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A review by wellworn_soles
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne
3.0
Popular histories, perhaps by their nature, are bound to be inadequate to those who study that history. As someone who has spent considerable time and scholarship focusing in West Asia in the premodern period, I understand how an indigenous scholar or a Texan scholar will balk at the wide arcing sweep the narrative in this book takes. It is inevitable, in producing a sort of survey, that nuance will be forsaken for overview.
Things I appreciate: S.C. Gwynne does take special care to recognize brutality in all its aspects. He does not fall into the simple narratives that would strip indigenous peoples of their complexity, painting them as noble peaceful savages before white people came and corrupted them. The Comanches, as Gwynne emphasizes, were a deeply war-like people with cultural tenets that seem cruel and inhumane by our standards. It was seen as normal - expected even - to brutally torture victims, repeatedly rape and abuse captives, and eviscerate babies in front of their parents. At the same time, Gwynne refuses to let his work be added to the dangerous canon that lauds the white rollback of the frontier as good or righteous. He takes care to highlight white brutality just as much as Comanche, which I really appreciated. Cultural perspectives are too complex to be neatly confined to “moral” and “amoral”, and Gwynne recognizes this.
Things I did not appreciate: some of Gwynne’s terminology. Use of words like “barbarian” and “civilization” to describe Comanche and white culture undercut the very nuance that Gwynne meticulously asserts throughout this work. It is frustrating to see this “clash of civilization” type rhetoric still appearing in historical works. This book was published in 2010; there’s no reason to have such trite, loaded and unfair terms persist with all the scholarship we have. Some other reviews cite such phrasing when they call this book racist, which I will not do. I think a reader would have to willfully ignore the repeated passages where Gwynne clearly encourages a more subtle interpretation. But I can see why some readers got there, and I think its the type of takeaway that could have been readily avoided had Gwynne sidestepped common pitfalls.
Overall, this was solid read when taken in context of its shortcomings. As a Texan, I am deeply appreciative of the richer history I can now apply to the world around me.
Things I appreciate: S.C. Gwynne does take special care to recognize brutality in all its aspects. He does not fall into the simple narratives that would strip indigenous peoples of their complexity, painting them as noble peaceful savages before white people came and corrupted them. The Comanches, as Gwynne emphasizes, were a deeply war-like people with cultural tenets that seem cruel and inhumane by our standards. It was seen as normal - expected even - to brutally torture victims, repeatedly rape and abuse captives, and eviscerate babies in front of their parents. At the same time, Gwynne refuses to let his work be added to the dangerous canon that lauds the white rollback of the frontier as good or righteous. He takes care to highlight white brutality just as much as Comanche, which I really appreciated. Cultural perspectives are too complex to be neatly confined to “moral” and “amoral”, and Gwynne recognizes this.
Things I did not appreciate: some of Gwynne’s terminology. Use of words like “barbarian” and “civilization” to describe Comanche and white culture undercut the very nuance that Gwynne meticulously asserts throughout this work. It is frustrating to see this “clash of civilization” type rhetoric still appearing in historical works. This book was published in 2010; there’s no reason to have such trite, loaded and unfair terms persist with all the scholarship we have. Some other reviews cite such phrasing when they call this book racist, which I will not do. I think a reader would have to willfully ignore the repeated passages where Gwynne clearly encourages a more subtle interpretation. But I can see why some readers got there, and I think its the type of takeaway that could have been readily avoided had Gwynne sidestepped common pitfalls.
Overall, this was solid read when taken in context of its shortcomings. As a Texan, I am deeply appreciative of the richer history I can now apply to the world around me.