LASALLE COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL

A.P.UNITED STATE HISTORY SUMMER READING 2013

SOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT

BOOK:Empire of the Summer Moon:Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche’s, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

byS.G. GwynneISBN: 13: 978-1416591061

Kindle Availability: $10.38

OBJECTIVE:Students will read Empire of the Summer Moon by S.G. Gwynne tobegin to familiarize themselves with the complex issue of Native Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students will analyze the rise of the Comanche in the history of Texas as well as the United States, by looking at the culture of the Plains to show the essential conflict between the white and Indian culture. The student will look at the brutal conflict between the Comanche’s and other Indian tribes as well as the white men. The student will also get a better understanding of geographic, political, and military forces that allowed the Comanche’s to dominate the Texas plains. The students will look at the logic of Manifest Destiny to both the Comanche’s and the American to show the inevitability of the collision of both worlds. The students will also look closely at the “final solution” to the Indian problem as it unfolded in the post-civil war era. The book will also take a closer look at the use of technology to the military that allowed white America to advance westward even in the face of Indian resistance. Finally the student will evaluate the treaty system as it existed between the United States federal government and the various Indian tribes to determine if justice of their application was given to the American Indians.

Summer reading/writing assignment based on Empire of the Summer Moon

It is advised that you refer the study guide provided to assist you in reading the novel. You have the choice of answering any one of the following three questions.

You must arrive on the first day of class with a concise and organized five (5) paragraph (More or less) essay in response to one the following questions. You must use direct quotes, specific examples, and page citations from the novel.

Question # 1

Compare and contrast the development of the Comanche Indian identity to that of the Anglo Population immigrating to Western Texas during the 19th century. Be sure to comment on the plight of Cynthia Ann Parker and her life in the crosshairs of both cultures.

Question # 2

F. Scott Fitzgerald once suggested that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. Quanah Parker’s life serves as an exception to that rule as it was completely changed after the final capture of his Comanche band in June 1875. This end to the wild life of the Comanche’s was merely the beginning of something very new and very different.

He would spend the rest of his life remaking and reinventing himself as a prosperous, tax-paying citizen of the United States of America who dressed in wool suits and Stetson hats, attended school board meetings and hosted dinner parties with the President of the United States….all the while looking out for the Comanche Nation as a father.

The notion that a late Stone Age barbarian would move into the mainstream of industrial American culture was just short of ridiculous. A half-breed Comanche warrior of jaw-dropping aggressiveness, Parker was to become a bourgeois statesman, a prosperous burgher, a religious leader and businessman who played the game of capitalism as well as anyone in Texas. Quanah never looked back.

How did this happen?

Identify 3 personal characteristics and 3 specific actions which allowed Quanah Parker to transform himself from a wild warrior and become the most successful and influential Native American of the late 19th century.

Question #3

The defeat of the Spanish at the hands of the Comanche’s ‘changed the history of the West and the fate of North America forever.

The year 1836 was the most ‘tumultuous and transformative’ year in the history of Texas.

The date October 3rd, 1871 marked the ‘beginning of the ‘final solution’ for American Indians.

Explain and connect these 3 watersheds in Texas and American History. How they all are related to the rise and fall of the Comanche’s – the most powerful Indian tribe in American History.

The following is your READING GUIDE to the book Empire of the Summer Moon.

EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON

Chapter OneA New Kind of War

  1. October 3, 1871 marked the ‘beginning of the end of the Indian Wars in American History 250 years of bloody combat a ‘final solution’ had begun. Explain the meaning of this ‘final solution’?
  1. Locate and describe the geography of Coronado’s Llano Estacado. In what way was it the ‘edge of the universe for white men?
  1. Why were US troops going into this territory, populated exclusively by the most hostile Indians on the American Continent? Who was their leader? In what way was he President Grant’s ‘agent of destruction’? Why did he become an ‘agent of retribution’?
  1. Describe the ‘hostiles’ of the Great Plains. Who were the Comanche’s? What was ‘special’ about them?
  1. “If the Indian marauders are not punished, the whole country seems in a fair way of becoming totally depopulated.” In what way were the Comanche’s ‘rolling backcivilization’ both American and Spanish?
  1. What was the importance of the Salt Creek Massacre? What did it demonstrate about the methods and determination of the Comanche’s?
  1. ‘Hundreds of {North American} tribes had either perished from the earth or had been driven west. Trace some of these examples. How was the history of the Comanche’s different?
  1. Describe the extent of ‘greatest mass destruction of warm blooded animals in human history’ as it relates to the American buffalo.
  1. Describe the band of Comanche’s known as the “Quahadis’. What made them unique among the other hostile Plains Indians? In what way was their land ‘like a bad hallucination’ to Europeans?
  1. Describe the character and personal history of the young war chief of the Quahadis named Quanah.
  2. Who was Cynthia Ann Parker?
  1. What is the ‘Battle of Blanco Canyon’? How did it start?
  1. Describe the meaning of the title of this chapter.

