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

The Comanches and Kiowas were to share a 2.9-million-acre reservation in what is now southwestern Oklahoma, north and east of the Red River and its north fork, south of the Washita, and west of the 98th meridian. This was actually very good land, huntable and arable and with decent water sources, and it was in traditional Comanche territory and included Medicine Bluffs and other sacred sites. But it was a tiny fraction of Comancheria, which at its peak held nearly 200 million acres. Nor did it include by far the richest of the old hunting grounds, the Texas bison plains. The Cheyennes and Arapahos, meanwhile—only their southern bands—agreed to live on a reservation immediately to the north of the Comanche reservation. Seen from the distance of a century and a half, the Medicine Lodge treaty can seem like a cynical document. But it did not at the time appear that way to lawmakers in the East, or to the members of the peace commission who signed it. Their efforts had inspired great hope that this would offer a final solution to the Indian problem on the southern plains. This belief was held despite the Indians’ stern protestations and the deep skepticism of the army in the West. After all, the eastern Indians had made the transition to farming life. The civilized tribes, after the horrendous attrition of the Trail of Tears, had managed to change. So could the Plains Indians. To many people the treaty seemed a fair and reasonable solution to an old and intractable problem. Th...