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

Last month we looked at some Cowboys, so this month we’re looking at the Indians side of history, making this weeks book 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. So let’s do this.

Now, when the Spanish first started colonizing the America’s, way back in the 16th century, the Comanche were a tiny little tribe who lived in a small section of southern Wyoming. Like, this is a known historical fact, as recorded from Spanish journals which were detailed records of what was going on in the America’s.

At some point after landing in south/southwestern United States, some Spanish colonist lost control of a couple of their horses, and the Spanish Ponies were VERY adaptable and suited to this new land they found themselves in, and rapidly became an invasive species, moving up across the great plains and canyons of the American west, where initially the Apache, who had contact with the Spanish and learned from the Spanish how to ride the ponies and care for the ponies, and husband the ponies, adapted this new technology for travel.

But, as with any technology, once it’s out of the bag, the original creators have no control over it, and the ponies kept spreading north until sometime in the 17th century, horse met Comanche. And what was initially a small tribe, barely subsisting on hunting rats and other varmints, rose to become the single greatest military power on the north American continent. And Gwynne makes an outstanding case for this argument.

See, the Apache learned to ride the ponies, but would dismount rather than fight from horseback. The Comanche were like Genghis Kahn, and the Scythians rolled into one, terrifying juggernaut, that then rolled down the plains from Wyoming all the way to northern Mexico, claiming all this territory as theirs by right of conquest. They made lasting treaties with the Kiowa, but every other tribe hated and feared the Comanche. Because with the addition of horses, the Comanche personified a warrior culture, and this culture was brutalist.

But the Comancheria, as it came to be called, was more or less undisputed, until the 19th century, when America started to spread her wings in James Polks vision of manifest destiny. But to get to why the 19th century was so violent, Gwynne fully explains that this was not just the American machine rolling over the poor native tribes and stealing their land. This was very much a WAR, with land as the prize. And to understand the challenge the American’s faced, you have to understand that the reason Mexico was allowing American’s to immigrate to Texas, was to create a buffer zone between the heart of Comancheria and Mexico. They were literally like “Oh yeah, you guys can totally move to Texas, and become Catholic...no problem” while thinking back in Mexico City...let those fools bear the brunt of the Comanche attacks.

Because by the time Mexico was allowing this immigration from America to happen, the Spanish, who ruled Mexico until August 24, 1821 when they recognized Mexican independence, already knew something about the Comanche that America was wildly unprepared for: The extreme military strength of mounted archers. European culture had already gotten used to gun powder and sword combat, and between these two technologies, were easily able to subdue the Mayan, Incan, and Aztez empires. But the might of Spain, easily one of the most competent conquest empires in history, met the Comanches, and hit a brick wall, unable to advance Spanish territory any higher than modern day San Antonio, thanks to the skill the Comanche had with archery from horseback.

Because a muzzle loading rifle basically required you to be dismounted to reload and fire. The rifles were too bulky to be reloaded from horseback. Additionally, I think the fastest a rifleman could reload a muzzle loader was like 30 seconds, and this was by the time they had a rudimentary cartridge in the form of pre-loaded powder charges. And in the time it took to reload, an Indian archer could shoot 20 or more arrows. While riding at speed on horseback. And HIT WHAT THEY AIMED AT. So yeah...the Spanish managed to also create a treaty that lasted with the Comanche, creating a trading outpost in New Mexico where the Comanche could trade horses and captives.

Now, the captives. I know there’s a lot of romance about how well Native tribes treated captives, adopting them into their tribes and making them part of the family, hell there’s entire subgenres of romantic fiction with that exact topic, the beautiful white woman who is taken hostage only to fall in love with her “Noble Savage” captor. And they live happily ever after.

Such fiction largely exists because of Cynthia Ann Parker. Note the last name? That is Quanah Parker’s mother. When she was 9 years old, she was living with the Parker clan in Texas, the whole extended family having come to Texas to settle the land and make their fortunes. And the family had built up a one acre palisade in which the whole clan lived. But for whatever incompetent reason now lost to history, on the fateful day in question, the palisade was wide open while the men were farming, and the Comanche rode up.

Ten of the sixteen men were outside, eight women and nine children were inside the fort. Maybe the incompetent reason is that James Parker, who had been a commander of the Texas Rangers, had disbanded his rangers, having not had contact with the Comanche for awhile. So maybe he thought the threat had passed, rather than what most likely really happened, that being the particular band of Comanche that rode through Parker’s area of Texas, just hadn’t gotten to him yet.

