Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (59 page)
Authors: S. C. Gwynne
Tags: #State & Local, #Kings and Rulers, #Native American, #Social Science, #Native American Studies, #Native Americans, #West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), #Wars, #Frontier and Pioneer Life, #General, #United States, #Ethnic Studies, #19th Century, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #Biography & Autobiography, #Comanche Indians, #West (U.S.), #Discrimination & Race Relations, #Biography, #History
9
. David La Vere,
Contrary Neighbors,
p. 122.
10
. Plummer, p. 97.
11
. Ibid., p. 98.
12
. Ibid., p. 107.
13
. Ibid., p. 108.
14
. Herman Lehmann,
Nine Years Among the Comanches, 1870–1879,
p. 155.
15
. The scant historical information about Crazy Horse is discussed in some detail in Larry McMurtry’s brief but excellent study
Crazy Horse
.
16
. See chapter 7 for a fuller explanation of this important phenomenon.
17
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
pp. 77ff.
18
. Sharon Block,
Rape and Sexual Power in Early America,
pp. 222ff.
19
. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
The Comanches,
p. 194.
20
. Ibid.
21
. Ramon Jimanez,
Caesar Against the Celts,
pp. 27ff.
22
. Ibid., p. 36.
23
. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge,
Our Wild Indians,
p. 59.
24
. Ibid.
25
. Ibid.
26
. Scott Zesch,
Captured,
p 127.
27
. John S. Ford,
Rip Ford’s Texas,
p. 231.
28
. Clinton Smith, op. cit., pp. 69ff.
29
. Zesch, p. 79.
30
. Clinton Smith, p. 69.
31
. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 22.
32
. Ibid., p. 25.
33
. The only exception was when members of the Penateka band joined U.S. Army forces as scouts during the final campaign against the Quahadis in the Texas Panhandle. They were never combatants.
34
. W. S. Nye,
Carbine and Lance, the Story of Old Fort Sill,
p. 7.
35
. Rupert N. Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement,
p. 10.
36
. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 23.
37
. Plummer, p. 113.
Five
THE WOLF’S HOWL
1
. T. R. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 160.
2
. Alfred Thomas, ed.,
Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, from the Original Documents,
p. 58: “As early as 1706 Iribarri reported harrowing details of the inter-tribal conflict that indicated the collapse of Apache civilization northeast of the province.”
3
. Ibid., p. 58.
4
. Herbert E. Bolton, ed.,
Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780,
vol. 1, p. 34.
5
. David La Vere,
Contrary Neighbors,
p. 10.
6
. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
The Comanches,
p. 12.
7
. Hubert H. Bancroft,
History of Arizona and New Mexico
(1889), p. 239.
8
. References to this battle appear in several places. First, in a report [Ynforme] dated September 30, 1784, by then Spanish governor of Texas Domingo Cabello y Robles. Second, in Herbert Bolton’s 1914 compilation of the writings of noted eighteenth-century Indian agent Athanase de Mézières. p. 25.
9
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 138.
10
. Richard I. Dodge,
Plains of the Great West,
p. 414. This account came from Pedro Espinosa, a “Mexican Comanche” warrior.
11
. La Vere, pp. 30–31.
12
. Almost all of what we know about Comanche-Spanish relations comes from official Spanish documents from the era. Two sources are exceptionally thorough: the reports filed by Don Juan Bautista de Anza, translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas in
Forgotten Frontiers,
and the intelligent and insightful reports of Spanish Indian agent Athanase de Mézières, compiled in 1914 by Herbert Bolton in
Athanase de Mézières and the Lousiana-Texas Frontier 1768–1780
. Also helpful and interesting is Ralph Twitchell’s edited multivolume compilation
Spanish Archives of New Mexico.
13
. Pedro de Rivera Villalón,
Diario y derrotero de lo camionado, visto y observado en la visita que lo hizo a los presidios de la Nueva Espana septentrional.
Edited by Vito Allesio Robles, Mexico (D.F., Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, 1946), pp. 78–79 (see Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
p. 67).
14
. Rupert N. Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement,
p. 23.
15
. Thomas, p. 58.
16
. Ibid., p. 59.
17
. Charles Wilson Hackett, ed.,
Pichardo’s Treatise on the the Limitations of Texas and Louisiana
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1946), vol. 3, p. 323.
18
. An excellent account of Serna’s successful 1716 expedition against the Comanches appears in Ralph Twitchell,
Spanish Archives of New Mexico,
vol. 2, p. 301.
19
. Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
pp. 66ff.
20
. James T. DeShields,
Border Wars of Texas,
p. 16.
21
. William Edward Dunn, “The Apache Mission on the San Saba River; Its Founding and Failure,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
17 (1914): 380–81.
22
. Ibid., p. 382.
