54 pages 1 hour read

S.C. Gwynne

Empire of the Summer Moon

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010

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Themes

The Comanches, the Most Powerful Native American Tribe in American History

This statement is found in the title of the work, and it is a bold statement. The Comanches were indeed a powerful tribe. They migrated from the cold regions of Wyoming into the wide-open and slightly warmer expanse of the Great Plains. They were innovative warriors and became masters of horses, and thus mounted warfare. They raided other tribes as they carved out a new area of control, displacing other powerful groups like the Apaches, with whom they carried out a long and bitter rivalry. However, they overcame the Apaches and became strong enough to be meddlesome to the Spanish. At times the book makes it seem that the Spanish had little competition or other worries other than the Comanches, but in fact the Spanish possessed a wide empire. While the Comanches were a force to be reckoned with, the Spanish also had Apaches and Navajo on their borders.

The Comanches possessed a large area of control known as Comancheria. It expanded over large parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. However, the lands of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, which is the preferred term and autonym for the tribe) at its height of power was larger than Comancheria. Furthermore, the Iroquois were also the predominant tribe in the northeastern regions of the United States, which meant that in terms of territory, trade, and war, the Iroquois were just as formidable as the Comanches.