If the Parker’s had all been inside the fort, they’d have been fine. Hollywood ain’t all bullshit, and the thickly built palisade walls would have withstood the Comanche threat. But they were not. And when the Comanche rode up with somewhere between 100 and 600 warriors...most like 100, but reports vary depending on who’s telling the story...anyways, the Comanche band, which included women who were as adept at riding as the men were, rode up under a white flag.

The ever hopeful Parker clan believed this was a good sign. White flag. Truce. No harm intended. The band...I’m saying band because the Comanche were a large tribe, with various subgroups called bands. Think of it like modern day United Kingdom, if you will. You have the overarching UK, with smaller bands contained there in of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish. Similar to the Comanche, with smaller bands of Kotsotekas, Penatika, Yamparikas...there were like five major bands, with smaller bands within those.

The bands are also why American’s in Texas believed Comanche were breaking treaties. It comes down to a fundamental difference in culture. Americans would draw up a treaty and assume that the band the treaty was with spoke for ALL the Comanche, when the band was only able to speak for itself. So when OTHER Comanche bands would do things like...for example...raid Fort Parker, Texan viewed all Comanche as faithless, and would respond in kind. Then the band who had signed the treaty would hear about the Texan raids, and think the same.

Back to the Parker raid. The Comanche told Benjamin Parker they wanted a cow to slaughter, and directions to the nearest watering hole. Parker told them they couldn’t have a cow but he had other supplies he could give them. Now, the smart family members were bolting out the back of the fort. The not so smart were about to experience hell on earth, including James Parker’s niece, Rachel Parker Plummer, and her fourteen month old son, James Pratt Plummer.

When Benjamin returned with the supplies for the Comanche, they immediately slaughtered him, and raided the fort. Rachel watched her uncle die: “He was clubbed, shot with arrows at extremely close range, and then, probably still alive, scalped.”

Rachel was quickly caught, knocked unconscious, dragged, beaten, gang raped, and tortured. All of this both immediately and over the next 18 months. She became the slave of one of Indians that day. When she would later give birth to a daughter as a result of her sexual assaults, the Comanche would decide that nursing her daughter was taking her too much time away from her duties of tanning hides and other work, and would kill her seven week old daughter in front of her.

This is not horrifying fiction. We know this because Rachel would eventually be rescued. More on that in a bit. The Parker’s who remained in the fort were killed or captured. Some of those who escaped out the back made it all the way to I believe it was Fort Worth. But the ones who were captured were either killed there, or taken with the Comanche when they left. The ones who were taken were Elizabeth Kellogg age unknown, Cynthia Ann Parker age 9, John Richard Parker age 7, Rachel Parker Plummer age 17, James Pratt Plummer age 14 months.

Now, Kellogg was also tortured, beaten, and raped, but her ordeal was a few months. The raid happened on May 19, 1836. By late may she was taken by Kichai Indians, who were not part of the Comanche tribe, so she was sold to the Kichai, who later sold her to Delaware indians, who then sold her back to her brother in law, James W. Parker in August 1836. The $150 to purchase her back was provided courtesy of Sam Houston.

James Parker, for his part, spent pretty much the rest of his life looking for his missing kin, most especially his daughter Rachel and grandson James. He struck out pretty much everywhere. Rachel spent a little over a year as a slave of the Comanche until October 1837, when her captivity was purchased by some white men. These were not speculators, they were operating under orders from William and Mary Donoho, a wealthy Santa Fe couple, who told them to pay any price for white women if the chance arose, and the Donoho’s would pay them back. And thus did Rachel’s ordeal end. And she wrote a book about it before passing away in 1840.

Her death is spectacularly ironic, given everything she had gone through. She was pregnant in late 1839, giving birth in January of 1840. Which in itself is remarkable, since typically women returned from Indian captivity were seen as damaged goods, and their husbands would not touch them anymore. So it speaks to the love her husband much have genuinely felt for her, that after her return, he welcomed her back. Sadly, their new born son died shortly after she did. But what’s so ironic about her death, is if she had been allowed to rest during her pregnancy, she probably would have been fine. But I believe it was her father, fearing a vigilante attack following false allegations that James had killed a woman, made her move in the dead of winter, through winter storms. This weakened her tremendously, and she died about three months after giving birth.

Now, James Parker’s finding of his nephew John and grandson James has less to do with derringdo on his part and more to do with a policy implemented by General Zachary Taylor, who in 1842 announced that the US Government would pay for any captives brought into Fort Gibson. Kidnappings flourished after this. So did ransoms. And in January 1843, James Parker heard of two boys that were brought into Fort Gibson. James Pratt Plummer was now 8 and John Richard Parker was now 13. Neither one spoke any English. Both were returned to their white families.

