07-04-2011, 06:04 AM
this looks interesting~
Empire of The Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Cynthia Ann Parker, aged just nine, was abducted as her family were brutally slaughtered around her.
After her isolated Texan outpost was attacked by Comanche Indians, she was stripped from her mother and spirited away on horseback - brought up to live as one of the tribe.
For 24 years the blue-eyed captive remained with her abductors, marrying and bearing children - even forgetting her native English tongue.
But in an incredible quirk of fate, one of her sons - Quanah Parker - rose to become one the most feared Native American generals of the 1800's and the last of Comanche leader to finally surrender the tribe to a life on the reservations under U.S. authorities.
The brutal tale of abduction, bloodshed and surrender is the subject of a new book, Empire of the Summer Moon.
Author S.C. Gwynne takes up the tale of Cynthia Parker - Nautdah to her adopted Comanche family - weaving her unlikely narrative into the violent sweep of scalpings, raiding parties and bloody revenge that punctuated frontier life in the mid 1800s.
He begins the story on May 19 1836.
A Comanche raiding party surrounded the Parker ranch in frontier Texas stormed the lightly manned station - demanding a cow to sacrifice and directions to the nearest watering hole.
Suspecting a trap, the women and children fled out the back door, into cornfields, a dried river bed or open country.
As the men walked towards the saddled Comanche, unarmed and offering food, they were brutally attacked, and dismembered before their shocked family members.
Fleeing with her mother Lucy and four siblings, Cynthia was run down by the pursuing Comanche, surrounded and torn away from her mother.
Gwynne writes: 'The Indians caught them... forced Lucy to surrender two of her children, then dragged her, the two remaining children and one of the men back to the fort.'
Meanwhile, those who remained inside to face the marauding Comanche suffered the same fate as many other frontier settlers of the time - an agonizing death.
'The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward: All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Some were killed, some were tortured,' he wrote.
'Babies were invariably killed.'
The Parkers were no different - Four male family members were pinned to the ground with spears and forcibly scalped.
Others who tried to run were savagely attacked: 'Elder John Parker, his wife Sallie and her daughter Elizabeth Kellog ...were surrounded and stripped of all their clothing.
'The Indians went to work on them, attacking the old man with tomahawks...forcing Granny Parker to watch what they did to him.
'They scalped him, cut off his genitals and killed him.'
The violence was typical of that experienced in wild west America.
In unrelated episode, Gwynne describes a similar attack on another settler family.
After seizing a nine-month pregnant woman, the Comanche: 'Dragged her back to a point about two hundred yards from the cabin.
'There she was gang raped. When they were finished , they shot several arrows into her.
'They scalped her alive by making deep cuts below her ears and, in effect, peeling the top of her head entirely off. She lived for four days'
But despite her violent introduction to the tribe, Cynthia - now known as Nautdah or 'found one' - eventually married a Comanche leader Peta Nocona.
Over the next 24 years she became a fully integrated member of the tribe giving birth to three children including the infamous Quanah.
'The captive women were gang raped. Some were killed, some were tortured. Babies were invariably killed'
As the skirmishes between Texas Rangers and native Americans became more brutal, Washington took a firmer line on the raiding tribes, sending troops in ever greater numbers to hunt down the elusive master horsemen of the plains.
It was in one of these raids in 1860 that Cynthia,- barely recognizable as a white woman except for her blue eyes - was 're-captured'.
In fact, so integrated was Cynthia, that the only English words she could speak were: 'Me Cincee Ann'.
Despite her 'rescue', Cynthia did not feel at home with her American relatives and tried to escape several times.
By 1836 the Comanche empire numbered some 30-40,000 people.
A vast military machine, they had crushed around 20 other tribes in their relentless expansion with one American commander labelling their soldiers 'The finest light cavalry in the world'.
Highly skilled horsemen, individual soldiers could fire 20 arrows in the time it took one American soldier to load and fire a single shot.
This once great military power eventually succumbed to the ravages of disease, relentless settler expansion and more frequent attacks by government troops.
Heartbroken at never again seeing her two sons - who escaped in the 1860 raid - she grew more introvert and ill.
When her young daughter died at the age of five her health rapidly declined, and she died lonely and alone in 1870 aged 43.
Her son Quanah however went on to lead a Comanche tribe before he was even 20.
Unusually tall and athletic for the usually diminutive Comanche, Quanah sealed his reputation in a number of daring raids .
His greatest victory came in 1871 when he outwitted a government force of 600 soldiers, successfully attacking their camp at night while leading an entire village to safety.
But by the mid 1870s life was becoming impossible for the nomadic Comanche, and on June 2, 1875 Quanah led his village into captivity, the last Comanche commander to do so.
In his remaining years Quanah enjoyed a certain celebrity and became a successful cattle rancher as the remains of the once proud Comanche empire collapsed around him.
