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

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss the genocide of Indigenous Americans as well as instances of wartime violence.

In the fall of 1871, the United States Army drew closer to finally defeating the once-mighty Comanche nation. On October 3, 1871, the 4th Cavalry, under the command of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, was on the verge of enacting the “final solution” (2) to the Western European and American struggle against the Comanches, then under the leadership of the enigmatic Quanah Parker.

The violence between the expanding United States and the Comanche people was at its peak in 1871. Colonel Randolph Marcy, accompanied by General Tecumseh Sherman, remarked on the scarcity of settlers compared to even a decade earlier. Settlers had left the Texan frontier in droves to escape Comanche raiding parties.

Comanche success occurred amid the Industrial Revolution and at a time of great social change in post–Civil War United States. Much of this affected, in some way, the events on the western Texan frontier, specifically the region known as Comancheria (the lands of the Comanches) where buffalo hunters affected “the greatest mass destruction of warm-blooded animals in human history” (5).

Mackenzie and his troops sought out a specific group of Comanches on the aforementioned date: the Quahadi, the group from which their war chief, Quanah Parker, came.