earn a degree from the art program at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Similar to von Megarin, Keating showed great technical skill as a painter, but was criticized for his lack of originality and ended up dropping out of college. He began working for art restorers, mostly doing boring work such as filling in cracks in paintings. But when he went to work for a restorer that he called Fred Roberts in his autobiography, The Fake's Progress, Roberts set him to not just simply restoring paintings, but sometimes adding in elements of his own to make the painting more interesting or more saleable. Keating later said, it was a naughty thing to do, but the alternative was filling in cracks. More than anything else in the world, I wanted to paint and I didn't care what it was that I painted. After Keating made

Starting point is 00:17:00 some snide comments about a painting by Frank Moss Bennett, Roberts challenged him to do something as good. Keating studied some of Bennett's works and, after some practice, created a picture in Bennett's style. Unbeknownst to Keating, Roberts added Bennett's signature to the picture and gave it to a gallery to sell. Keating later claimed that he learned of this only after seeing one of his fake Bennets for sale in a gallery, and this opened his eyes to the idea of earning some money using the name of other famous painters. He said, It seemed disgraceful to me how many of them had died in poverty. All their lives they had been exploited by unscrupulous dealers, and then, as if to dishonor their memory, these same dealers continued to exploit them in death. He thought that he could teach the

Starting point is 00:17:42 commercial art world a lesson, and he felt that the poverty that he had shared with the past artists particularly qualified him for this role. He said, I was determined to do what I could to avenge my brothers, though I think you have to wonder how much he might have also felt that he was avenging himself. There are a lot of parallels with Von Magritte, just the psychology behind it. Definitely. Keating was Cockney and used Cockney rhyming slang. So he called his paintings Sexton Blake's for rhymes with fakes. Keating started selling off his fakes in the early 1950s for very low prices in junk shops or auctions. Many he just gave away to friends, neighbors, and people he happened to meet,

Starting point is 00:18:22 like the man who came to read his gas meter. He partly saw this as a way of helping people who needed money, but his goal was also just to add some chaos to the art world when these forgeries would start being sold by others. So for example, he made hundreds of knockoffs of Cornelius Kreekoff, and when rumors of Kreekoff forgeries started circulating, prices for all of Kreekoff's works fell. Some of Keating's Sexton Blakes pleased him so much that he just kept them for himself to hang on his own walls, and Keating called himself a socialist and always maintained that his forgery was never intended to really profit him financially. Although Keating took pains to learn to duplicate the styles of the painters that he was copying, unlike van Meagren, Keating made little attempt to hide that his paintings were actually forgeries. He deliberately planted

Starting point is 00:19:09 what he called time bombs in his pictures, like those that John noted, such as writing rude words under a painting using paint with a high lead content that would show up if the picture were to be x-rayed. And while von Meagren carefully prepared canvases and paints that would withstand careful scrutiny, Keating painted over worthless pictures that he had purchased in junk shops, often using modern synthetic paints and other modern materials. And even if no one thought to analyze the paint used in his pictures, in some cases, the newly applied paint would eventually start to peel, leaving just the worthless picture beneath it. leaving just the worthless picture beneath it. In a way that seems, honorable seems like the wrong word,

Starting point is 00:19:47 but you can tell that his goal wasn't really foremost to fool people and make money for himself out of this. Right, yeah. He was almost sabotaging himself. Yeah. Noah Charney, a professor specializing in art crime who has actually studied more than 100 forgers,

Starting point is 00:20:01 says in an article in The Atlantic that most art forgers actually do want to be caught. So Charney says that most are failed artists that were dismissed by the art world, and that they turn to forgery as a type of passive-aggressive revenge. And that certainly does seem to apply to both Keating and von Meagren, right? Charney says, on the one hand, if a forger's work is taken to be that of a great master, Picasso, for example, who is the most forged artist in history, then the forger considers that they are just as good as Picasso. On the other, the forger demonstrates the fallibility or foolishness of the so-called experts who cannot tell their forgery from an original, the implication by extension being that these experts were foolish to dismiss the forger's original creations in the first place. But these motivations will only be fully served when the forgery is discovered.

