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

coincidental. The cowboys would often linger on the reservation, sometimes for weeks, fattening thousands of their cattle on the lush grass that belonged to Indians. The contractors who supplied beef to the reservation also turned their animals out to graze on the Indian lands. None of this was legal, but there were no troops to police it. And many of the big ranchers south of the Red River, facing competition for grazing lands, now coveted the same reservation grass. The Indians’ response to the white incursions was to form what amounted to protection rackets. Quanah was the first to figure out how to make them work. Groups of armed Comanches, not exactly war parties but not terribly friendly, either, patrolled the southern and western parts