John, who was Cynthia’s brother, was later sent to the Comanche to try and convince Cynthia to leave. His has been lost to time, although many legends about him exist. James Pratt Plummer would marry twice, before dying on November 17, 1862 of pneumonia while serving in the Confederate Army in Little Rock, Arkansas.

But what of Cynthia Ann Parker? Well, they knew she was still alive, due to various sightings of her over the years. In April 1846, Colonel Leonard H. Williams was an Indian agent who was tasked with contacting Penateka chief Pah-hah-yuco. Pah-hah-yuco was one of the Peace Chiefs, which is exactly what it sounds like, he was pushing for peace between the Comanche and the White people. And when Williams found the village where Pah-hah-yuco was living, he also found Cynthia Ann Parker, now 19, now most famously known as the last of the missing captives.

Now, while the older women, Rachel at 17 and Elizabeth, who’s age we don’t know but she was a mother at the time of the Parker raid, were brutalized and tortured for their captivities, for children, it was considerably different. Yes, the Comanche murdered Rachel’s seven week old daughter, because Rachel was a slave and unable to perform her slave duties while she was nursing. But the sweet spot for children was to be old enough to be useful, which 14 month old James was, and young enough to be trainable, which is where Cynthia and John fit in. All three children were adopted into the tribe, and raised as Comanche children.

So Cynthia, now going by the name Nautdah, having spent ten years learning how to be a Comanche, was very confused by the white Colonel Williams fascination with her and insistence on speaking with her. Williams did try to purchase her from the band, but as she was 19, and now the wife of Peta Nocona, she was decidedly not for sale.

Having learned that she was still alive, in 1847, Robert Neighbors took it upon himself to try and rescue Cynthia Ann/Nautdah. I guess the June 1, 1846 headline of “Miss Parker has married an Indian Chief” offended his deliciate sensibilities. So he also tried to buy her back. Nautdah and Peta Nocona, recognizing that it was not impossible OTHER Comanche might be willing to take the trade, moved to a different band of Comanche, further west from the Frontier, to keep Nautdah safe.

Then in 1851, a trader to the Comanche, Victor Rose, saw Nautdah/Cynthia Ann in the village and asked her, presumably in Comanche since by this time she did not speak any English, if she wanted to leave. And Cynthia/Nautdah responded by shaking her head and saying “I am happily married. I love my husband, who is good and kind, and my little ones, who, too, are his, and I cannot forsake them.” Something to that effect. Gwynne is not sure if Cynthia would have spoke such grammatically perfect sentences, but if the question was asked and answered in Comanche, then the translation may be accurate to tone and intent.

The last time Cynthia Ann was spotted was in the late 1850’s when Captain Randolph Marcy, who was an explorer and western frontier chronicler, reported “There is at this time a white woman among the Middle Comanches, who, with her brother, was captured while they were young children from their father’s house in the Western part of Texas...this woman has adopted all the habits and peculiarities of the Comanches; has an Indian husband and children, and cannot be persuaded to leave them.”

And that was it. Gwynne does a remarkable job tracing Cynthia Ann’s steps throughout the west, but really, there’s no way to know all the details. And from that last report by Marcy until the Texas Rangers and the Battle of Pease River, when the Rangers were riding down on her and she shouted out “Americano, Americano!” and the Ranger’s realized the squaw they were about to shoot, had blue eyes. Nautdah was taken, with her toddler daughter Prairie Flower, and basically held captive among the whites until her death in 1870. Prairie Flower had died of influenze in 1864. And Cynthia Ann, realizing she would never be allowed to return home, and having lost her only anchor, slowly starved herself to death over the next six years.

But the reports above mentioned children...meaning more than one. Cynthia Ann had three children with Peta Nocona. Peta also died at the Battle of Pease River. But their two sons, Quanah and “Peanuts.” Which suggests some remnants of memory from her childhood pre-Comanche remained, since the reason for the name as given in the book is that Nautdah had fond childhood memory of eating peanuts around the fireside at Parker’s Fort.

Following the Battle of Pease River, Quanah and Peanuts made their way to the closest Comanche band they could find. Where they were treated as poor relations come begging, which they basically were. Quanah was about 12 years old, Peanuts one or two years younger. And from there, they had to figure it out on their own. Men of the Comanche hunted and made war. The women did the butchering, cooking, tanning of leather, making of tipi’s and clothing, packing and unpacking when the tribe moved. Without a woman to cook for them, these were lean years indeed. But Quanah pulled it off and fuck me if this part doesn’t read like a classic Hero’s Arch, tragedy occurs, which creates a call to adventure, including a daring elopement with his second wife, and ends with a brutal acknowledgment of reality, and finding his way in the new world.

