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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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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “A New Kind of War”
Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss the genocide of Indigenous Americans as well as instances of wartime violence.
In the fall of 1871, the United States Army drew closer to finally defeating the once-mighty Comanche nation. On October 3, 1871, the 4th Cavalry, under the command of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, was on the verge of enacting the “final solution” (2) to the Western European and American struggle against the Comanches, then under the leadership of the enigmatic Quanah Parker.
The violence between the expanding United States and the Comanche people was at its peak in 1871. Colonel Randolph Marcy, accompanied by General Tecumseh Sherman, remarked on the scarcity of settlers compared to even a decade earlier. Settlers had left the Texan frontier in droves to escape Comanche raiding parties.
Comanche success occurred amid the Industrial Revolution and at a time of great social change in post–Civil War United States. Much of this affected, in some way, the events on the western Texan frontier, specifically the region known as Comancheria (the lands of the Comanches) where buffalo hunters affected “the greatest mass destruction of warm-blooded animals in human history” (5).
Mackenzie and his troops sought out a specific group of Comanches on the aforementioned date: the Quahadi, the group from which their war chief, Quanah Parker, came. Quanah Parker was not only a successful and respected Comanche war chief—he was also an enigma for his American enemies because he was the progeny of a Comanche man and a white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker.
Mackenzie made a mistake on that fateful day. Quanah and his warriors possessed superior information about the whereabouts of their enemies, and a raid on the night of the third found the American soldiers ambushed, losing several men and many horses. The battle later became known as the Battle of Blanco Canyon. It was the first of many battles over the following four years.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Lethal Paradise”
Quanah Parker quickly became a renowned and hunted enemy. No fewer than 46 companies of American infantry and cavalry were in pursuit. His destiny lay in leading his people through the wars on the frontier and beyond, into their reservation years.
Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was a daughter of the influential Parker clan—a family that built a veritable fortress on the very edge of the Texan frontier, within the area known as Comancheria. Cynthia Ann’s fate, and that of her family, correlated with the fate of the Comanche nation: “In one sense, the Parkers are the beginning and end of the Comanches in U.S. history” (12).
It all began in 1833, when the Parker family migrated from Illinois to Texas with the promise of free land. In 1833, Texas was still a part of Mexico, but the Parkers acquired a plot of land totaling 16,100 acres near present-day Dallas, which they later enlarged further by purchasing adjacent lands. The Parkers, like many Anglo-American immigrants at that time, supported Texan independence. The land was far from any substantial Mexican or Anglo-American settlements, and the Parkers were left virtually alone, hence the fortress-like structure on the property.
In spite of the impressive structure, the Parkers did not treat it properly as a fort, and thus it wasn’t difficult for a Comanche raiding party on May 19, 1836, to come upon them unawares. Most of the Parker men were killed, and a few women escaped, but those who didn’t were raped and then killed or kidnapped. Cynthia Ann was just a child. She was taken prisoner, and though she was not raped, she was mistreated and beaten.
The Parker raid was no isolated event. In fact, the bloodshed only grew worse. The Salt Creek Massacre in 1871 “[made] the violence at Parker’s Fort seem tame and unimaginative by comparison” (19). Comanche aggression wasn’t reserved for Anglo-Americans either. Mexicans and other Indigenous tribes met with similar fates when the Comanches raided them as well.
Much of what is known about the events of the Parker raid and what it was like to be a Comanche prisoner came from the diary of then 17-year-old Rachel Parker Plummer, along with her 14-month-old son, was captured and carried off along with Cynthia Ann. She was a captive with the Comanches for 13 months, and her account was widely read at the time by an American public fascinated and appalled by the “Indian Wars.”
Chapter 3 Summary: “Worlds in Collision”
At the time of the Parker raid, the Parker Fort represented the outermost extension of the American frontier, and the Parkers, like most Americans, did not fully understand or comprehend who the Comanches were. The two sides, the Americans and the Comanches, shared more in common than they were willing to admit.
The Comanches at the time of the raid represented a small portion of a much larger group of bands that shared similar customs and language. The Comanche lands extended over large parts of present-day Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
While it is referred to as the Comanche Nation, the Comanches did not work or operate with any sort of political, military, or economic cohesion the way that European nations did. Though they engaged in trade with other Indigenous tribes, Mexicans, and Americans, they often utilized Comancheros (men of mixed Comanche and Spanish/Mexican heritage) as mediators. The Comanches were the most dominant tribe in the region, and their language, a Shoshone dialect, served as the lingua franca of the southern Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, much as Latin did in the Roman Empire. Because of these differences in culture, the Europeans and Americans gravely underestimated the Comanches, a mistake that went back many years.