Chapter TwoA Lethal Paradise

  1. Why is the year 1836 the ‘tumultuous and transformative’ year in the history of Texas? Trace the birth of the sovereign nation called the Republic of Texas.
  1. What was Parker’s Fort? Why was it ‘an extremely dangerous place’?
  1. Describe how the raid on Parker’s Fort triggered the longest and most brutal of all wars between Americans and a single Indian tribe?
  1. What was the outcome of the raid? In what way did this raid typify the tactics and methods of the Comanche’s?
  1. Reconstruct the ‘logic of Comanche raids’? Why were they so ‘depraved’ and brutal? Did they reserve this brutality only for white men?
  1. If the Parker’s knew about the brutality of the Comanche’s, why did they settle where they did…’in a place where almost every waking moment held a mortal threat”?
  1. Describe the ‘breed’ of men and women who pushed American civilization westward into Texas. How was their method different than the spread of the Spanish Empire?
  1. What was the typical attitude of these agents of civilization toward Indians? In what way was Quanah Parker’s family a nearly perfect example of this attitude? Explain the irony!
  1. Describe the treatment of the survivors of the Parker’s Fort Raid. What became of Cynthia Ann and Rachel and 14 month old James Plummer? How do we know?
  1. Describe the meaning of this chapter

Chapter ThreeWorlds in Collision

  1. Describe the extent and power of the Comanche Empire. How is language a significant sign of their domination?
  1. Given the extent of this empire, how is it possible that Anglo-Americans knew so little about the Comanche’s?
  1. Explain the motive for the Mexican encouragement of Americans to settle in Texas in the 1820’s. What is so ironic about this?
  1. Identify early contact between Americans and Comanche’s. In what way was the Comanche territory as ‘unknown as unexplored regions of Africa’.
  1. What is the significance of the fact that the Comanche’s who raided Parker’s fort were mounted?
  2. Describe the early Comanche culture. What happened to transform the Nermernuh people from such a backward tribe of Stone Age hunters to one of the most powerful forces of civilization on the North American continent?
  1. Describe the nature of the ‘horse revolution’ from the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico with their Iberian mustang, the transmission of Spanish horse culture and the dispersal of the horses in herds throughout North America.
  1. What was the importance of the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in terms of the Great Horse Dispersal? How did this event alter the power structure of the Great Plains. What role did the Apaches play in this change?
  1. How did horse technology change the method of hunting and war making?
  1. “I am ready, without hesitation, to pronounce the Comanche’s the most extraordinary horsemen I have seen yet in all my travels ...The finest light cavalry in the world.” What additions to “horse technology” did the Comanche’s create?
  1. “No other tribe, except possibly the Kiowas, so completely lived on horsebackfrom their ‘horse vocabulary’...to gambling.” Explain
  1. In what way did the Comanche mastery of the horse lead to their migration southward? Why was this important in the competition for buffalo?
  1. When and where did the Comanche ride into recorded history?
  1. Explain the meaning of the title of this chapter?

Chapter FourHigh Lonesome

  1. “With these remarks, I submit the following pages to the perusal of a generous public; feeling assured that before they are published, the hand that penned them will be cold in death.”
  • Briefly describe the memoir of captivity of Rachel Plummer Parker.
  1. Describe and locate the heart of the Comancheria, otherwise known as the Great American Desert. In what ways was it ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘alien’ ‘oceanic’ and terrifying to “white Americans?”
  • Why was this thelast part of the country to be settled?
  1. Describe the ‘least hospitable’ climate of this territory. Describe a ‘norther’; a blue norther’; a blizzard; a whiteout.
  1. Describe the logic of kidnapping Rachel Plummer in terms of the buffalo economy. What were the ‘value- added’ chores which the women performed?
  1. “My little innocent baby was not only dead, but literally torn to pieces.”

Based on the buffalo economy, why was it important for men to become polygamous? Why was it important to have slaves such as Rachel? Why was her seven week old baby strangled?

  1. “Torture killing by committee; gang rape; scalping; cutting out tongues; burning alive; dancing in glee as bodies worked as worms and burst in fire.”

Explain the moral algebra involved in the behavior of the Comanche’s? What does the author mean when he says that ‘Crazy Horse is free to be the hero we want him to be’?

  1. “If the Comanche’s were implacable killers, grim apostles of darkness and devastation, inside their camps they were something entirely different… To others they were the personification of death. To themselves, they were simply ‘People’. Explain?
  1. In what ways was the culture of all Plains Indians built around the buffalo?
  1. Describe the social structure of the Plains Indians. What was the difference between the white man’s conception of a ‘tribe’ and the Comanche ‘band’? Why was it a mistake to make a treaty or understanding with a ‘band headman’?
  1. Identify the five major ‘bands’ of Plains Indians at the turn of the 19th century.
  1. “The Comanche’s were ‘without a center’. Explain the political leadership of the band?
  1. What became of Rachel?

