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

by S.C. Gwynne

As a boy approached puberty, life quickly became more serious. These were the high lonesome plains, after all, and his tribe lived a hard and brutal nomadic life where nothing was guaranteed. Skill in hunting was the only real guarantee of survival, and thus he was expected to perfect his skills in archery. The Comanches were known as exceptional archers, both from horseback and on foot. From fifty yards a warrior could reliably hit an object the size of a doorknob four out of five times. From ten to fifteen yards he could shoot a twenty- to thirty-inch arrow with such force that it would drive entirely through the carcass of a two-thousand-pound buffalo if it did not hit bone. A Comanche boy had to learn to make fire: in those years it was done by hand-twirling a firedrill on a soft stick that was surrounded with a gunpowder-laden rag. (In the old days, Spanish moss tinder or birds’ nests were used.) He had to learn basic wilderness skills like telling whether an observed animal was heading toward or away from water. (One example was a bird called the Dirt Dauber. If his mouth was empty, the observer knew he was going straight to water.)10