Starting point is 00:20:51 So Charney says that it's only after forgers are caught that the experts can be shown to be so wrong and that the forgers can be praised publicly for their talents. And so maybe that played into some of Keating's motivations. so maybe that played into some of Keating's motivations. Whatever his reasons were, he did openly confess when the Times of London printed allegations of his being a forger in 1976. The Times published his full confession in which he said, I flooded the market with the work of Palmer and many others, not for gain, I hope I am no materialist, but simply as a protest against the merchants who make capital out of those I am proud to call my brother artists both living and dead. And he then went on to take a sharp jab at those who had believed his forgeries to be authentic. At the time this news came out,

Starting point is 00:21:34 most of Keating's works were already in private collections, and he refused all appeals to list all of the fake paintings that he had created. Keating was brought to trial in 1979, but maintained his innocence, saying that he'd never intended to deceive or defraud anyone, that he had simply wanted to paint in the spirit of the master painters, and possibly under the influence of those spirits, as he claimed that sometimes he was inhabited by these dead painters who were actually the ones who did the painting, and that he was fighting on their behalf against the corrupt art world. Charney, the art historian, said, popular culture loves art forgers, seeing them as congenial, quirky pranksters more than criminals. And this really was the case for Keating, as a public that normally had little to no interest in art became fascinated with this

Starting point is 00:22:20 whole drama that some called Watercolorgate. Three weeks into the heavily watched trial, Keating became severely ill after a motorcycle accident, and the charges against him were dropped when doctors didn't expect him to survive. But he did recover, and he went on to host a very popular TV show from 1982 until his death in 1984, in which he demonstrated in plain spoken language with step-by-step instructions how to paint in the style of different famous painters, or basically showing others how to create forgeries as he had.

Starting point is 00:22:53 I guess so. Interestingly, a 2005 article in The Guardian traced the worth of Keating's paintings. For a few years after Keating's admission of the forgeries, his paintings were worthless. But after the public had warmed to him during his trial and his TV show, his paintings were selling for about 1,000 pounds apiece at the time of his death. Demand for Keating's works continued to climb steadily,

Starting point is 00:23:17 and at the time of the Guardian article in 2005, his paintings were selling for 10,000 to 12,000 pounds, or roughly $15,000. But the Guardian says the most valuable Keating's in theory are his undiscovered masterpieces. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of his fakes remain in private hands. And noted that many collectors are reluctant to assess their masterpieces for fear that they might find evidence of Keating's work. that they might find evidence of Keating's work. And the fact that Keating's paintings have been steadily increasing in value has, of course, spurred a new generation of forgers

Starting point is 00:23:49 to attempt to pass off their works as being Keating's, which is perhaps the ultimate compliment for a previously dismissed painter. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We learn so many new things from our listeners. So if you have anything you would like to say, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to present me with a contradictory sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Paul Sophoclaus.

Starting point is 00:24:28 A woman died in front of many witnesses. Even though they could have saved her life, none of them took action. However, they had a very good reason for not acting. What was it? Okay. Is the time period important? Let's say yes. Let's say yes.

Starting point is 00:24:42 Is the location important in any way? Perhaps. Perhaps. Okay. I'm helping you very much. Was this, when you say in front of many witnesses, well, there's several things that come to mind. One, was she being executed, deliberately executed? No.

Starting point is 00:25:01 Two, was this some sort of performance? No. Okay. Let's go to the time period then. The 1900s? No. 2000s? No. Was this some sort of performance? No. Okay. Let's go to the time period then. The 1900s? No. 2000s? No. 1800s? Yes. I'll just tell you it's 1880. Oh, that's very specific. Am I supposed to know what was going on in 1880? No, I just don't want you to have to hunt around. Was it 1879? Okay. So it was 18, and this may be germane. Does it matter what country this happened in? I think I'll say yes.

Starting point is 00:25:29 Okay. Did it happen in North America? No. Europe? No. Asia? Yes. Russia?

Starting point is 00:25:38 I'll just tell you it's Siam. Just to speed things along. Siam, 1880. Okay. Did this have some kind of religious connotation or purpose or was there some religious element to this that I need to untangle? I think the answer is no. I think the answer is no.

Starting point is 00:25:56 Okay. Is it important what she died of? Yes. Okay. Would you say that somebody else or some group of people killed her? No, I wouldn't. Okay. Did she die of some sort of natural cause? No. Did she die in what would be considered some sort of a disaster? I wouldn't quite say disaster, but yes. Okay. Did other people

Starting point is 00:26:20 die at about the same time that she did? Yes. Ah, a specific number of people? Well, I have one in mind. There may have been more. So at least one other person died at the same time she did? Yes, that's right. Is that important? Should I pursue that? No, you can just go with her. Just go with her. Okay. So this was 1880. So okay, when it was in front of witnesses, people had to have been physically present to have been seeing this. Would you say that this was, would the term you would tend to use be an accident? Yes. Ah.

