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

Primitive warriors. Blameless victims. If either descriptions match your idea of Native American history, then this book may not be for you (or maybe it is). Native American history is as complex as it is rich. Empire of the Summer Moon is a fascinating addition to the complicated story of indigenous America’s interaction with white settlers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Mentions of Native history in the history classes of my grandparents generation tended to focus on the stereotype of the “noble savage”, tribal members being on one hand mystical and on the other brutalistic. Much recent discussion of Native history focuses on the victim narrative where Native Americans were slaughtered and subjugated at the hands of ignorant Europeans looking to conquer, and either eliminate or assimilate all those who stood in the way. S.C. Gwynne bridges the gap between these two narratives, not shying away from both the clear wrongdoings of American settlers while also taking time to describe in gruesome detail the violent actions of plains indians tribes. One could argue that Gwynne spends more time (possibly unintentionally) throughout this book focusing on countering the narrative of the “helpless victim” than anything else, but some will certainly quibble with the way in which he did it. Life on the Great Plains in the 1800s was, to engage in the philosophical cliche, “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 

The subtitle to Empire of the Summer Moon (Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history) gives the reader a quick summary of the book’s content and clues the reader in on the author’s seeming admiration for the Comanche Tribe. Gwynne spends the book detailing a relatively short period of time in Comanche history, amounting to a few decades, to such a granular level that the reader at times questions how much could actually be known of a history that occurred on the fringes of modern civilization, often lacking the technology or practices that cements historical events for future academics. The book is technically about a young Comanche leader named Quanah Parker, and his actions to violently resist reservation life until every option other than death had been exhausted. However, this book is far from a biography of Parker. Many different lessons can be learned from the hundreds of vignettes that comprise Gwynne’s narrative. Upon reading this book, one will learn about the structure (and misconceptions) about Native American tribes, the short but important period of tribal history alongside the horse, settler life on the fringes of the United States, and the technological battle that was the “Indian Wars”. These are all valuable insights to glean from a “popular history” book and were rather unexpected. 

The casual reader will be shocked, and maybe intrigued, by the descriptions of violence that permeate the book. There is no ignoring this aspect of the era’s history, and as Gwynne points out frequently, the Comanches were a particularly violent tribe, priding themselves on their war waging prowess. Their actions, as described, are nothing short of barbaric. Reading these same descriptions attached to some of the great villains of history (the Mongols, Nazi Germany, etc.), one could more easily wrap their head around these tactics. This is where Gwynne complicates the “helpless victim” narrative that is often the thrust of Native American history today. I find Native American history fascinating, and am horrified by the thought of my country being founded upon the genocide of another group of people. I firmly believe that the term genocide is the most accurate way to describe the actions of colonists and eventually the United Sates government towards tribes. However, glossing over the true nature of Comanche culture and the ways in which they attempted to crush their enemies would do a disservice to the study of them as a people. This is who they were, warts and all, and Gwynne does an excellent job of making this abundantly clear to the readers. I do find reason at times to quarrel with the way in which he goes about this. Gwynne at one point appears to imply that civilizations, like the Comanches, who never engaged in a sedentary/agricultural existence tend to be more war-like and primitive. The assertion is not adequately supported and I believe makes his argument feel more stereotypical than anything, taking away from his incredible scholarship on display. I do not believe this book satisfies anyone in reaffirming their preconceived notions about a particular group of people, which enhances its educational value. There are no obvious “good” or “bad” guys throughout, instead it is a story of when two cultures clashed over land, status, and pride, nevermind the preceding history of subjugation tribes had faced at the hands of the United States government. The book honestly has no good guys or bad guys, with both sides holding the designations alternatively throughout the book. As I often like to encourage my students to think about history, two conflicting ideas can be true at once.  

Questions this book made me think about… 

1. Does a lack of superior technology inherently make one culture less advanced? 

2. How does one grapple with facts that “counter the narrative” of a people’s history? 

3. What roles does geography play in a culture’s history?