While the subtitle implies that Quanah Parker plays a larger role in the history of the Comanche, his prominence is in the closing days of the Comanche’s pre-reservation years and attempt to help his people once on the reservation by essentially calling duplicitous government efforts to take away reservation land. Gwynne’s dual history of the Comanche nation and the Parker family so closely linked with them for most of the 19th Century, are two different books combined in one that separately would have been good but together is just okay. Gwynne gives a general history of the Comanche nation from their rise as a power on the Plains thanks to the introduction of the horse and their fall with the near extinction of the bison mainly through the lives of Quanah Parker and his mother.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne's exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads - a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being.Įuropean-Americans in the southern Great Plains feared them, other Native Americans quickly learned to get out of their way, and eventually the United States army would have to learn to be like them to defeat them. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun. White settlers arriving in Texas from the Eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana.
The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.Īlthough listeners may be more familiar with the names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. Highly recommended by HAWL Reading Group.įROM AMAZON: Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories.
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