Starting point is 00:26:53 Was she trying to perform some sort of feat or break a record or, you know, do some novel or pushing the boundaries kind of thing? No. Okay. But you would say it was an accident. Is her specific identity important in some way? Yes. Aha. Is who she was married to important? Yes. Aha. Was she married to the king? Yes. Okay. How did you figure, why did you just came out of nowhere?

Starting point is 00:27:21 I don't know. I'm thinking about the movie, King and I and The King Yes I Am had all these wives and she's one of them. Okay, so you wouldn't say, though, that she was put to death. It's not like she had committed adultery and was being stoned or something like that. That's right. No, nothing like that. Okay, but she was married to the king, one of several wives. She was the queen consort.

Starting point is 00:27:42 Okay, she was the queen consort. And this is germaine somehow um but you would say that her death was an accident yes okay um would there have been marks on her body something that i could have visually seen on her body after she died that would have told me the method of death no i don't think there would be okay poison no um okay nothing you could see on her body but you would call it an accident um did she somehow asphyxiate yes okay and she wasn't trying to perform something no um she asphyxiated and people watched and didn't do anything about it there's a a chance that religion was involved, but did you say a chance religion was involved? A chance.

Starting point is 00:28:28 I'm not quite sure, but possibly not. Superstition, would you say? No. No. Was she in the process of doing something, like giving birth, or in the process of doing something else that I need to uncover? Yes. Giving birth?

Starting point is 00:28:43 No. And you wouldn't say she was performing something. I'm really stuck on that. Okay. Was some specific event occurring, like some official state something or other, like a coronation or a state dinner or... Some ceremony like that, no.

Starting point is 00:29:03 Yeah, okay. No. Was the king involved in whatever was going on? No. Some of the other wives? No. I'm still stuck on him having multiple wives. Do you know? I mean, does that matter? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. If he did, they weren't there. Okay. Were children involved in any way? Yes, her daughter was there, but you don't need to pursue that. But I don't need to pursue that but i don't need to pursue that try to work out the cause of death okay um i know i tend to jump around when i'm not getting anywhere on one line so all right she is asphyxiated you would call that an accident

Starting point is 00:29:35 but you wouldn't say she was trying something or trying face? No. Was something around her neck? No. Blah. What else do you asphyxiate? Was there smoke? Like, was the air she was trying to breathe not, didn't have enough oxygen in it for some reason? No, that's not it. Did she drown?

Starting point is 00:29:59 Yes. Ah. Okay. They were doing some kind of ceremony involving water, some ceremonial something or other involving water. No, no ceremony. Was she swimming? No. You wouldn't have said she was swimming.

Starting point is 00:30:12 Was she in a bathtub? Well, why would you take a bath? No. No, so that doesn't make sense. Okay, but you would say it was an accident. Did she intentionally go into water? No. No. No.

Starting point is 00:30:27 She accidentally ended up in water. Yes. Was there ice involved? Like ice that broke or cracked? No. I'm trying to decide if I should just tell you this. Was she on a ship or something else intended to float on the water? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:41 She was on a boat that overturned accidentally and she drowned. Okay. But why did nobody intervene? Yes. She was on a boat that overturned accidentally and she drowned. Okay. But why did nobody intervene? Right. There were people nearby who saw this happen and who didn't help her. Okay. Were other people on the boat? Presumably. Did it matter what happened to them or what they were doing? No. Did it matter why she was on the boat? No. No. Did it matter why the boat overturned? No. Okay. So she's on a boat.

Starting point is 00:31:05 The boat overturns. She's in the water. She's drowning. Yeah. And nobody tries to help her. That's right. Because nobody's allowed to touch her. That's right.

Starting point is 00:31:13 Oh, my gosh. Wow. You jumped right to the end there. The woman was Sunanda Kumari Ratana, Queen Consort of Siam. In 1880, she and her daughter were traveling by boat to the Summer Palace when the boat capsized. There were many witnesses, but they couldn't help because it was a capital offense to touch the queen. So she just drowned there. She was only 19 years old.

Starting point is 00:31:31 Oh my gosh. That's a sad one. That's a sad, fatal one, yes. So thank you, Paul, for sending that in. Yes, thank you, Paul. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, even if nobody dies, we're perfectly fine with puzzles where nobody dies. You can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:31:54 That's our show for this week. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample more than 9,000 Selkuth Elvulgations. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics in today's show. If you like our podcast and want to help support it, please see the Support Us page of our website. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us, or by leaving a review on iTunes or other podcast directories. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:31 Our music was written and performed by the amazing Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 141-Abducted by Indians, a Captive of Whites

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