Customer Reviews

Comanches

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An excellent book!

In this book, Mr. Fehrenbach provides a valuable service in this day and age when he describes, unflinchingly, the utter savagery employed by Indian tribes' particular brand of "warfare" - not warfare at all really but more of a rite of passage for males in the band. A rite in which the systematic rape, mutilation and gruesome torture of one's helpless captives was considered perfectly acceptable - and not limited to only white men, women and children either - other enemy Indian tribes were just as imperiled. He also pulls no punches with regard to the reciprocating treachery, hatred and savagery employed Europeans settlers. But, more important than anything that could be construed as fault-finding, he highlights the underlying cultural ethos that were at work when describing the clash of cultures that occurred between red men and white and brings home the inevitableness of this clash and the hopelessness of accommodating the Indian's way of life amid the title wave of immigration and settlement that occurred throughout the 19th century.

This book should be required reading in all our Colleges and Universities.

An outstanding work of narrative history. Fehrenbach occasionally refers to works he has cited but most often presses forward with the story uninterrupted by footnotes. A bibliography is included following the text.
This is a wide-ranging look at the Comanche spanning their first known origins and their ethnic, cultural, and environmental evolution into the ultimate horse Indians. The tribe's history is set in the context of the history of the land they occupied. First, Fehrenbach lays out the Spanish conquest of northern Mexico, and the imperial policies that governed their frontier, and delineates how those policies and practices fostered the advance of Comanches as a horse culture built on raiding and marauding. Then with the demise of the Spanish as a power, he juxtaposes the Comanche against the advancing Anglo-Texan population. Not only does this paint a complete picture of the Comanche, it provides an overview of the history of the region and great insight into the differing approaches to empire among the Spanish, French, and Anglos and the results those policies produced on the ground. Not dull stuff at all the way he tells it.
Fehrenbach's writing style is fluid and transparent, designed to tell the story not to draw undue attention to himself as a writer. He has a novelitst's sense of pace and drama that never allows the story to bog down. He also has an eye for character and detail that deftly draws together the telling elements that make his vignettes poignant and memorable. Most of all, however, he formulates deductive historical insights that pinpoint the causative factors shaping the direction of history. And all this in a text as readable as a finely crafted novel.

This book describes the history and destruction of the Commanche people in a manner that makes the book hard to put down. More importantly the story of the interactions of the Commanche people, the Spaniards, Mexicans, Texans, and Americans are portrayed in the fairest manner possible. There are no good guys, no bad guys, just people doing what they had to do to survive. Fehrenbach's insight into the Commanche ethos allows one to understand why European based cultures had to fear them, hate them, and at the same time respect them and actually feel proud that such a people existed. At the same time I have become more proud of my Texan ancestors whether they be White, Indian, or Mexican. I now understand why the Commanche people and the American or Texan peoples could not have coexisted. Tragically, one had to be exterminated.

Unsung and unrecognized, T.R. Fehrenbach is one of America's findest historians of the Southwest. Without a doubt, his book "Comanches: The History of a People," is a masterful piece of work. Wonderfully written and reseached, I learned more about the American Plains Indians'culture in the first three chapters, than I have from any other book.

Since I have taught American history for the last thirty years, it is very difficult to discover a book as well balanced and as informative as Fehrenbach's. He is a joy to read for those who understand the difference between a serious and objective work or a book which attempts to reproduce the inaccurate images brought to us by Hollywood and the national media.

This is the story of the Comanche, an intensely warlike people whose protection of home and hearth was quite fanatical. For 250 years, these Central-West Texas nomads were the preeminent force of their region, striking terror into the hearts of everyone who encountered them. Oddly, they made peace with only one group, the Hispanic population of today's New Mexico. For the uniqueness of this relationship, these Santa Fe traders subsequently become known throughout history as the "Comancheros."

From any other indigenous or imperialist group however, they simply took what they wanted. They defeated the Spanish several times in pitch battles, ignored the French and retarded their Western ambitions, tolerated the Americans while raiding the Santa Fe Trail for sport and slaughtered their hated enemies, the Texans, by the thousands. They were a people in a 300 x 400 mile enclave unto themselves, who, within their environment, were so technologically superior to everyone else that they took on and conquered all comers with efficiency and dispatch. They were a race apart, often raiding 1,000 miles at a time, deep into the heart of Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula.

