*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award* *A New York Times Notable Book* *Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award* This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” (The New York Times Book Review). Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. 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. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. 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. 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. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. 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, and the amazing story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Hailed by critics, S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history.

Quanah Parker is a figure of almost mythical proportions on the Southern Plains. The son of Cynthia Parker, a white captive whose subsequent return to white society and early death had become a Texas frontier legend, Quanah rose from able warrior to tribal leader on the Comanche reservation. Other books about Quanah Parker have been incomplete, are outdated, or are lacking in scholarly analysis. William T. Hagan, the author of United States-Comanche Relations, knows Comanche history. This new biography, written in a crisp and readable style, is a well-balanced portrait of Quanah Parker, the chief, and Quanah, the man torn between two worlds. Between 1875 and his death in 1911, Quanah strove to cope with the changes confronting tribal members. Dealing with local Indian agents and with presidents and other high officials in Washington, he faced the classic dilemma of a leader caught between the dictates of an occupying power and the wrenching physical and spiritual needs of his people. Quanah was never one to decline the perquisites of leadership. Texas cattlemen who used his influence to gain access to reservation grass for their herds rewarded him liberally. They financed some of his many trips to Washington and helped him build a home that remains to this day a tourist attraction. Such was his fame that Teddy Roosevelt invited him to take part in his inaugural parade and subsequently intervened personally to help him and the Comanches as their reservation dissolved. Maintaining a remarkable blend of progressive and traditional beliefs, Quanah epitomized the Indian caught in the middle. Valued by almost all Indian agents with whom he dealt, he nevertheless practiced polygamy and the peyote religion - both contrary to government policy. Other Indians functioned as middlemen, but through his force and intelligence, and his romantic origins, Quanah Parker achieved unparalleled success and enduring renown. -- Publisher description

Critical acclaim for The Last Comanche Chief "Truly distinguished. Neeley re-creates the character and achievements of this most significant of all Comanche leaders." -- Robert M. Utley author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull "A vivid, eyewitness account of life for settlers and Native Americans in those violent and difficult times." -- Christian Science Monitor "The special merits of Neeley's work include its reliance on primary sources and illuminating descriptions of interactions among Southern Plains people, Native and white." -- Library Journal "He has given us a fuller and clearer portrait of this extraordinary Lord of the South Plains than we've ever had before." -- The Dallas Morning News

The son of white captive Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker rose from able warrior to tribal leader on the Comanche reservation. Between 1875 and his death in 1911, Quanah dealt with local Indian agents and with presidents and other high officials in Washington, facing the classic dilemma of a leader caught between the dictates of an occupying power and the wrenching physical and spiritual needs of his people. He maintained a remarkable blend of progressive and traditional beliefs, and contrary to government policy, he practiced polygamy and the peyote religion. In this crisp and readable biography, William T Hagan presents a well-balanced portrait of Quanah Parker, the chief, and Quanah, the man torn between two worlds.

Life histories are an excellent means of crosscultural understanding. In detailing the life of a Comanche medicine woman who wanted her methods recorded, Jones demonstrated such an intense interest in her training and experiences as a shaman that Sanapia not only accepted him as a valued biographer but also adopted him as a son. Readers will enjoy this intimate portrait of the last surviving Comanche Eagle doctor, revealed in descriptive accounts of her ritual behavior, her attitude toward the profession, the paraphernalia she employed, and her function in Comanche society.

A fictionalized biography of the great Indigenous leader and activist who was the son of a Comanche chief and a white settler. In May 1836, a large war party of Comanche Indians attacked a small fort in Texas, abducting blond, blue-eyed Cynthia Ann Parker, who was nine years old at the time. Adopted into the tribe, for more than twenty years Cynthia Ann, renamed Naudah by her captors, lived the life of a Comanche. She eventually married and gave birth to a son. This son, named Quanah for the flower-filled valley of his birth, was destined to become one of the greatest Comanche chiefs ever to have lived. As the call for expansion reached its height during the nineteenth century and America rapidly began moving westward, the American Indians became threatened as their food supply, the huge buffalo herds that roamed the plains, was slaughtered almost to extinction. As a chief, Quanah watched as other tribes were forced to take refuge on reservations set up by the United States government, and he vowed to his people that they would never leave their land without a fight. Eventually, however, Quanah’s tribe succumbed to the overwhelming new hardships of existence on the plains, and Quanah, the last Indian chief to surrender, brought his people to the reservation . . . This is the story of the legendary Quanah Parker—part white, but thoroughly Comanche. Brave warrior, respected leader, and dedicated lobbyist in the fight for Indian rights, he remained a liaison between his people and the white man while acting to preserve the Comanche heritage on the reservation.

A biography of Quanah Parker, a spiritual and political leader of the Comanche people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The fierce bands of Comanche Indians, on the testimony of their contemporaries, both red and white, numbered some of the most splendid horsemen the world has ever produced. Often the terror of other tribes, who, on finding a Comanche footprint in the Western plains country, would turn and go in the other direction, they were indeed the Lords of the South Plains. For more than a century and a half, since they had first moved into the Southwest from the north, the Comanches raided and pillaged and repelled all efforts to encroach on their hunting grounds. They decimated the pueblo of Pecos, within thirty miles of Santa Fé. The Spanish frontier settlements of New Mexico were happy enough to let the raiding Comanches pass without hindrance to carry their terrorizing forays into Old Mexico, a thousand miles down to Durango. The Comanches fought the Texans, made off with their cattle, burned their homes, and effectively made their own lands unsafe for the white settlers. They fought and defeated at one time or another the Utes, Pawnees, Osages, Tonkawas, Apaches, and Navahos. These were "The People," the spartans of the prairies, the once mighty force of Comanches, a surprising number of whom survive today. More than twenty-five hundred live in the midst of an alien culture which as grown up about them. This book is the story of that tribe-the great traditions of the warfare, life, and institutions of another century which are today vivid memories among its elders. Despite their prolonged resistance, the Comanches, too, had to "come in." On a sultry summer day in June, 1875, a small hand of starving tribesmen straggled in to Fort Sill, near the Wichita Mountains in what is now the southwestern part of the state of Oklahoma. There they surrendered to the military authorities. So ended the reign of the Comanches on the Southwestern frontier. Their horses had been captured and destroyed; the buffalo were gone; most of their tipis had been burned. They had held out to the end, but the time had now come for them to submit to the United States government demands.