Chapter FiveThe Wolf’s Howl

  1. Explain how the defeat of the Spanish at the hands of the Comanche’s ‘changed the history of the West and the fate of North America.
  1. Describe the economic system known as encomienda. Did it succeed?
  1. Explain how the Apaches applied ‘guerilla warfare’ upon the Spanish in New Mexico.
  1. Describe the extent of Apacheria in human and geographical terms. What became of the Apaches between 1706 and 1748?
  1. Describe the methods used by the Comanche’s against the Spanish as well as other Indian tribes. How did this method transform the Comanche’s into a Spartan- like society by 1750?
  1. Identify the ‘Comanche barrier’. What purpose did it serve?
  1. ‘The story of Colonel Don Diego Ortiz de Parrilla offers one of history’s clearest windows into what it was like in Comanche tormented New Spain. Describe the San SabaMassacre of 1758.

Why was it the gravest of miscalculations by the Spanish? What role did the Apaches play in this affair?

  1. Describe the Texas ‘summer moon’? What was it significance to the Comanche’s?
  1. What revenge did Parrilla take against the Tonkawas? What was the Comanche reaction at Spanish Fort? What became of Parrilla and the future of the Spanish Empire?
  1. Describe the methods and attitude toward handling of the “Comanche problem” employed by Gov. Don Juan Bautista Anza. How did he propose to deal with Chief Cuerno Verde ‘the scourge of the kingdom”? Did it work?

Chapter SixBlood and Smoke

  1. “Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was a poet, a superb horseman, an amateur historian, oil painter, and President of the Republic of Texas in 1839. But above all, even by frontier standards he was a dangerous, mean and uncompromising son of a bitch.”
  • Describe Lamar’s attitudes toward Indians and his policy to carry it out.
  1. Describe Lamar’s expedition against Chief Bowles and the Cherokees in 1839. How did this initial expedition expand into the clearing out of the ‘rat’s nest’ and become ‘last stop on the trail of tears” for thousands of Indians. What was the motive of the Texans?
  1. What was the purpose and meaning of the raid by Colonel John Moore in February,. 1839 upon Comanche’s? Did it succeed?
  1. Describe the ‘peace negotiations’ between Comanche’s and Texans at Council House. What role did Maltilda Lockhart play?
  1. What was the significance for the future relations of Texans and Comanche’s as a result of the Council House fight?

Chapter SevenDream Visions and Apocalypse

  1. Who was Buffalo Hump? What was his Nermernuh name? What did it literally mean?
  1. Describe Buffalo Hump’s vision and explain how he carried it out at the Great Linville Raid in August, 1840.
  1. “They were drawn to the West by the adventure, violence and glory. Fearless 24 year olds with a distinct taste for combat. “Define the characteristics of the Texans who fought against Buffalo Hump.
  1. How did the Battle of Plum Creek change the style of white resistance to the Comanche’s, led by John Coffee Hays? Was this battle a victory for the Texans or for the Comanche’s?
  1. What happened when the battle was over?

Chapter EightWhite Squaws

  1. Identify the ‘three keys’ in which history is played (written). In which key is the story of Cynthia Ann Parker? Explain. Why is there no Indian ‘history’ of her existence?
  1. What is a ‘loved captive’? Recount the story of Bianca ‘Banc’ Babb. Why is it important in the history of White Squaw?
  1. Who is Leonard H. Williams? What is the significance of his ‘story’ about White Squaw? What did he learn about her that other whites would not/could not accept?
  1. Who were the Penatekas? How are they important in the history of Cynthia Ann Parker? What became of their culture? Why?
  1. Explain the degree and extent of ‘white man’s diseases’, particularly cholera in 1849? Where did it come from? What was the effect on the Plains Indians? How did the People (Nermernuh) deal with such diseases?
  1. Why does the author say that peace in Texas at mid-century was an “illusion”? Show how the Treaty of 1844, engineered by Sam Houston, an old Indian man, illustrates just how deeply whites misunderstood the Comanche’s.
  1. Who was the son of Cythania Ann Parker and her Comanche husband Peta Nocona? Where did his name come from? Why is he so important to the history of the Comanche’s?

Chapter NineChasing the Wind

  1. Who was James Parker and what was his importance to the history of Cynthia Ann Parker?
  1. Describe the term ‘Comanchero’. What was their heritage? What was their relationship to the Comanche’s?
  1. Reconstruct the story of the other captive from the Fort Parker Raid, Rachel Parker Plummer. How did she eventually die? What was so ironic about the cause of her death?
  1. What became of James Parker? Did he succeed in his ‘quest’?
  1. Explain the meaning of the title of this chapter?

Chapter TenDeaths of Innocent Face