She refused to return to “civilization” and, subsequently, had to be captured and returned to her Parker family as a prisoner.īecause Gwynne traces the course of three histories and the lives of Quanah Parker and his chief adversary, Brigadier General Randall Slidell MacKenzie, and because the history of Texas is inexorably tied to the history of the United States, Gwynne’s narrative is non-linear. Her history is a saga because she never tried to escape her Comanche life.

In particular, Gwynne narrates the story of an American legend, Quanah Parker, but on a much broader measure, his eye-opening narration accurately and lyrically narrates three histories: one of the settling of the state of Texas the second of the forty-year war against and destruction of the Indian tribe called Comanche and the third, the saga more than the history of Cynthia Parker, who was kidnapped by Comanche as a nine-year-old girl, was integrated into the tribe, and birthed and raised the legendary Quanah Parker. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History is an historical narrative of heroes and legends set against the panorama of the American West, particularly the Texas frontier between the years 18.

Comanche summer moon