23
. Frank Dobie offers an interesting look at the rumors of San Saba gold in his book
Coronado’s Children.
24
. Dunn, p. 387.
25
. Ibid., p. 389.
26
. Ibid., p. 381.
27
. Parrilla to the viceroy,
Historia
95 (June 30, 1757), p. 146.
28
. Fathers Banos and Ximenes to the
Guardian,
July 5, 1757, cited in Dunn, p. 401.
29
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 201.
30
. Thomas,
Forgotten Frontiers,
p. 66.
31
. Ibid.
32
. By far the best description of this legendary campaign comes from Anza himself, who was both articulate and thorough in his reports to Mexico City. These original documents have been translated and compiled by Alfred Thomas, editor of
Forgotten Frontiers,
see pages 119–42. The Anza writings represent one of the great primary sources of historical material on the relations between the Spanish and the Comanches. Most of my account is taken from these reports.
33
. Anza’s diary, in Thomas,
Forgotten Frontiers,
p. 136.
34
. This estimate came from Sam Houston’s commissioner of Indian affairs George V. Bonnell in an article published in 1838 in the
Houston Telegraph and Texas Register
. He apparently got the number from the Comanches, which would make it doubtful indeed. Still, it stands as the only estimate from the era, and later numbers, following the cholera and smallpox epidemics, would seem to bear out a number in that range.
Six
BLOOD AND SMOKE
1
. It must be noted that General Custer, too, wrote poetry, though Lamar’s doggerel was better than Custer’s doggerel.
2
. Noah Smithwick,
Evolution of a State,
p. 138.
3
. James Parker,
Narrative of the Perilous Adventures,
p. 14.
4
. Robert M. Utley,
Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers,
p. 23.
5
. Jo Ella Powell Exley,
Frontier Blood,
p. 106 (citing congressional records).
6
. Utley, p. 24.
7
. “Messages of the President, Submitted to both Houses,” December 21, 1838, Lamar Papers, Doc., 948,
p. 11.
8
. T. R. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 310.
9
. David La Vere,
Contrary Neighbors,
p. 55.
10
. Ibid., p. 310.
11
. Donaly E. Brice,
The Great Comanche Raid,
pp. 17–18.
12
. La Vere, p. 64.
13
. Ibid., p. 20.
14
. Mike Cox,
The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900,
p. 43.
15
. Other accounts give different numbers, as usual. John Henry Brown writes that there were fifty-five whites, forty-two Lipans, and twelve Tonkawas. Since Smithwick was actually there, his would seem to be the more credible account.
16
. Smithwick, p. 135.
17
. Ibid.
18
. Cox, p. 69.
19
. Ibid.
20
. J. W. Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
p. 145.
21
. John Henry Brown,
Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas,
p. 75.
22
. Ibid. See contemporary accounts of this whole episode in John Holmes Jenkins, ed.,
Recollections of Early Texas: Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins,
and in Noah Smithwick’s
Evolution of a State.
Colonel John Moore’s report to his superiors concerning the engagement is contained in the
Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas,
vol. 3, pp. 108ff.
23
. Cox, p. 75; details on the location of the wound from Charles A. Gulick, Jr., ed.,
The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar,
vol. 4, p. 232.
24
. Shelby Foote,
The Civil War,
vol. 1,
pp. 336ff.
25
. Dorman Winfrey and James M. Day, eds.,
The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest,
vol. 1, p. 105.
26
. Mary Maverick,
Memoirs of Mary Maverick,
p. 31.
27
. Ibid.
28
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 326.
29
. Ibid.
30
. See Smithwick’s account of his three months with Spirit Talker in
Evolution of a State,
pp. 107ff.
31
. Ibid., p. 134.
32
. William Preston Johnston,
Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston,
p. 117.
33
. Maverick, p. 35.
34
. Brice, p. 24.
35
. Maverick, p. 32.
36
. Fehrenbach,
The Comanches,
p. 328.
37
. Maverick, p. 36.
38
. This account was given in a report from Captain George Howard to Colonel Fisher dated April 6, 1840; it is also mentioned in the memoirs of ranger John Salmon “Rip” Ford.
39
. Rupert N. Richardson,
The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement,
p. 51.
40
. Ibid.; see also Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz,
Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches
(El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1989), p. 18.
41
. Thomas Kavanaugh,
The Comanches,
p. 264.
42
. Ibid.
Seven
DREAM VISIONS AND APOCALYPSE
1
. David La Vere,
Contrary Neighbors,
p. 36.
2
. Scott Zesch,
The Captured,
p. 34.
3
.
Houston Telegraph and Texas Register,
May 30, 1838.
4
. La Vere, p. 28.
5
. Jodye Lynne Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz,
Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches
p. 5.