For decades, the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans could not fathom the Comanche ability to travel swiftly over great distances on horseback. Thus, it took a long time for them to finally understand how formidable a mounted Comanche warrior could be. The Comanches differed greatly from the prevailing Euro-American understanding of Indigenous peoples. The tribes east of the Mississippi did not use the horse in war, and so it wasn’t until settlers began encountering the plains tribes that the image of the mounted Indigenous warrior took shape. The Comanches resembled other mounted archers and lancers like Genghis Khan and his Mongols more than they did Eastern Indigenous tribes like the Iroquois.
The Comanches came into the plains region from the mountains of modern-day Wyoming. The name Comanche is a Spanish invention, probably derived from a Ute word meaning “enemy.” They called themselves the Nermernuh, which translates to “the People.” They were nomadic hunter-gatherers who did not farm. However, during the latter half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, Comanche culture underwent a dramatic transformation when they discovered and tamed wild, escaped Spanish horses. The arrival of the horse was as significant an event for the Comanches as the advent of electricity was for Western nations. Even though other tribes learned to use the horse, the Comanches were the only tribe that learned to breed horses, which gave them an even greater advantage and power over their Indigenous rivals. They became horse masters: “The Comanches, as it turned out, were geniuses at anything to do with horses: breeding, breaking, selling, and riding” (33).
It was this mastery of the horse that led the Comanches to travel further south, where they first encountered the Spanish. The Spanish had never heard of the Comanches prior to this first contact, even though their original lands in the northern mountains lay within Spanish-controlled North American empire.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In these initial chapters, the author establishes his narrative style, which focuses on the Parker family as a case study through which he will tell a broader story of Comanche history. S.C. Gwynne compares the Comanche people to well-known empires from world history, establishing his view of the conflicts on the Great Plains as A Clash of Empires. In Gwynne’s view, the Comanche were a powerful empire in their own right, and the conflicts between them and their colonizers—first the Spanish and then the Americans—were above all conflicts between different modes of imperial power. In Chapter 3, Gwynne compares the Comanches with the Mongols under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who united many disparate tribes and conquered most of Eurasia in the 13th century, eventually commanding one of the largest empires in the history of the world. Like the Comanches, the Mongols were nomadic grassland people and superior horsemen, learning from an early age to ride, which gave them an advantage in warfare. Gwynne also uses a historical analogy to suggest the genocidal nature of the US “Indian Wars” in their final years. He describes the decisive battles between US cavalry and the Comanches as the US government’s “final solution” to what it saw as the problem of Indigenous existence. The term “final solution” was used by the Nazis regarding the Jewish people, and thus American Manifest Destiny is compared to the Holocaust.
The author also likens the Comanche dialect of the Shoshone language to Latin, the uniting form of communication between disparate geographic regions of the Roman empire. In doing so, the author illustrates the degree to which white European imperialism decimated Indigenous culture. Though a “dead language,” Latin is studied in high schools and colleges across the country, presumably with the goal of understanding and revering texts emblematic of “antiquity,” or what white scholars have hailed as worthwhile. Conversely, the Shoshone language (perhaps because Indigenous cultures held primarily oral traditions) is not typically spoken or studied in white cultural institutions, while for many decades, Indigenous youth were forcibly enrolled in “residential schools” where they were forbidden from speaking their native languages.
The book includes graphic descriptions of atrocities that occurred on both sides, best seen in Chapter 2 with the description of the Parker raid. On page 19, the author clarifies his justification for including such violence in his narration. The first is that people at the time read Rachel Parker Plummer’s diary and were thus fully aware of what was happening on the frontier, which had a stark effect on the psyche of the American populace and influenced Anti-Indigenous Racism and Cultural Misunderstanding that persisted for decades and fueled the “Indian Wars.” Another important distinction made by including scenes of brutality is to dismantle the archetypical figure of the “noble savage.” This figure, popularized from the late 18th century through the present day, oversimplifies Indigenous American culture and homogenizes what are actually many disparate populations of peoples. By pointing out the Comanches’ command of war and their predisposition toward imperialism of their own, Gwynne restores their agency as a formidable opponent for American expansion.
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