Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

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Dale L. Walker (May 30, 2010). "Book review, 'Empire of the Summer Moon,' by S.C. Gwynne". Dallas Morning News. Empire of the Summer Moon is a skillfully told, brutally truthful, history. Despite their prowess (Gwynne calls them the world’s best light cavalry) and their occasional appearance in western films (such as John Ford’s famed The Searchers), the Comanches have long existed in the shadow of better known tribes, especially the Lakota of the Northern Plains. Indeed, when Michael Blake’s novel Dances With Wolves was adapted for the large screen, the story was transplanted from Texas to the Dakota Territory, and the Comanches became the Sioux. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History Empire of the Summer Moon is, in other words, a marvelous combination of many genres. It is a captivity narrative, a multi-person biography, and a military history. Gwynne does all these things extremely well. He is a really good writer. This is one of those rare history books where the prose is actually worth mentioning, at least in a positive sense. The descriptions of battle leave you with the stink of gunpowder in your nose. There are certain points when Gwynne uses his prose in combination with his insights into the participants – especially the mirror-twinned lives of Cynthia Ann and Quanah, who were both forced to leave their settled existences and live in spheres not of their choosing – that Empire of the Summer Moon reaches extremely rare heights. At its best, this book is among the best.

Understanding this history brings us to another problem with this book. Many authors now view the policies of the United States government with respect to Native Americans as acts of genocide. Gwynne never makes this statement. His approach is to show atrocities committed by both Indians and non-Indians in an attempt to merely report on history.At this period of history, rape was virtually unknown, since women were respected for the immense contributions they made. In fact, during the time of matriarchal society women had political power and men could only rule with their consent. Yet, while this was a clear Native American success story, the lawmakers in Washington decided that they needed to steal Native American land again. In the end, Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches, only had a few hundred dollars, his home, a few horses and mules. While Washington took away almost everything he had, Parker never turned away anyone who was in need. Comanche history and culture is the focus of this book. The subtitle of the book markets itself as a biography of Quanah Parker, but he doesn't show up until the final fourth of the book.

Marriott, Alice Lee; Rachlin, Carol K (1971). Peyote: An Account of the Origins and Growth of the Peyote Religion. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. p.111. ASIN B0044EQFKC. Later, as a grown woman, Cynthia became famous when recaptured with her baby daughter in a brutal cavalry raid while skinning buffalo and loading meat as the wife of a chief. Her defiant resistance to return to white cultural ways captured the imagination of the American public. She refused to speak English and perpetually tried to run away to her people, eventually dying of pneumonia. A different kind of fame arose when it came out that her mixed race son, who at age 12 escaped during the raid and grew up to become the brilliant warrior and leader of the reclusive Quahadi band of the Comanche, Quanah Parker. Though Gwynne uses the term loosely, the Comanches were an “empire” in the very literal sense of the word. They came from the Wind River region in present-day Wyoming, and slowly migrated toward the south. For a long time, they were at the mercy of other tribes, until, in an ultimately bitter irony, the Spaniards – and their horses – arrived on the scene. Brilliantly adapting the horse to their lifestyle, the Comanches grew into a potent martial and political force. They nearly annihilated certain tribes – such as the Apache and the Tonkawa – made treaties with other tribes, and consolidated their holdings into a roughly delineated land known as Comancheria, which comprised portions of present-day Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas.The Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway, which originated in Texas in 1902 and was merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1981. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend. Because horses were introduced into the Comanches when they were a relatively underdeveloped society, they, no doubt, engaged in practices that were completely new to their way of life. Gwynne gave no evidence that the Comanche men ever raped or abused Comanche women. Genocide against the Indians They resembled less the Algonquins or the Choctaws than the great and legendary mounted archers of history: Mongols, Parthians, and Magyars.

Empire of the Summer Moon is a brutally honest and graphic re-telling of the history of the greatest Native American tribe in the history of America - the Comanches. A journalist by trade, Gwynne maintains impartiality throughout the book. Although it is difficult not to sympathize with the Comanche and their ultimate fate, they were notorious for their extreme violence toward all who stood in their way. How are you able to reconcile the savagery of the tribe with their nobility? Does this moral dichotomy even need to be reconciled, or is it wrong to apply modern standards of ethics to the Comanche?An appropriately fast-paced life of Comanche leader Quanah Parker and his band, the last Native free riders on the plains. S.W. Gwynne’s book does not do that. Gwynne does not start the book in the mid-nineteenth century when the Comanche’s and US are up in arms. He starts his book by talking about the evolution of the Comanche Tribe as it was affected by the weather, animal migration, Spanish/Mexican expansion, other tribes, and the United States. He does not present the arrival of the United States in Comanche land as the US’s virgin foray with native tribes, but rather a two hundred year-long culmination of interaction with different Native American Nations. The desert wind would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, no ghost or scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place had died. Book Genre: American History, Biography, Historical, History, Native American History, Native Americans, Nonfiction, North American Hi…, War, Westerns

The author does not spare the reader details of the warlike nature of these people, nor does he condemn or romanticize the tragedy from hindsight. No quarter was asked by this group, nor any given, and S.C. Gwynne admirably refrains from heavy handed opining on the rights and wrongs of the long-running conflict. Gwynne's work is a complex story of a lesser known era in American history. It is a story worth knowing. Gwynne tells it well. I would encourage anyone interested in expansion of the American frontier to read it. One not fully familiar with Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico geography would be well served to have maps readily available to appreciate the range of the Comanche travels and the speed in which they achieved it. But this subject is never touched upon in this book. It never puts forth an actual hypothesis. It never answers questions, but instead gives us fact after fact. And while that is useful and entertaining, especially in this case, it does little to advance our actual knowledge of the 'why's'.The scene toward the end of the book when Quanah and his fellow Comanche are allowed off the reservation for a buffalo hunt is heartbreaking. There are no buffalo to be found, and they are reduced, instead, to hunting cattle. This poignant failed attempt to recapture a vital piece of Comanche identity just a few years after surrender begs the following questions: Would the Comanche have been forced to give up their way of life even if they had not engaged in war? Would they eventually have been rendered obsolete because of their inability and unwillingness to adapt to the ever-modernizing world around them? Cynthia Ann lived 25 years with the Comanches, married Chief Peta Nocona, and gave birth to three children, including son Quanah Parker, who would become the last Chief of the Comanches. At the age 34, she was recaptured by the Texas Rangers and forcibly returned “home”. The question is what was home then? She missed her children and the Native American way of life and never readjusted to white society again. New Names of Minor Planets" (PDF). The Minor Planet Circulars/Minor Planets and Comets. MPC 112429-112436: 112434. April 6, 2019 . Retrieved April 8, 2019.