"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.
Where Empire of the Summer Moon shines in his description of Early Texas society as often being an exceedingly harsh place, hence the death by exposure of that former Comanche captive girl in the East Texas woods while hiding with her relatives from another family they were feuding with.
Another area where it shines is following the later political careers of Quanah Parker and his rival Isa-Tai in tribal elections.
It does stumble right off the bat, the opening paragraphs where he describes the remnants of the infamous cannibal Tonkawas, then scouting for Ranald MacKenzie, as “always losing”.
The Tonkawas, never very many, had been living within raiding distance of the far more numerous Comanches for at least 35 years, and had been killing and eating Comanches for all that time.
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.
1860, when Texas Ranger Captain John SalmOn Ford led 100 Texans against Buffalo Hump’s Comanches in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma, he also recruited 100 Tonkawas who he referred to as superior men (skills, not culinary habits) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the West.
It was a Tonkawa scout who dismounted, took careful aim, and struck down the famous Comanche Iron Jacket in his coat of Spanish mail, using a .54 cal Mississippi rifle to do the deed.
1874, Red River War, the Tonkawas were reduced to a mere handful, but true to form, were implacably leading the US Cavalry down on those Comanches still out.
By that time, most Comanches were ranching in Oklahoma (which Summer Moon ignores). The radical traditionalist fringe, including Quanah Parker, actually held for the first time a Northern Plains style sun dance in an effort to fortify their spiritual mojo.
The hundred or so young men who participated, hyped up and bulletproof, decided to go against the Buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. Quanah Parker himself had wanted to go against the Tonkawas.
So the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, actually a skirmish, happened. I forget if Summer Moon mentions the fact that those young Comanche men at Adobe Walls subsequently fanned out and wrought havoc.
And EVERYONE seems to forget the gentle German Botanist/Doctor, JJ Sturm, well known to and trusted by the Comanches, who rode out alone after the Palo Duro Canyon Fight, to seek out and bring in the fugitive Comanches, including Quanah Parker.
