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

He was called Isa-tai, which was one of those Comanche names that delicate western sensibilities had trouble translating. Sometimes it is given as “rear end of a wolf,” which is amusing but inaccurate. Elsewhere it appears as “coyote droppings,” “coyote anus,” and “wolf shit.” But even these were euphemisms along the lines of “Buffalo Hump.” The more accurate translation would have been “wolf’s vulva,” or “coyote vagina,” both of which were unprintable until well into the twentieth century.20 He was a medicine man, a magician, and probably a con man, too, though there was no question that he believed at least some of what he was preaching. He was a Quahadi, probably around twenty-three years old, a stocky man with a large head, a broad, open face, and a bull neck. In the winter and spring of 1873–74 Isa-tai had established himself as the possessor of an electrifying sort of puha that Comanches had never seen before. He claimed miraculous healing powers and the ability to raise the dead.21 Though he was as yet untested in battle, he maintained that the white man’s bullets had no effect on him, and that he could also make medicine that would make others immune, even if they stood directly before the muzzles of the white man’s guns.