Reading Notes
This detailed book on the role of the Comanches in American History works on several levels. First, I read a lot of history and lately books about writing history (Barbara Tuchman's Practicing History and Marc Bloch's The Craft of History*) so I have been primed to appreciate how the author of Empire Moon S.C. Gwynne managed to weave the details of his scholarly research into a riveting saga.
Secondly, you cannot underestimate the blood, slaughter and greed that is an integral part of our nation's history. ( Oh, Texas, you have such a checkered past.) Because the Comanches were so fierce, brutal and had created their own tactics for fighting on the wide expanses of the Plains in 1830s, they drastically curtailed Mexico's efforts to expand north of the Rio Grande river.
And finally, as harsh and "uncivilized" as the Comanches were, their culture was partially dictated by their Plains environment (the Buffalo). Moreover Gwynne draws a parallel that they were no more brutal than the white Scotch-Irish settler's ancestors— if you compared cultural timeline of the Celtics of the 5th century BC who fought against the civilized Greeks and Romans. (Herodotus described them as "fierce warriors who fought with seemingly disregard for their own lives." ) Like the Celts, the Comanches were superb horseman and did terrible things to their enemies and captives.
When reading about the decline of Comanche nation in the 1880s, you couldn't help but feel some sadness because their demise was similar to what eventually happened to other indigenous cultures. Gwynne uses the life of their last great chief Quanah as a way to describe the Comanche's final integration.
* Notes on the Tuchman and Bloch book are buried in some reading notes, elsewhere in the blog here.
