I've become interested about this tribe. Especially the time they spent in North/west Texas. Does anyone have some good books or even better, some half truth folklore stories about them in this part of the country?

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

TwoMarksHand said:

---

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

---

Have not but I did see it in my initial search. Looks like a good one.

I'm about 90% of way thru it.... highly recommend as I got reco from this board for it

Empire of the Summer Moon is the best.

Lords of the South Plains is a good one, if I remember correctly. I read that one years ago

Read it - phenomenal book!

Yesterday said:

---

TwoMarksHand said:

---

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

---

Have not but I did see it in my initial search. Looks like a good one.

---

It's one of my favorite books of all time

They figured out how to weaponize horses totally changed the game. Just imagine bow hunting bison at full gallop, successfully. Unreal.

Empire of the Summer Moon has to be #1. The author S.C. Gwynne also has a great interview on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Nine Years Among the Indians is another good book. Written by Herman Lehmann detailing his abduction by the Apaches from the hill country and then living with the Comanches.

The Captured by Scott Zesch is another good one.

Empire of the Summer Moon is my favorite. This one is also good but extremely in-depth:


For fiction, McMurtey's Comanche Moon is my second favorite of all his books (after Lonesome Dove).

I enjoyed James Michener's book Texas. It covers Texas history starting with the early Spanish explorers up until the 1980's when the book was published. The basic premise for the book is fictional but the historical context is mostly accurate, although some liberties are certainly taken.

Another reco for empire of the summer moon.

Fun fact, a descendent of Quanah Parker plays Quanah in Texas: the musical, performed in canyon, tx at palo duro canyon.

TwoMarksHand said:

---

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

---

Good book. Will open your eyes if you've ever had the "noble savage" misconception. You did not want to get taken alive…even by the Comanche women.

I thought this was good, but not sure if it's what your looking for.

Nine Years Among the Indians

Hermann Lehmann

All the books mentioned so far are pretty good. If you're looking for a more in-depth academic type description of the Comanche, pick up a copy of The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen. Hamalainen is a Finnish historian, which I find amusing, but he does a great job of laying out the facts to support a description of the Comanches as much more than a primitive tribe of savages. In fact, using Spanish, Mexican, Texan, and US records, he shows they were a very sophisticated trading empire who basically turned Northern Spanish Mexico into a tributary state. It's not as lively as the other books in this thread, but it really changed my perception of the Comanche as a people.

TwoMarksHand said:

---

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

---

EOT

Arguably one of my favorite books I've ever read. I have the hardcover and audio and will fire it up on long drives.
To think that at one time, north Texas was one of the most dangerous places on earth! Or that the Comanches so decimated Mexico that they ceded so much land to the US to act as a buffer - settlers being the fodder for Comanches and would hopefully leave Mexico alone. It's a must read.

I remember my g-mother telling me stories her g-mother told her about the "Comanche Moon" and how she would be locked in the seller and the men would barricade the house and stay up all night with rifles.

"Life among the Apaches ", by John C Cremony. it has little about Comanche life also. One of the best books on Indian life etc I have read.

JSKolache said:

---

They figured out how to weaponize horses totally changed the game. Just imagine bow hunting bison at full gallop, successfully. Unreal.

---

It was even more wild than that. They'd pinch 3-4 arrows in their bow hand and would time shots when the horse was at a full gallop and all four legs were off the ground - giving them a fraction of time to get off a clean shot with the horse suspended in the air.

Or records of warriors firing from horseback, under the neck of the horse, using the animal as a shield.

BlueSmoke said:

---

TwoMarksHand said:

---

Surely you've read Empire of the Summer Moon?

---

EOT

Arguably one of my favorite books I've ever read. I have the hardcover and audio and will fire it up on long drives.
To think that at one time, north Texas was one of the most dangerous places on earth! Or that the Comanches so decimated Mexico that they ceded so much land to the US to act as a buffer - settlers being the fodder for Comanches and would hopefully leave Mexico alone. It's a must read.

I remember my g-mother telling me stories her g-mother told her about the "Comanche Moon" and how she would be locked in the seller and the men would barricade the house and stay up all night with rifles.

---

blue star for you.

The mexico/spaniards stopping their northern expansion due to the Comanches was eye-opening and makes total sense.

It's also wild in the later years that far after the civil war, the plains were still the most dangerous place on earth - literally no mans land in fear of the Numunuu.

People think the Apaches were wild and crazy? The Comanches basically exterminated them and kicked them off the fertile hunting grounds of the plains.

They changed the battlefield forever. Americans literally could not believe what they were seeing when they first witnessed a mounted comanche warrior with a 14' lance, bulletproof shield and a bow that could be shot while hanging off the side of their mount. Utterly terrifying.

They were the modern day Mongols of the Plains. Still, the plains killed more people than any tribe. Thousands of miles of vast, open space with limited supplies and timber. Winters so brutal you'd die going to the bathroom outside.

