Empire of the Summer Moon

The book came out a couple years ago and is now available in paperback.  It tells the story of the Comanche "empire" and Quanah Parker's role in saving what was left of it.  I came across it when I was looking for titles on the Comanche.  The broad network of tribes seemed more like an amalgam than an empire or nation.  Reminds me of the Seminole in Florida, who like the Comanche were hard to pin down and took decades to finally subdue.  They too had no single cultural identity, but absorbed roaming tribes that had broken off from other Southeast tribes and were seeking refuge from the intrusion of settlers.

I also noted Dee Brown's book on The American West, where he looks at the different Indian nations, including the Comanche, which comprised the American Plains.  One of the things I found amusing about Frankel, was he noting that the Comanche had an egocentric view of themselves by calling themselves "the people."  Actually, most tribes consider themselves "the people," including the Navajo who call themselves Dineh.  Navajo was a term given to them by the Spanish, just as Sioux was a term given to these Plains Indians by the French.  They all derive from the earlier Athabascans, who drifted down from the high plains of Canada in the 16th century, so were relatively new to the region.  They don't have a long settled history like the Pueblo Indians.  Taos Pueblo has been continuously occupied for a millennium.

I picked up a copy of 1491 after enjoying Charles Mann's 1493.  Pre-Columbian America has always been of great fascination to me I proudly hung a National Geographic map of Indians of North America (1972) on my wall for several years.