Savagery on the Great Plains

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history, S.C. Gwynne

The title of this book is something of a misnomer. I think I got two thirds of the way through it before I learned anything about Quanah Parker. That is not a complaint - the background is necessary to understand the man, and fascinating in its own right. Quanah Parker was the son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a 9-year-old girl frontier girl who was kidnapped by the Comanches. (The  John Wayne movie The Searchers appears to be based on this incident.) Parker stayed with the Comanches for 25 years and bore three children with chief Peta Nocona before being forcibly returned to white society by the Texas Rangers. Quanah grew up to be a fierce guerrilla warrior and powerful leader, and, it turns out, the last chief of the Comanche nation.

This was a phenomenal book - lots of history, adventure, and shocking violence during the 40 years that the Comanche wars raged. I learned a great deal about the Comanches & Apaches, the U.S. Cavalry, the Texas Rangers and the intrepid settlers of the Great Plains. (Interesting factoid: why were the white settlers living in what was then Mexican territory? Because the Mexicans wanted them there! They served as a buffer from the Indian tribes who would sweep down to kill and enslave entire Mexican villages.) This is no politically correct Dances with Wolves-type story of cowboys and Indians living in harmony (or even grudging respect) - this is a bloody account of a people being driven from their land who would stop at nothing to defend it. The plains Indians were undeniably brutal - the tales of guerrilla warfare, gang rape, murder, torture and desecration are hard to stomach. Nevertheless, this is history at its most thrilling and a page-turner extraordinaire.