Quanah Parker
Cynthia Ann Parker
Empire of The Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Cynthia Ann Parker, aged just nine, was abducted as her family were brutally slaughtered around her.
After her isolated Texan outpost was attacked by Comanche Indians, she was stripped from her mother and spirited away on horseback - brought up to live as one of the tribe.
For 24 years the blue-eyed captive remained with her abductors, marrying and bearing children - even forgetting her native English tongue.
But in an incredible quirk of fate, one of her sons - Quanah Parker - rose to become one the most feared Native American generals of the 1800's and the last of Comanche leader to finally surrender the tribe to a life on the reservations under U.S. authorities.
The brutal tale of abduction, bloodshed and surrender is the subject of a new book, Empire of the Summer Moon.
Author S.C. Gwynne takes up the tale of Cynthia Parker - Nautdah to her adopted Comanche family - weaving her unlikely narrative into the violent sweep of scalpings, raiding parties and bloody revenge that punctuated frontier life in the mid 1800s.
He begins the story on May 19 1836.
A Comanche raiding party surrounded the Parker ranch in frontier Texas stormed the lightly manned station - demanding a cow to sacrifice and directions to the nearest watering hole.
Suspecting a trap, the women and children fled out the back door, into cornfields, a dried river bed or open country.
As the men walked towards the saddled Comanche, unarmed and offering food, they were brutally attacked, and dismembered before their shocked family members.
Fleeing with her mother Lucy and four siblings, Cynthia was run down by the pursuing Comanche, surrounded and torn away from her mother.
Gwynne writes: 'The Indians caught them... forced Lucy to surrender two of her children, then dragged her, the two remaining children and one of the men back to the fort.'
Meanwhile, those who remained inside to face the marauding Comanche suffered the same fate as many other frontier settlers of the time - an agonizing death.
'The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward: All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Some were killed, some were tortured,' he wrote.
'Babies were invariably killed.'
The Parkers were no different - Four male family members were pinned to the ground with spears and forcibly scalped.
Others who tried to run were savagely attacked: 'Elder John Parker, his wife Sallie and her daughter Elizabeth Kellog ...were surrounded and stripped of all their clothing.
'The Indians went to work on them, attacking the old man with tomahawks...forcing Granny Parker to watch what they did to him.
'They scalped him, cut off his genitals and killed him.'
The violence was typical of that experienced in wild west America.
In unrelated episode, Gwynne describes a similar attack on another settler family.
After seizing a nine-month pregnant woman, the Comanche: 'Dragged her back to a point about two hundred yards from the cabin.
'There she was gang raped. When they were finished , they shot several arrows into her.
'They scalped her alive by making deep cuts below her ears and, in effect, peeling the top of her head entirely off. She lived for four days'
But despite her violent introduction to the tribe, Cynthia - now known as Nautdah or 'found one' - eventually married a Comanche leader Peta Nocona.
Over the next 24 years she became a fully integrated member of the tribe giving birth to three children including the infamous Quanah.
'The captive women were gang raped. Some were killed, some were tortured. Babies were invariably killed'
As the skirmishes between Texas Rangers and native Americans became more brutal, Washington took a firmer line on the raiding tribes, sending troops in ever greater numbers to hunt down the elusive master horsemen of the plains.
It was in one of these raids in 1860 that Cynthia,- barely recognizable as a white woman except for her blue eyes - was 're-captured'.
In fact, so integrated was Cynthia, that the only English words she could speak were: 'Me Cincee Ann'.
Despite her 'rescue', Cynthia did not feel at home with her American relatives and tried to escape several times.
By 1836 the Comanche empire numbered some 30-40,000 people.
A vast military machine, they had crushed around 20 other tribes in their relentless expansion with one American commander labelling their soldiers 'The finest light cavalry in the world'.
Highly skilled horsemen, individual soldiers could fire 20 arrows in the time it took one American soldier to load and fire a single shot.
This once great military power eventually succumbed to the ravages of disease, relentless settler expansion and more frequent attacks by government troops.
Heartbroken at never again seeing her two sons - who escaped in the 1860 raid - she grew more introvert and ill.
When her young daughter died at the age of five her health rapidly declined, and she died lonely and alone in 1870 aged 43.
Her son Quanah however went on to lead a Comanche tribe before he was even 20.
Unusually tall and athletic for the usually diminutive Comanche, Quanah sealed his reputation in a number of daring raids .
His greatest victory came in 1871 when he outwitted a government force of 600 soldiers, successfully attacking their camp at night while leading an entire village to safety.
But by the mid 1870s life was becoming impossible for the nomadic Comanche, and on June 2, 1875 Quanah led his village into captivity, the last Comanche commander to do so.
In his remaining years Quanah enjoyed a certain celebrity and became a successful cattle rancher as the remains of the once proud Comanche empire collapsed around him.
Quanah Parker
Cynthia Ann Parker