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

On its face, Quanah’s arrangement with the stockmen might seem like simple corruption. But it could only be seen that way against standards that did not exist on the frontier. Quanah was merely playing the game the way everyone else did. Almost everyone who was a party to leasing talks had a substantial conflict of interest. Isa-tai, who opposed leasing, was actually running his own protection racket for two thousand head of cattle that grazed continuously on Indian land, as was Permansu, the nephew of the famous Comanche chief Ten Bears.24 The Indian agent, the agency clerk, and other agency personnel all had received payments from cattlemen or had vested interests in the outcome. (The agent was eventually fired for his inside dealing.) Four other Comanches were also on the stockmen’s payroll, as were several “squaw men” (white men who had married Indian women) on the reservation. Bribes were being paid all around. This was the world in which Quanah was learning to operate: