MoFo Book Club - Jan. '22

Okay, I am done and ready to discuss!

I'm getting there! Should be finished by sometime this weekend!

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God I'm far behind. Might have to skip a month to catch up. Feel free to go on without me. It's only now starting to get interesting for me.

I think that ultimately the most interesting aspect of the story to me was the sheer volume of interests at play at any given time: military, private citizens pushing west, the Comanche, the other tribes, the politicians, etc.

Content-wise, this book was a bit challenging for me. A bit too much torture, sexual violence, and animal cruelty. It was a fascinating story, but it was hard to want to pick it up when you don't know if the next chapter is going to have hundreds of horses being sloppily executed with pistols or a man cutting a woman's vulva off her dead body and parading it around on a stick. I understand the importance of some of these details in terms of understanding the brutality of the encounters and the nature of the war strategies, but it started to feel almost repetitive at a certain point.

I wish that there had been more about the cultural struggles of those who returned from captivity and the way that they were perceived by the society around them. I thought there was a perceptive point about the idea that, for example, Cynthia Ann was considered an "other", and that part of the evidence of this was the willingness to view and share the image of her with an exposed breast. I think that the experience of the returned captives provides an interesting counter-point to the end of the story where we learn about Quanah adapting to an American lifestyle.

While I know that this is not something in the control of the author, I think it's a shame that there's such sparse primary source content from the different indigenous groups. So much of it is filtered through written down speeches, and a good amount of it comes from the perspectives of white captives.

A good read, but I'm definitely ready for something a bit lighter and with at least 97% fewer scenes of corpse mutilation.

I've got about 80 pages left and at this point I'm surprised at how little we've heard about Quanah. He's on the cover, the section of photos in the middle of the book has a lot of pictures of him, but here we are 3/4 of the way through the text with barely anything about him specifically.

So, on I go, hoping to finish by the weekend... and hoping to learn more about Quanah.

Yes, I was also surprised that he's not really the focus until the last 50 or so pages.

It's like someone saying they want to tell you about their trip to Disneyland . . . then talking for an hour about the history of the park before finally spending 5 minutes on their own trip there.

Though I'm sure that from the author's point of view this was all very necessary foundation to lay down.

It makes for a very different feel to the book. With a picture of one man on the cover, and that subtitle, I expected more about his life, his thinking, his perspective. This reads more like a history book with overarching themes and big-picture events. STILL very interesting stuff that I had no background knowing, so it was completely worthwhile, but just wasn't what I was expecting.

So far the most fascinating parts involved Cynthia Ann Parker--her capture and her return, and her reactions to all of those things that happened to her. The psychology behind it all was fascinating, so I had hoped for more like that.

ANYWAY, we'll see how I feel once I get through this last big part of the book...

Yeah, I think that the challenge is just the lack of depth of resources. Very little can be pulled on from his early life except for general understanding of where he lived and what his experiences may have been like. And then his integration into American society actually sounds relatively uneventful.

Totally agreed. And I thought it was absolutely heartbreaking when

There were people who were victimized by the Comanche and people who were victimized by the American military/society, and Cynthia Ann is in the very small group that really got hammered by both.

Agreed on all points. And yes, we can never know enough about anything involving Native American tribes because clearly they weren't going to be writing down histories or keeping diaries. So sad that so much of that history will never be remembered.

I found this book to be a fairly comprehensive examination of the info it wanted to cover, but I also thought the coverage on Quanah was a bit lighter than I thought I would get when I started reading. I enjoyed the book, and found it to be somewhat compelling in places, but in others, it read a bit like a textbook, so I had to push through it.

By the end, I had gained what I felt to be a good amount of knowledge of the way life was at the time for both the settlers and the natives, and had a general feeling of melancholy when considering I was reading about the end of an era of true freedom, even if it contained horrible events and unbridled savagery from all involved.

This was also yet another example of how technology can suddenly, radically, and rapidly change the face of the world.


Meanwhile, I have finished the next book i was reading, which was the first volume of The Witcher series of books.

Wondering about the timing on the next book for the club...

