Well …
wow. Having read deeply about the
American West for two decades, I had thought that there would be few surprises
left in store for me. And then, happily,
I came across S. C. Gwynne’s masterful, Empire
of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the
Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. If you read only one book about the so-called
Indian Wars, let it be this one.
The North
American aboriginal people have been so romanticized and sanitized since the drug-addled
1960s – which re-envisioned them peyote-dropping, love-happy hippies – that contemporary
readers have lost sight of just how brutal and dangerous they were. The Plaines Indians were really more of a
Stone Age people, resistant to change, without a written language or cultural
attainments, totally lacking in science, and predicated on a life of horsemanship
and continual warfare. They were a truly
formidable foe to settlers in the American West who came from a tradition of the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment and a muscular Christianity. The worlds of the Western settlers and the
Indians were as alien to one-another as to be almost other-worldly.
Settlers
were completely unprepared for the level of savagery -- wanton rape, torture
and mutilation were common currency among the Comanche -- and the battle
between both peoples soon devolved into greater brutality on both sides. Gwynne is utterly matter-of-fact in placing
blame on both sides – there was more than enough violence to go around. The history here is neutral, and the lack of
a sanitized take is sure to discomfort partisans of either side of the issue.
Gwynne
frames this sad history with the stories of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son, the Comanche chief Quanah.
As a girl, Cynthia Ann watched as Comanches brutally murdered and raped
most of her family. Kidnapped to help
increase Comanche numbers (the mortality of Comanche infants was incredibly
high, and kidnapped women were chattel for child-bearing), she worked as a
slave to a Comanche band. Eventually,
she would become one of the wives of Peta
Nocona, one of the most powerful of Comanche raiders.
However,
her uncle James Parker spent years
and years searching for Cynthia Ann.
(Yes, this story became the model for the John Ford film, The
Searchers, in 1956.) He never did find
her, but the adult Cynthia Ann was found among the survivors after a military raid
and returned to her family, along with her child, Prairie Flower. Cynthia Ann
is an incredibly poignant figure – ripped from one reality as a child and forced
into another, and then, ripped from that and brought back into a world she
no-longer knew. A lifetime among the
Comanche had left her completely unprepared for Western life, and she sickened
and died, mourning the loss of her world, her husband, and her son, Quanah.
Quanah
fared much better than his mother. One
of the most recalcitrant leaders of Comanche bands, he raided, stole horses and
killed many before he accepted life on the reservation. While there, he decided to beat the settlers
at their own game, becoming something of a businessman by manipulating fees for
use of his land, building a grand house, and shaming the government into additional
funds. He actually can be seen in a
short Western film (the first two-reeler) shot in 1908, The Bank Robbery. It can be
seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q87ooO6B74.
When not
focusing on the Parkers, Gwynne writes about Ranald S. Mackenzie, the man who would destroy the Comaches and
become America’s greatest Indian fighter.
He graduated first in his class from West Point (the same year of George Armstrong Custer), and would
later befriend and educate Quanah. We also
meet the fiery Jack Hays, the
greatest of the Texas Rangers, and the source of countless legends of the Old
West. It was said that before Hays,
Americans came into the West on foot carrying long rifles, and that after Hays,
everybody was mounted and carrying a six-shooter.
S. C. Gwynne is a journalist who writes for The Dallas Mornings News, and is a
former bureau chief and senior editor at Time. What he seeks to do with the hauntingly
titled Empire of the Summer Moon is paint on an extremely large canvas the full
immensity of events during the Indian Wars of Texas and Oklahoma. It is peopled with many heroes, more than its
share of villains, and many who were a little bit of both. It is set against a dazzling (and deadly)
landscape, and encompasses several decades.
The book is rich in history, drama, violence and humanity. It comes very highly recommended.
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