Comanches would often sit back and just watch settlers suffering. They'd dance around them, pick a few off, torture them, take their shoes and cut off the soles off their feet and kill their animals, stuff like that. Rough bunch for sure

This book is fiction, but for many years I taught A Woman of the People by Benjamin Capps.

It is loosely based on the Cynthia Ann Parker kidnapping. The book is told from the point of view of a young Anglo girl who is captured by Comanches and grows to become part of "The People," as the Comanches call themselves.

Capps did a great deal of research on the Comanche tribe and it shows. It is a well-written and often moving novel.

This post is timely.

I always half ass remember the title of Empire of the Summer Moon. For some reason when Killers of the Flower Moon came out I mistakenly thought it was about it until I paid attention and realized my mistake.

Bookmarking for later.

Indian Depredations of Texas, I think is the title. It is true stories of the Comanches raids in Texas from 1840 until they were pretty much exterminated or run out of Texas to the reservations in Oklahoma. Some of the stories and details will turn your stomach and then you will understand why the settlers hated them so much. They were barbaric savages!!

I have a copy of this that belonged to my dad. Been meaning to read it for some time now. He liked it a lot.

BlueSmoke said:

---

Comanches would often sit back and just watch settlers suffering. They'd dance around them, pick a few off, torture them, take their shoes and cut off the soles off their feet and kill their animals, stuff like that. Rough bunch for sure

---

Talk about always ensuring you had one last bullet for yourself. Yikes

I was on Amazon ordering a few things, two new books were added to today's order! Looking forward to reading them.

DVM

https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/redriver/

Great web site on the Red River Wars.

Quote:

---

During the summer of 1874, the U. S. Army launched a campaign to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indian tribes from the Southern Plains and enforce their relocation to reservations in Indian Territory. The actions of 1874 were unlike any prior attempts by the Army to pacify this area of the western frontier. The Red River War led to the end of an entire way of life for the Southern Plains tribes and brought about a new chapter in Texas history.

---

Happened to catch the second episode by Ken Burns about the Buffalo last night. Quanah Parker was a big part of this episode.

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-american-buffalo/

Quote:

---

Will open your eyes if you've ever had the "noble savage" misconception.

---

Captain Carter was not a fan of the noble savage. I read this decades ago. One of the few accounts written by the folks fighting the Indians in the 1870s

https://www.amazon.com/Mackenzie-Winning-Comanches-History-Reprint/dp/0876112467

Quote:

---

When first published in 1935, On the Border with Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches, by Capt. Robert G. Carter, quickly became known as the most complete account of the Indian Wars on the Texas frontier during the 1870s. And even today it still stands as one of the most exhaustive histories ever written by an actual participant in the Texas Indian Wars. Carter, a Union Army veteran and West Point graduate, was appointed in 1870 to serve as second lieutenant in the Fourth United States Cavalry stationed at Fort Concho, Texas. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1900 for his gallantry in action against the Indians occurring on October 10, 1871, during the battle of Blanco Canyon.

Led by Col. Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, the Fourth Cavalry moved its headquarters to Fort Richardson, Texas, in 1871 where they soon became one of the most effective units on the western frontier. Among the battles and skirmishes they participated in were the Warren wagon train raid of 1871; the Kicking Bird pursuit of 1871; the Remolino fight of 1873; the Red River War of 187475; and the Black Hills War of 1876.

L. F. Sheffy refers to On the Border with Mackenzie as "a splendid contribution to the early frontier history of West Texas . . . a story filled with humor and pathos, tragedies and triumphs, hunger and thirst, war and adventure." And in the words of John H. Jenkins in Texas Basic Books, Carter "pulls no punches in this outspoken narrative, and the reader always knows where he stands." Long out of print, this definitive history of the Indian Wars will now have the accessibility that it deserves. It is as Charles Robinson states in the foreword "essential to any study of the Indian Wars of the Southern Plains."

---

Weren't the Texas Rangers formed to fight Comanches?

dead zip 01 said:

---

Nine Years Among the Indians

Hermann Lehmann

---

Just finished this after reading Summer Moon many moons ago. Highly recommend.

Comanches by the dean of Texas History T.R.Fehrenbach

I echo anything by T. R. Fehrenbach re: Texas History, especially of the Comanches, is worthy of your time.

I'd add -

Interwoven by Sallie Reynolds Mathews to the list - raised on a ranch a few miles from the future location of Fort Griffin in Shackelford County - a great white person family story from the edge of the Comancheria from 1850 onward

Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle (Revised: 4th Edition) https://a.co/d/gvk97LB

The Warren Wagon Train Raid by Benjamin Capps - an important fight had more to do with some Kiowa participants but still a pivotal story

The Warren Wagontrain Raid: The First Complete Account of an Historic Indian Attack and Its Aftermath https://a.co/d/h0jeghq