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

Before that could happen, the Indians had to be found. Even though they were traveling as entire communities, in such a large area the task was still extremely difficult, as Quanah had so brilliantly demonstrated at Blanco Canyon three years before. The five columns stayed in the field for four to five months, crossing and recrossing the various forks of the Red, climbing and descending the caprock, marching and countermarching and following a maddeningly desultory set of trails left by many independent bands of Indians. The soldiers’ mad sorties here and there call to mind the Keystone Kops: much frantic pursuit with little to show for it. The Indians may not have fully understood the nature of the campaign against them, but they absolutely understood that they could not beat any of the columns in open battle. So they avoided them, shadowed them; attacked only when they found a small, detached party; or came at night to stampede horses.