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

tell what objection they have to it, unless they have not got sense. They are kind of old fogy, on the wild road yet, unless they have not got brains enough to sabe [sic] the advantage there is in it.” His rivals—Hears the Sunrise, Isa-tai, Lone Wolf, White Wolf, and many Kiowas—meanwhile, denounced Quanah as “bought by the cattlemen.” They were at least partly right. Quanah had been put on the payroll at $35 a month by one of the leading cattle outfits. The cattlemen, who were rabid advocates of the leasing of Indian lands, saw him as their spokesman, a job he performed very well because he believed his tribe’s interests were the same as theirs. The white ranchers also very likely contributed to Quanah’s own growing herd of cattle, and paid for his trips to Washington to counterbalance the lobbying done in the nation’s capital by Hears the Sunrise and the antileasers, who repeatedly demanded that Quanah be stripped of his authority as a tribal leader.23