Redemption

September 7, 2020

How did a ferocious killer transform himself into a kind, generous, beloved community leader?

This was the question I found myself asking in the last couple weeks as I read Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, by S.C. Gwynne.

Like most Americans, I had heard of the Comanches, a tough Plains Indian tribe that dominated much of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and northern Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries. Unlike most Americans, I had also heard of Quanah Parker, the son of a captive white mother and her Comanche warrior husband. What I did not know until I read the book was how vicious and barbaric the Comanches were in their dealings with other Indian tribes and with the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans.

Growing up with a romanticized image of the noble Red Man, I idealized my childhood paragons Cochise of the Chiricahua Apaches and Crazy Horse of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. Yes, I knew that they were violent and even bloodthirsty, but I justified their aggressiveness as a necessary trait in the defense of their people and lands against invading Americans. However, even I was shocked recently as I read about the sadistic practices of the Comanches and their Indian enemies. Not only did they routinely slaughter and enslave one another, but they took great pleasure in torturing, mutilating, dismembering, and gang raping their Indian and white opponents. And as a feared Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker was no exception to such mayhem.

As author S.C. Gwynne said in a passing reference to my Lakota champion, “Crazy Horse was undoubtedly heroic in battle and remarkably charitable in life. But as an Oglala Sioux he was also a raider, and raiding meant certain very specific things, including the abuse of captives. His great popularity – a giant stone image of him is being carved from a mountain in South Dakota – may have a great deal to do with the fact that very little is known about his early life. He is free to be the hero we want him to be.”

Quanah was a cruel slayer of other Indians, but he especially hated white men because they had killed his father and recaptured his mother. Yet once he decided that it was in the interest of his people to surrender rather than face extermination, this fierce, vengeful butcher changed his attitude overnight. He realized that, for better or worse, the future of the Comanches was in becoming Americans, and so he chose to take advantage of any opportunities that he could envision. His life on the reservation was never easy – he had political, financial, and marital problems – but he consciously chose to maintain a positive attitude no matter what injustices he encountered. He eventually became wealthy, and developed a friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt, even hosting Roosevelt at his large reservation home.

But Quanah’s first priority was always taking care of his people. He gradually gave away all his wealth to his fellow Comanches, in the form of food, cattle, and horses, and as a result he died a poor man.

What was the secret to Quanah Parker’s reinvention of himself from Comanche cutthroat to American benefactor? According to S.C. Gwynne, “What Quanah had that the rest of his tribe in the later years did not was that most American of human traits: boundless optimism. Quanah never looked back, an astonishing feat of will for someone who had lived in such untrammeled freedom on the open plains, and who had endured such a shattering transformation. In hard times he looked resolutely forward to something better.”

Not a bad lesson for those of us living in hard times today.