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

Quanah also had a curious and noteworthy friendship with Teddy Roosevelt. In March 1905 he rode in an open car in Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in buckskins and warbonnet, accompanied by Geronimo, two Sioux chiefs, and a Blackfeet chief. (One of the people who witnessed that event was Robert G. Carter, the officer who had been ambushed by Quanah at Blanco Canyon and who still hated Quanah bitterly and did not understand why someone who had killed so many whites could march in such a parade.)8 The two men met at a party Roosevelt hosted for the chiefs. A month later, Roosevelt traveled west on a special train to participate in a much-publicized “wolf hunt” on lands belonging to the Comanches, Apaches, and Kiowas in southwestern Oklahoma. His principal hosts were leading cattlemen Burk Burnett and Daniel Waggoner, and the Comanche chief Quanah Parker. This wasn’t just fun and recreation: The 400,000-acre Big Pasture where the hunt took place was one of the most hotly contested pieces of land in the West. By virtue of the revised Jerome Agreement, the Indians held title to it and leased it to the likes of Burnett and Waggoner. But a large group of land-hungry whites, supported by Texas congressman James H. Stephens, wanted the government to buy the land and open it for development. When Roosevelt’s train arrived at Frederick, Oklahoma, he was met by a crowd of three thousand and then escorted by a mounted honor guard, which included Quanah, to a speaker’s stand in the middle o...