Quanah would eventually rise up to become the last of the Comanche chiefs to accept conditions as they were and move to the reservation. But how do we get from the Comanche being the acknowledged dominant military presence of the Great American Plains, to living on the skint reservations under white mans privilege?

Fifty years of brutal warfare. And it was violent bloody warfare. This was not just the typically retold story of white man came and steam rolled the native tribes. The Comanche were BRUTAL. There’s a reason the Apache were happy to work as scouts when hunting Comanche. The Comanche didn’t just brutalize and torture white women. ANY ONE who was not Comanche and fell into their hands were subject to the same. The torture included everything from gang rape, to beatings, to slow roasting someone over spit for shits and giggles, to slowly burning someones nose off their face. The Comanche were not one of the “five civilized tribes” that the people in Washington DC had been romanticizing ever since Jean Jacques Rousseau had written his pablum contextualizing the “Noble Savage.” There was nothing noble. They were just Savage. And Gwynne highlights exactly that point again and again.

The turning point on the frontier came about courtesy of Samuel Colts first revolver. If you want to know a bit more about that, check out Gun Barons, which I read last year. The first revolver was a rif on the muzzle loaders, but allowed the gunman to fire seven shots before needing to reload. And unlike the book I read last month, Cult of Glory, Gwynne highlights exactly why the Texas Rangers were such utter badasses. Namely starting with John Coffee Hays. Who drilled his Rangers on mounted battle tactics. Hays recognized the Comanches effectiveness was largely due to their mobility. And knew that dismounting was a tactical disadvantage in battle against mounted combat troops. So he drilled his rangers, first with the single shot pistols that were available, until they could hit a small target at a gallop. And then sometime in 1843, Hays lieutenant, Samuel Walker, discovered the Colt Revolver, saving a design that was destined for the scrapheap of history, and changing the course of that history on the frontier.

NOW, carrying four revolvers and just changing out the empty revolver for a fully loaded one, the Rangers were capable and firing and hitting up to 28 targets in less than a minute, at a full gallop. Which terrified the Comanche, who were basing battle success on who had the most magic, meaning the spirits were on their side. Watching a Comanche chief fall in battle was seen as an ill omen, and the Comanche would flee.

Gwynne does a remarkable job highlighting the different battle tactics, and pointing out matter of factly, meaning without judgement, that part of the White Mans’s success on the frontier was their willingness to charge into oncoming fire to take a position. The Comanche did not and would not do this. Which is a tactical disadvantage.

So fifty years of warfare with both sides doing everything they could to demolish the other, ended with the great Comancheria, stretching from southern Wyoming to Northern Mexico, an acreage of over 200 million, being shrunk down to 2 million. So a 99% reduction in land mass, to be set aside for the Comanche. Initially. This did not last, and ultimately, the reservation would be shrunk even more, to 160 acres per head, by which time the tribe had shrunk to 3000 members, so less than 500,000 acres.

But Quanah, proving what a remarkable person he was, changed with the winds. Once he was on the reservation, once he made that move, he did everything he could to ensure his people were taken care of. Starting with...capitalism. No joke. Recognizing that the reservation represented some of the most outstanding grazing lands available, he leased the land to the cattle barons, making money on it, and refusing to become a farmer, which is what The Great White Father in Washington DC wanted. He even amassed his own cattle herd, small, but enough to keep his people fed.

He became an advocate for his people in DC, and everything he amassed, he gave back to his people, so that when he died on February 23, 1911, he only had like $100 in his bank account. He even managed to befriend Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, who is like the anti-Custer in that he was not flashy, and was actually competent, which means, I had literally never heard of him prior to reading this book. Quanah so impressed Mackenzie that Mackenzie went out of his way to find out what had happened to Nautdah and Prairie Flower for Quanah.

He kept his people out of the Ghost Dance, which meant they were not at Wounded Knee, which is the subject of next weeks book. And he helped found the Native American Church, which is the subject of the last book this month. So he ties a lot of strings together on the old West.

This book was outstanding, it reads like a novel of the wild west, making it a very fast read, and includes history I didn’t know, and perspective that the White Guilt proponents don’t want you to think about. And that’s it for this week.

Review is up at YouTube and Rumble.