@Blue

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Your thoughts somewhat reflect mine, @Sedai. I think it was almost a bait-and-switch to put only a picture of Quanah on the cover, with that subtitle, and then have his story relegated to the last 40 or 50 pages. I realize there just isn't much we know for sure about him and his life (especially his earlier life), but the quick turnaround from warring Comanche chief to savvy businessman in the white man's world was a bit jarring, almost to the point of unbelievability. Clearly there was so much about this man's thought processes that we will never know or understand. And given the subtitle of the book, I don't think Gwynne had enough information to lead us to think we were going to get that background.

I'm not sure I'd define freedom the way you do, though. As a Christian, I can't ever say freedom includes the right to practice such horrible acts on other people, merely because it is your people's way of doing things. But the rest of the definition rings very true. The way the white man trampled his way from East to West in those days is enough to make you sick. I'm surprised that so many white settlers pushed forward as stupidly as they continued to do, even once they were aware of the dangers and risks.

I didn't mind the textbook feel of certain parts, though, because I knew so little going into this book. I'd read (and proofread) one other book that crosses paths with some of this history, The White Chief of Cache Creek, written by Faith Martin, a woman I know personally. It's part of a Missions series from my denominational publisher, and it includes a lot of minute detail from original sources from missionaries in that area. It has its moments of sounding like the White Man Savior syndrome, but since I maintain the gospel goes out to all nations and colors throughout the ages (and that Jesus wasn't white, duh), I perhaps have less problem with those parts than some others here might have. At the very least, I appreciate it as a history of part of my denomination's efforts at spreading the gospel.

So, for me, getting so much of the history of the Comanches was a real eye opener. Very glad I read this. But also ready to move on.

Fair point about freedom @Austruck.

I think what I mean when I say that here, is it was the end of an era for many people and tribes that had experienced life in a very unrestrained way, with all the unfettered wildness as well as the clearly horrible detrimental effects of a society in which there are very few, if any, rules and laws. A good argument against anarchy, eh?

I wouldn't want to have lived back then, that's for sure. I am one of these weirdos that think the best time to live in history is right here, right now...but with perhaps a bit less government overreach...

Definitely agreed on the government overreach stuff, but yes, I too am glad I live now and not then (or any other times, really). I'm old enough to have lived into adulthood pre-internet, and frankly, I wouldn't be able to freelance like I do without this computer and the internet. And I wouldn't know any of you mopes, either!

Your amended definition works well. All the things that happened to Native Americans as a whole are just awful to read about. How could any of them have seen it coming, right? Just ugly ugly stuff, all around.

As for the book, there were spots toward the end where I chuckled at some of the stunts Quanah pulled once he was part of white society. He really caught on fast, and that's a lot of his charm, I suppose.

Right. It all comes back to the fundamental problem of just how much of the history was written by white people and not the indiginous people, coupled with the fact that many of the people doing the writing either had their own "angle" or were simply ignorant as to what they were writing about.

Then there's just the fact that even someone trying to report things accurately still has the barrier of cultural divide. I'm sure there are things that Quanah would say to another Comanche that he might not say to a white person.

Like you say, there is just so much that can never be known!

Listen to the author discuss the book with Joe Rogan....



@Sedai

I will post a nomination thread for March in a few days


This is a bit much imo. The plains Indians had no written language, so where could 'white people' go to get the facts about the plains Indians other than from their own experiences?

All plains Indians did the same thing.

This is not a case of 'white people' rewriting history.

I didn't say that white people "rewrote" history. I said that "much of the history was written by white people". Which it was. And that's relevant when we're talking about the lack of insight into the perspective of the Comanche or the other tribes.

As I've said before, it's not the author's fault that primary texts written by Comanche people don't exist. But it fundamentally creates an imbalance in the presentation of information.

It was written by white people because the Comanche didn't write... that's my only point.
That's fair.

March nomination thread is up:

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...ad.php?t=65733

Finally finished it!!!!

Will do a larger review later, but it was quite the read. A real struggle to begin with to get into, but about mid way through, it got better and the story more fascinating and intriguing to follow.