"Dick Parr, scout, Indian interpreter, guide, wagon master, and famous as an old overland stage coach driver, is a character worthy of considerably more than passing attention." - The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 12 Feb 1905
"Cephas W. Parr, known as Dick Parr, watched the movements of the Kiowas and Comanches." - Hero of Beecher Island (1997)
"In those early post-war years on the Central Plains, there were five army scouts whose names brought admiration, William Cody, Dick Parr...." - The Stalkers: The Battle Of Beecher Island (2013)
"Dick Parr, Sharp Grover, and William Cody (Buffalo Bill) were... able and competent plainsmen, bred to their work by years of service, and men to be relied upon under all circumstances." - Forsyth, Thrilling Days in Army Life (1900)
"Dick Parr settled near Barney Day...and for a time killed buffalo for the railroad construction gang going through Kansas." - Fifty fearless men: the Forsyth Scouts and Beecher Island (1993)
There are a thousand Kansas "characters" from its Wild West era of whom the world never heard of. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these forgotten characters is Dick Parr (Cephas W. Parr) who had been captured as a boy by the Sioux Indians, at Raw Hide River, South Dakota, in April 1856. He later became a scout, Indian interpreter and guide with the U.S. Army.
As an Army post scout at Fort Hays, Parr would take part in one of the most heroic exhibitions of American valor, ranking with the desperate battle of the Alamo, the defense of Beecher's island by Forsyth's Rough Riders in 1868. After two pioneer women had been captured by a hostile band, Parr was one of 52 buffalo hunters, plainsmen, and scouts who were sent out to rescue them but were ultimately surrounded by upward of 1200 warriors—Cheyennes. Arapahoes. and Brule Sioux, all desperate fighters led by chief Roman Nose.
As Buffalo Bill states, it was Parr who got him is first job as an Army Scout: "Forsyth was organizing a company of frontier men for Indian warfare. I eagerly sought an engagement, and succeede through the influence of C.W. Parr post scout at Fort Hays. ... Although I had no military experience, I was fairly well inured to prairie life, acquired by my two years of knocking about on the frontier."
In 1900, Louise Aurelia Corsa (Lincoln) Parr (1859-1908), the second and last wife of Dick Parr, would publish a 40-page sketch of this forgotten hero of the Plains in a little-known book, "Sketch of the Life of Dick Parr in the Far West," republished here.
In introducing her sketch of her husband's life, Louise writes that "of the many noted frontiersmen whose heroic names brighten the pages of our country's border history, none can claim so unique a place within its annals of written biographies as does the life of the renowned hero of the plains — Dick Parr."
Describing Parr's harrowing time as a scout with General Custer, during the Battle of Chalk Bluffs, Louise relates:
"The Cheyenne chiefs, Roman Nose and Medicine Wolf, with their small band of warriors, advanced forward with the war sign, which is given by charging around in a complete circle, and then again half the distance, when, with a wild ringing war-whoop, the entire band of warriors bore down upon the now boldly advancing Seventh cavalrymen and their spirited leader, General Custer...."
In 1905, in appreciation of his service as an Army scout, the U.S. Congress passed "an Act Granting a pension to Cephas W. Parr... late scout and guide, United States Army, " paying "him a pension at the rate of twelve dollars per month."