While the Comanche managed to maintain their independence and even increased their territory, by the mid-nineteenth century they faced annihilation because of a wave of epidemics introduced by European settlers. Outbreaks of smallpox (1817, 1848) and cholera (1849) took a major toll on the Comanche, whose population dropped from an estimated 20,000 in mid-century to just a few thousand by the 1870s.

Efforts to move the Comanches into reservations began in the late 1860s with the Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867), which offered them churches, schools, and annuities in return for a vast tract of land totaling over 60,000 square miles. The government promised to stop the buffalo hunters, who were decimating the great herds of the Plains, provided that the Comanches, along with other Plains Indian groups, moved to a reservation totaling less than 5,000 square miles. However, the government elected not to prevent the slaughtering of the herds, which provoked the Comanche to attack a group of buffalo hunters in the Texas Panhandle in the Battle of Adobe Walls (1874). The attack was a disaster for the Comanche, and the army was called in to drive all the remaining Comanche in the area into the reservation. Within just ten years, the buffalo were on the verge of extinction, effectively ending the Comanche way of life as hunters. In 1875, the last free band of Comanches, led by famed warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.

Pay close attention to the other reviewers: They are correct. This was written in 1974 and reads like it. Don't expect today's analysis, scholarship or readability. Don't expect footnotes or even a decent bibliography. Understand that this is a narrative, i.e., part fiction, was written in another time, for another purpose and with a definite agenda. Its style is cumbersome, verbose, and opinionated. But it is good. It is the story of a North American Plains tribe that was really nothing short of remarkable. During their 250 year history, their impact was enormous. They destroyed the ancient dream of Spanish Empire in North America; shredded the Mexican frontier; blocked the French advance into the Southwest; foiled Texas' dreams of an independent empire; and delayed America's Manifest Destiny for almost 60 years.

Above all this is the story of a resolute people engaged in a brutal struggle to maintain their supremacy.

Well researched, interestingly written. I could not put this book down. Mr. Fehrenbach provides a balanced perspective many books do not.

T.R. Fehrenbach's The Comanches is a wonderful, unflinching look at a powerful yet tragic tribe of Indians. The thing that separates Fehrenbach from other history writers is his use of anthropology.He explains why these and other Indians did not evolve beyond the Stone Age. For teachers like myself it helps to know why geography and culture(not race) influence different peoples' actions.

Fehrenbach explores the Comanche from the mysterious and inauspicious beginnings in Wyoming or Montana to the final days of the Quahadi on the Staked Plains of Texas. When a few horses came into their hands the tribe found a niche in history and elbowed their way into country better suited to them. They destroyed their enemies who already occupied that land from horseback, the Fara'on and Lipan Apache were extinguished. The Jicarilla Apache became a friend to the Spanish because of the Comanche of the high plains. Penatekas harried and almost overcame the ancient Tonkawans of Central Texas.

When the Penateka raid to Linnville, Texas, ended their reign the raids continued four decades until Ranald McKenzie destroyed the Quahadi horse herd. Afoot, the Comanche was lost.

This is a book you want.

I am a Texan, so it is hard for a history of Texas to meet my expectations, without touching a tender myth. Fehrenbach has made this history a sensitive retelling of Texas history which is as readable as Michener's book, but, of course, much more factual. And he destroys the loved Texas myths with gentleness and sensitivity. A must read for any American history buff, and for many who didn't think they were. This is also an excellent book to give to someone who thinks they don't like history

This is one of Texas historian T.R. Ferenbach's greatest hits and I enjoyed it thoroughly, as much for its Texas and U.S. Army history as for the tale of the destruction of the murderous, wholly unlovable Comanches.

The book was written in 1974, so it's free of Hollywood mumbo jumbo (the modern, PC equivalent of the Cigar Store Indian), as well as the hand-wringing, multicultural, everything's-relative claptrap. By the late 1860s, with their ultimate demise plain to see, Comanche chiefs began lying about their nomadic guerrilla-warfare culture which had, for hundreds of years, been raiding, stealing, kidnapping and enslaving women and children, torturing some for pleasure, raping most, and mutilating all.

"The story of the People is a brutal story," Ferenbach writes, "and its judgments must be brutal." No one but their victims ever understood them, especially not the patronizing Quakers whom Washington put in charge of trying to pacify them. The 4th U.S. Cavalry did it best, by using their own tactics to massacre the men and take the women and children captive to the reservations. Ferenbach is rightly sensitive to the pathos of their end. But, by then, the Comanches had slain so many thousands of noncombatants, most of them white and black Texans and peasant Mexicans, that few who knew their handiwork would mourn.